Three great book series for toddlers

(Goblin is 30 months)

A while ago I did a post about Goblin's favourite bedtime books. Unfortunately like many toddlers he really likes repeating the same books over and over and over again. So I haven't really had a chance to find new ones he likes - he won't let me read new ones at bed time. A couple of weeks ago I asked Taming the Goblin facebook followers for ideas of new books for Goblin. There were some great ideas, and I am working through trying to track them down. Our library doesn't shelve children's books by author so its pot luck if you find what you are looking for.  But I did manage to track down some of the recommendations and convince Goblin to let me read them to him.

The Maisy series (by Lucy Cousins) was recommended by Make, Do and Friend. At the library we found 'Maisy Goes to the Library' which I thought was rather appropriate. Goblin really liked this book. It has lots of different animals to identify throughout. And there are only a few sentences per page - if there are too many Goblin gets bored and wants me to turn the page before I have finished the story.

We Can Do All Things recommended anything by the author John Butler. I found the cutest book in Amazon's used section (a great way to buy cheap books). 'While you were sleeping' talks about what animals are doing while your child sleeps. It is a bit strange that some of the animals aren't nocturnal. I think this is a missed teaching opportunity. But what it lacks on that educational front it makes up for in super cuteness and beautiful pictures - and its a counting book, 1 to 10. Every page has a picture of the moon on it, which is one of Goblin's current obsessions, so this book was a win.

Another Make, Do and Friend recommendation was Meg and Mog books. I'd forgotten these existed. I liked these when I was a kid. I found a great one about going to the moon. I was really surprised how much educational information it contained. Within the basic story there was information about how you can jump higher on the moon, that you eat squished up food, and that you orbit the moon (something I have been telling Goblin since he was really tiny).  Since reading this one we have gone back to the library and found other Meg and Mog books. These are definitely a hit with Goblin.

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Beltane activities

(Goblin is 30 months)

Tuesday is the 1st of May: May day and the pagan festival of Beltane. I decided to do some May Day activities with Goblin. I wanted to paint us both green and make flower and vine crowns - but its been raining hard all week which put a bit of a damper on that plan. So instead I decided to make a Green Man plaque from salt dough. 

The idea was that this would be an activity for Goblin. But as soon as he touched the salt dough he decided that today was going to be a clean hand day. Goblin isn't usually fussed about getting his hands messy but some textures seem to freak him out a bit. Today the salt dough was doing that. So I made the green man on my own. 

Salt dough is 2 cups flour, 2 cups salt and one cup water ( I used half a bottle of green food colouring in the mix as well). I pressed leaves into the dough to make leaf patterns around his beard and hair. Once I'd finished it I baked him in the oven at 100C for 8 hours. No you did not read that wrong, it took 8 hours to dry the dough out so it was rock solid. Then I rubbed some green acrylic paint into the veins of the leaves and wiped it off with a baby wipe to darken the edges.

I really like my green man. I think I'll varnish him and try hanging him in the garden. I don't know how weather worthy he'll be, but thats quite appropriate as part of the Green Man story, old Jack-o-Green dies and is born a new each year.

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Carrot and Oat bar - baking fail

(Goblin is 30 months)

Last week I spotted Growing Together's 'Carrot Cake bars' post at Happy Whimsical Hearts baking link up (see button below). I decided I had to try them with Goblin. The recipe comes from The Little Things  and there is a Christmas bar variation too.
Normally I would offer the UK measurements but Hublet has bought us an actual 'cup' measurer so I just used that (Sorry). So you need

1 cup of oats 

1/2 cup of grated carrot (which equates to two medium carrots)

2 tablespoons of raisins 

2 table spoons of grated coconut

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

a pinch of salt

honey (TLT say to taste but we ended up using about 4 tablespoons)

water - we used about 1 cup

I always try and enable Goblin to participate as much as possible in any cooking we do. So I decided to try and make the carrots safe for Goblin to grate. And once I'd stopped sniggering and dragged my mind out of the gutter I gave Goblin his carrot with cardboard knuckle guard.

Our new grater is really sharp and I was a bit worried that Goblin would grate off his fingers, but even with the guard he just found grating too difficult. So I ended up doing most of it.

Goblin did manage to help me measure the ingredients though. Its much easier with a cup measure than having to use the scales. We just put them all in the bowl at once. I realised I'd got rock salt rather than table salt out of the cupboard so we just skipped that ingredient.
The recipe said to add water until the mixture had a thick batter consistency but this never happened. I think it may have been because I was using the cheapest oats in the world.

To get it to stick together we ended up using a ton of honey - somewhat undermining the whole 'health' aspect of these bars. The mixture fitted perfectly in a 12 inch cake tin.

As per the instructions we put it in the oven for 25 minutes on 190C (gas mark 5, 375F). It was quite hard to tell whether it was cooked because it was still soft when we took it out of the oven. I turned it out onto a plate and left it to cool. Then I cut it into triangles.

Well they look really yummy but they did need salt (so much for thinking I could just skip that ingredient). The flavour was nice but the texture was quite odd - a bit slimy - like baked porridge (which is exactly what it is - and you have to remember again that I used very cheap oats).
Goblin was not impressed. He took one mouthful, gagged and refused to try any more. Hublet taunted me by explaining that the reason his treats taste so nice is
"because of the sheer quantity of sugar and butter I use, you made the mistake of using carrots and oats!"

So once again I have had a bit of a cooking fail (although I can't stop eating the stuff myself). But if any of you follow this blog regularly you will probably already know that Hublet is the cook in our house and most of my attempts at cooking take a downward turn. I'm pretty sure the quality of the oats had a significant effect on the results so please go visit The Little Things  and learn from a proper cook and hopefully yours will turn out better than mine.

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Kids Co-op Link up (#6 for me)

 
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It's Kids Co-op time again. Please take some time to check out all the awesome ideas that people have linked up, and link up any ideas of your own too. If you have any questions about linking up leave me a comment and I'll see if I can help. And here is my contribution that I will be linking up this week:

Celebrating the Wind

It has been very stormy this week. But today, in between the rain there were glorious periods of sunshine and Goblin was keen to play in the garden. Despite the sunshine the wind was crazy. Our garden is still very immature and we don't have any lovely big trees to blow in the breeze so I decided to tie some ribbons to the canes in our sunflower tub.

I also tied a kite to the washing line and brought Goblin's wind chimes down from his room hanging them on a nail in the fence. When Goblin went into the garden he was enchanted by the ribbons that were dancing in the gusts.

I don't have any 'full time' garden wind chimes because we live on quite a built up housing estate and I don't think its fair to the neighbours to have them chiming away all through the night. In fact although I like wind chimes, after half an hour of their incessant tinkling I had to take them back in side (only so much 'celebrating the wind' I can handle - I'm obviously not a born hippy).

After a while playing Goblin decided he wanted to run around with the kite. The wind was too inconsistent and blustery to fly the kite properly so I let him have it without the string and he ran around the garden with it.

A teacher friend of mine once said that when it was windy the kids in the playground all went a bit bonkers. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary with Goblin, but then he's always a little bit bonkers when he's outside anyway.

And now to the link up:

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Money play

(Goblin is 30 months)

When we go to the shops Goblin likes to hand over the purchases we are buying, watch the man or woman beep the stuff across the scanner and hand it back to him. But I realised he hadn't been noticing the important bit where I have to pay. So recently I have been trying to do more cash (rather than debit card) transactions so Goblin can hand the money over. I want to get him used to the idea of a money and transactions even if he doesn't yet understand the value of money.

The other day, while shopping in Tesco we came across this awesome cash register. In the box I assumed it was just a little cash register and I thought at under £10 it would be a cute toy for imaginary play. But when we got it home and undid all the packaging we discovered it was much more.

For a start it came with a whole bunch of cardboard groceries. Goblin loved this and out them all in his plastic trolley and then started scanning them all. It has plastic coins and paper note money and a cash draw that opens when you press a button, and locks with a key. Also the register has a working calculator, so when Goblin is older we can actually use this toy to do shopping based maths. There is a pretend weighing scale, a scanner the beeps, a card swiper that beeps when the Tesco club card is swiped through it and a card reader where the key pad only beeps if the card is inserted. Oh and to top it off it has a microphone that you can talk into to do crackly supermarket announcements "clean up in aisle three please". All in all this toy was so much better than we originally thought.

Immediately we unpacked it he started playing 'shop'. He got Hublet and I to pretend to buy things and he'd scan them, take our Tesco club card and put it in the card reader and take our money. I am gradually telling him what the coins and notes are. So I'll say, "how much is that, £14 - Ok here is £15, a £10 note here, and a £5 note here. You need to give me a £1 coin, look its this one". Its way above his maths ability but talking about things seems to be one of the important ways that Goblin learns at the moment.

So to stop me just sounding like an advert for Tesco's, when Goblin is not playing with his new cash register he also has Hublet's giant jar of change. I told you before about the slotting coins into his money box activity that developed after Goblin discovered Hublet's jar. Well his new favourite thing is  to empty the contents of the jar onto the floor and uses the coins for sensory play with his vehicles. While he plays I point out which coins are which.

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