With an expat moms breakfast 30 to 45 minutes away on tap for early this morning, I wanted to be as organized as possible last night. I prepped the usual – stainless bottles full of water and a couple of healthy snacks – then went in search of something that Gracen could quietly play with while I chatted with some of the other moms. Lately, her new unifix cubes have been keeping her incredibly engaged and happy during meals out and over at friends’ houses, but I also don’t want them to lose their magic. ☺ While digging through our craft shelf, I came across some slime I brought from back home. (Yes, I brought homemade slime from Canada… I don’t know what that says about me, and I’m not sure I want to know either…) I packed it in one of my favourite interlocking containers from Daiso and then went in search of a couple of things to pair it with. The result was this little sensory play to go kit, which Gracen just loved.
The last few months have been filled with transitions… Transitions for our whole family, but though they’ve been big for us, they’ve been HUGE for Gracen. First, we packed up our home in Vancouver and moved out. Then we moved in with her grandparents where we completely redid her bedroom twice and got rid of the bed she’s always had there to replace it with a different one. Then, after getting settled in nicely, we embarked on a more than 30 hour journey to the Middle East during which she slept a total of five hours. When we arrived here in Kuwait, she found herself in a new home {which was no longer a house, but an apartment} with a new room, a new bed, and the bare minimum as far as ‘stuff’ is concerned. On top of all of that, upon our arrival, she had to make the transition of switching her days and nights. And you know what? Our little lady has done phenomenally well. She’s a trooper, I tell you. She’s adjusted well, made all sorts of new {old} friends, and seems truly and genuinely happy here.
The only thing I’d say has been challenging now that all of the transitions are said and done, is the fact that we seem to have lost some of her independence somewhere along the way. Don’t get me wrong – when it comes to picking her clothes or putting on her shoes or choosing a snack, she’s still very independent. But when it comes to playing independently, something we’d worked really hard on in Vancouver, I can see we’ve back tracked quite a ways. Back home, we’d fallen into a wonderful routine that allowed me to shower and pee and do dishes without having a munchkin under my feet. She’d often choose to play independently in her room or read independently in her book nook, and it was wonderful. We’d even started letting her play outside in the {fully fenced} backyard all by herself sometimes! But here? Not so much.
Our apartment here in Kuwait is huge. Much, much bigger than our house in Vancouver was, and I guess I expected her to make use of all of the space when I had something I needed to do. Not the case. It’s okay and I know we’ll get back to where we were, but for now, if I run to the washroom to grab a tissue, pop into the laundry room to deposit a dirty cloth, or head into the kitchen to get a glass of water, I have a little shadow following right behind me. Always.
This week, Miss G and I have been participating in a candy play series with several other mamas and munchkins. The goal has been to experiment with candy and come up with several fun and uinique ways to creat, play, and explore with the Halloween treats that will soon be making their way into our houses. On Monday we created beautiful glossy paint using Skittles, on Tuesday we created mouldable and edible candy clay, on Wednesday we sorted, counted, and graphed SweeTARTS. and yesterday we used our goodies to make fun candy jewellery.
This is by no means an original idea… In fact, I’ve seen it around the web several times before {like here and here}. But cool? YES. Soooo cool. Like magic milk paint, I think it’s just one of those things you have to try yourself and see in person. It’s that cool. Plus, when teaching I’d always fret about the teeth of my munchkins who seemed to get multiple backs of Gobstoppers each year around Halloween. Well, this is the perfect way to enjoy them without having to worry about your little one’s teeth or sugar consumption.
This week, Miss G and I are participating in a candy play series with several other mamas and munchkins from around the world… Yesterday’s theme was painting – check out our glossy Skittles paint here.
It’s no secret that we absolutely love homemade play dough around here… In fact, we usually have 2 or 3 batches on the go at once, and most often, we pull at least a batch out a day. It’s hard to choose a favourite, but out of all our go-to recipes, I think the marshmallow dough we made this summer was one of the most enjoyed. So when I stumbled upon this recipe for homemade candy corn, it got me thinking… Would the dough be similar? How much of a ‘play window’ would it allow for before it started hardening? Would it easily mould? Well, there’s only one way to find out, now isn’t there?
One day, while playing with our well-loved pumpkin spice play dough, Gracen asked if we could have some friends over so she could share her new dough with them. She’s always adored having friends come over, and now that we’re in an apartment building filled with teaching families, arranging play dates is easier than ever. A play dough play date sounded like a brilliant plan to me, so I agreed and immediately started thinking about another fall-scented play dough we could create. I quickly remembered the apple play dough post I’d seen on Fantastic Fun & Learning, and knew that Miss G and her friends would enjoy something similar. Because I was on a bit of a roll with the dough containing real pumpkin, I decided our apple dough would contain real apples and would be further fall-ified by making it apple pie scented. The good news is that my mission was a total success! The dough turned out soft, squishy, and smelled deliciously of warm apple pie drizzled with caramel sauce – yum! In fact, as I was making it, Brad came into the kitchen with eager eyes and asked what I was baking because our house smelled so delicious. Oops.
I adore fall. The colours, the crisp air, the scarves, the boots, the crunch of leaves underneath your feet… It all just makes me warm and fuzzy inside. My social media feeds have been full of it recently, and for that I’m thankful (because hey – I’ll take it however I can get it). While we may be in the desert and it may still be 40 to 45 degrees on an average day, there’s no reason why we can’t make fall happen right here in our own apartment. And so we began today.
It’s no secret that we love sensory play in our house. Like a lot. Sadly, our recent move meant saying goodbye to many of the sensory materials that had become staples in our everyday play repertoire… (What – It doesn’t make sense to ship pounds upon pounds of coloured pasta, pea gravel, packing peanuts, dried beans, and glass gems?? Hmph.) And so we begin again! This week’s mission was replacing our stash of coloured rice, and did we ever! In fact, we now have 22 pounds of vibrantly coloured rice.
Today as Miss G was napping, I decided I’d set out a fun station for her to discover and explore throughout the afternoon. All I knew is that I wanted it to be something simple to prepare (so much to do!), but that’s all I had. As I thought back through previous activities that Gracen loved, I remembered her magnetic station from long ago. That thing literally stayed around for months and months and got tons of play even near the end of its run. That’s when the idea of a sink or float discovery station came to mind. Water is the simplest sensory material ever, and all it would require would be for me to collect things from around the house.
Is it crazy that I’m totally stoked on this awesome, non-crumbly, and fully edible peanut butter play dough we came up with today?! The truth is, it’s taken us a few attempts to come up with the perfect recipe. I really should have known which ingredient would be the key to our success – it’s a long time favourite of mine – but it took us a while to get there. We started with the classic recipe I grew up with – peanut butter, dried milk, and honey – and while it’s yummy and fun to play with, it crumbles absolutely everywhere and is super tricky to roll out and cut using cookie cutters. This one, on the other hand, is like pure luxury. It’s super soft, silky, and rolls and cuts with ease.
I saw this awesome idea on one of my favourite play blogs, Play at Home Mom LLC, long ago and loved it at first sight. At the time, Miss G wasn’t yet really into drawing, so I filed it away for sometime in the future. Now, with an almost 3 year old who adores drawing and colouring and a 30 {or so} hour trek to the other side of the planet looming near, it was one of the first things that popped into my mind when preparing for what is bound to be a somewhat challenging journey. It’s silly, fun, doesn’t require a ton of pieces, and since it’s dry erase, will be perfect for using again and again during our long plane rides.
Oh my word… I’m so glad we finally got around to trying this! I pinned the idea over a year ago and I knew it was going to be fun, but I had no idea just how much Miss G would love it and how much play it would bring about (just wait until we get to those pictures!)
Our rice-filled, Japenese-themed sensory bin was such a hit with the little girls at Gracen’s 3rd birthday party, we decided to bring it out to enjoy again today. We brought a soft blanket, parked ourselves in the shade of a big tree on the far side of the yard, and Grae snuck in the calm, quiet time she quite desperately needed in order to regroup after a couple of busy people-filled days (if you’ve yet to try it, slowly running your hands through dry, cool rice is quite therapeutic).
Have I mentioned how much I love when fun, unplanned activities just come about naturally during the day? I do! In fact, I often find that they’re some of our very favourites. That’s exactly what happened today with our super simple table top roadway.
While cleaning out our vehicle yesterday, I realized that we still had a big stash of beach shells we’d collected a couple months hiding in our hatch (you know you’re a parent when…) We’d originally collected them with the intent of painting them, so that’s just what we did.
While Gracen napped this afternoon, I decided to finally put the bag of marshmallows I’ve been carting around for the last couple of weeks to good use. And oh my word, am I ever glad I did!
