Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Sally Eyre said…
Check this link out - I don't know what theme it would go with though: http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2014/07/make-slime-with-laundry-detergent.html
8 August 2014 at 03:27
Martha said…
That looks like a fun link! I've got tons of PVA glue at the moment so will have to track down the detergent and give it a go.
14 August 2014 at 12:46
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Erewash Valley Trail: Ilkeston

You could spend a lot of time following old canals and railways in the Erewash Valley. This walk included parts of the Erewash Canal, the Nottingham Canal, the Nutbrook Canal, and the Stanton branch line, and I could have continued further along any one of those, if I'd had the time. I started in Kirk Hallam, which is mostly a post-war housing estate with a distinctive outline on the map: the main road to Ilkeston through the middle, and a loop road encircling the village. It looks like the London Underground logo. I parked at the lake at the top of the loop. There was a sculpture commemorating the nearby Stanton Ironworks - the ground remembers the roar of the blast  read the inscription around the base - and the remains of a lock on the Nutbrook Canal. Heading towards Ilkeston, I crossed a former golf course, now a nature reserve called Pewit Coronation Meadows, passed a large sports centre, and was soon in the town centre. There was a general impression of red-brickiness, with l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ten books that shaped my life

Ten books that shaped my life in some way.  Now that wasn't a problem.  I scanned the bookshelves and picked out nine favourites without the slightest difficulty (the tenth took a little longer). The problem was that, on the Facebook challenge, I wasn't supposed to explain why .  Nope.  Having picked out my ten, I couldn't let them go without saying why they were special to me. These books are more than a collection of words by an author.  They are particular editions of those words - taped-up, egg-stained, dust-jacketless and battered - which have come into my life, been carried around to different homes, and become part of who I am. How to Be a Domestic Goddess Well, every woman needs an instruction manual, doesn't she? Nigella's recipes mean lazy Saturday mornings eating pancakes, comforting crumbles on a rainy night, Christmas cakes, savoury onion pies and mounds of bread dough.  If you avoid the occasional extravagance (20 mini Bundt tins...
3 comments
Read more

Erewash Valley Trail: Stapleford

It had been a long wait for this walk. All through the Christmas holidays, and an inset day, and weeks and weeks of appalling weather. Now it was the end of January and there was still a dull grey layer of cloud, but at least it wasn't raining. I set out. If you like a good ex-industrial landscape, the Erewash Valley is the place to be. It is veined with old canals and railways, freckled with former factories and mills, and pitted with coal mines. The M1 and a railway run north to south through it, but parts of it still feel surprisingly rural. I had been drawn in by all that there was to discover, so I'd shelved the Portway for a little while and diverted onto the Erewash Valley Trail. I parked in Bramcote Hills Park again and had a quick look at the walled garden, overlooked by the  Hemlock Stone. Hickings Lane heads towards the centre of Stapleford. It looks like it should be a dual carriageway but it's not; there are two separate roads with a wide grass strip between th...
Post a Comment
Read more