Blog number 11

Hello again lovely people! How are you all doing?

I would say how many weeks of lockdown we have had but I honestly have lost count.

I am not even sure what day it is anymore!

However we have been keeping busy and relatively sane and here are some of the things we have been doing.

Aquafaba foam

If you are a bake off fan you will know that aquafaba is the liquid you find in a can of chickpeas.

It can be made into vegan meringue but also in to a taste safe foam.

I am not going to lie, this took a very long time to whisk. It would have been much easier if I a food processor instead of just an electric whisk but I got there in the end!

You will want to whisk it until it forms stiff peaks.

Once that was done I separated it into bowls and added the food colouring. I also use a gel food colouring as it doesn’t water down the foam.

Funnily enough the yellow food colouring made the foam into a watery mess but the blue, green and red were all fine. No idea why so if anyone does, please feel free to enlighten me!

Aquafaba has a bit of a funny smell so I added some essential oils to the mix as well.

Lavender for the blue, peppermint for the green, geranium to the red and lemon for the yellow and eucalyptus for the white. This added a lovely sensory addition to the foam as toddler G loves different smells.

I popped the bowls of foam along with scoops, spoons, play sauce pans and some pom poms onto the tuff tray outside and encourage toddler G to mix and stir the colours together.

He got very into swirling the different colours and making shapes and eventually just pouring everything together in one big mess!

Toddler G also liked scooping out the pop poms from the foam.

I was relieved that he played with the foam longer than it took to whisk!

Fruit salad

Toddlers love to feel independent and grown up and what is more grown up than chopping knives!

Obviously don’t give them a sharp one, I used the small child ikea ones as they are a perfect size.

I didn’t have a massive range of fruit but toddler G was more than happy with grapes, apple and banana.

I think soft fruits like strawberries, peaches, and kiwi fruits would have worked really well too.

I popped some easy to cut pieces on a chopping board on the tuff tray, I peeled the apple first and chopped it in to quarters, and showed toddler G how to hold it in one hand and chop with the other.

I popped a bowl next to him so he could put the chopped-up fruit in it and he happily stayed for 15 minutes chopping up the fruit and making the salad.

I will definitely be including him in more kitchen activities as this was a great success.

Hiding puzzle pieces in rice or oats

Very simple activity to set up if you need just five minutes to drink a hot cup of tea!

If you have some wooden puzzles, hide them in a bowl of rice or oats end get your little one to dig them out before they put them together or match them to their slot.

I was surprised at how much toddler G enjoyed this.

He does like his puzzles anyway but this added another dimension to them and made them a lot more exciting.

Object matching

A great rainy-day activity!

This one needs a little prep but it’s very easy and you don’t need any complicated materials.

You will need to find a few of your little ones favourite things, a car, block, train track all works very well.

Draw around them and then ask your little one to find and match up the object with your drawing.

For younger children make sure the objects you have drawn around are nearby so it’s not too tricky but older toddlers you can leave the objects around the house to make it more of a treasure hunt.

Crunchy box

Seriously love this activity but it’s another slightly messy one so good to do outside if you can!

Toddler G loves playing with his food, he loves smashing things up and he loves being given jobs to do so this was a big hit with him.

I popped shredded wheat, some crisps (the ones he doesn’t like!) and some cereal and asked him to prepare the food for the birds as they needed it in small pieces.

I handed him his wooden hammer and let him bash away.

Toddler G got really really in to this and when he got bored of hammering he just used his hands to scrunch them up.

Once he had finished we then popped all the food on the bird table so they could have a bit of a feast!

Lego Bath

There is a saying that if you have a grumpy small person, put them in water or put them outside and it’s so true!

Because we have nowhere to be in the mornings anymore I have decided to not rush and let toddler G get ready when he wants. It does mean then when lockdown is finally over we will never be on time for anything ever!

So our mornings are very slow and lazy and toddler G normally ends up wanting to get in the shower with me.

I decided to jazz things up a bit for him though and I tipped all his mega blocks in the bath as well.

This worked amazingly well! He loved building the blocks in the bath, washing them all and filling them up with water and pouring the water from one block to another. Fantastic for his motor skills and also it let me sit on the bathroom floor for half an hour with my laptop while he entertained himself, I only had to admire how clean a block was now and then and he was super happy!

Well Funky Fans and any of my friends and family who read this blog, we are all in for another 3 weeks but we know that we can do this!

At least the sun is still shining for the majority of the time so we can make the most of our daily exercise and our gardens if we have them.

I hope you are all staying safe and well. Sending you all a big hug! XX