Theme Week: Water

As we were hurtling towards the summer holidays, I started panic-planning.  What was I going to do with Toby at home all day every day?  And would I ever get anything done that I wanted to do?  With the horrifying prospect of six weeks of "I'm bored" before me, I decided it was time to resurrect my toddler theme weeks.  I can hardly call my long-legged almost-four-year-old a toddler any more though, can I?

This time round, I've gone elemental, with Water, Earth, Air and Fire, plus Plants just for good measure.  Water filled a week and a half, because Toby's preschool finished on a Tuesday, and there are almost endless things you can do with water when it's warm and sunny.

Activities
1. Defrost the freezer!  
Well, that was my job.  Can you believe I spent my last few hours of preschool freedom defrosting a freezer?  And as I scraped the chunks of ice off, I thought: Toby would love this.  I hoped it might amuse him for ten minutes; he was out there for over an hour!  Once the ice melted, he filled the bowl with water and carried on.

Theo liked it too

2. Water Music.  
 Not Handel, unfortunately.  A selection of jam jars to fill with water and hit with a spoon provided some entertainment.  And listening skills, and pouring practice, and volume measurement, and all good stuff.

Equipment: jars, spoon, jug of water. (Ignore the fruit)

Making different notes

Topping up the water level

 3. Ice painting.
I think Toby was a little confused that we were actually painting the ice, rather than painting with the ice.  This was an idea borrowed from Ellie's blog.  She went all natural with her colourings; I just used food colours (hey, I'm a baker).  Nice and simple: We made some highly-coloured water and froze it.  Next day we used the ice cubes to make pretty patterns on an old muslin.

 Outings
1. Feeding the ducks at a local park

2. Meeting some friends for a walk and a play at Foremark Reservoir

3. Admiring the fish at the garden centre in the village

Food
I have to admit to having no photos of my attempts at themed food.  We had fish tacos one day - chunks of fish and vegetables in a tortilla - but we were too busy eating them to take a photo.  We also made blue jelly, to resemble a pond, from gelatine, blue food colour and one of those clear flavoured water drinks.  Then I put some supposedly fish-shaped fruit snacks in, but they were tiny and just looked like weird blobs.  It tasted OK but I deleted the photos.  Just imagine some kind of great artistic jelly fish pond, in a glass bowl with red and green and yellow fish sweets, and maybe even a lily pad on top.

And that won't be what it looked like at all.