2 years 3 months

Sponging with some paint.

At first A wasn’t into using the sponge because it was an unusual texture but he got used to it.

To be honest he’s not into getting his hands messy, so that’s why I keep making him try. He’s getting better.

I swear he likes clean up more then the activity sometimes. He was done before I could get a proper photo 😅

I’m not sure if this a thing that families do, but it’s something I have thought about off and on for some time now.

I think it has more to do with my behaviour management philosophy being positive behaviour based, which is about teaching your (high) expectations about behaviour. It’s the Pygmalion Effect of having high expectations which leads to high performances.


Schools that use this idea have 3 to 5 expectations that they can actually describe, you could actually demonstrate.


Here are the expectations that I’ve been tossing about:

• Caring
• Creative
• Capable
• Curious
• Clever

I was thinking about Calm as well but do I really want my son to be calm... all the time. I want him to be able to do express anger, sadness, and a host of other feelings in a healthy way. Would telling him to be calm prevent that?


My husband, C, and I had a conversation about the difference between kind and caring, and we decided that despite the obvious first letter difference we would still prefer caring. Just because you do something that is kind, doesn’t mean that you actually care, but if you do care you are more likely to do kind things.


Does this encompass everything there is to know about our family? We love to travel particularly overseas - so that’s curious and also capable if you land somewhere where no one speaks English. We love learning about new things, reading and researching - curious and clever. We love puzzles, designing and making things - clever and creative and capable. We love cooking (and eating) - creative and capable. We love writing - creative and clever. I’m pretty confident (hmm another C word!) that it does.

Stamping using a fruit or vegetable... everyone’s done that. But we’re ‘creeping’ up to Halloween 🎃 so I wanted to do some themed craft activities.

I kept some apple halves that would normally go out to the compost. Luckily my husband didn’t have a fridge clean out on the weekend.

We used orange acrylic paint, and two glitter paints - gold and red. A refused to wear the paint smock 😩 but luckily he is a pretty clean crafter. He didn’t get that from me.

2 years 2 months

I stole this idea from my friend Ang, who also has a truck crazy kid.

I used two long strips of bulsa wood. It was fairly thick - possibly 7mm. I used a pair of sharp but long scissors and cut the planks in half.

I then used washi tape to makes lines and zebra crossings. A helped with some of these, The especially crooked ones.

We then slapped some black acrylic paint on them. I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying time, and then we gave it a quick coat of Mod Podge. I used the dryer again.

A actually used one of the roads before I got to dry it, so it has slid tracks on it. Adds to the realism 😆

2 years 3 months

This printable came from The Measured Mom. When A saw it come out of the printer he was keen to colour in!

Not much to say really, except I read the text to him, and he picked out the colours he wanted to use. I coloured in a helicopter and a tractor so I talked about the colours I wanted to use as well.

2 years 3 months

One of A’s works is to feed our cat named Squish. In the above photograph he is filling his feed bowl.

Our cat is a particularly messy one. So below A is sweeping the cat biscuits up which Squish has spread about. This is a new work for A but he’s been wanting to do it for a while, he’s only just showing master of using the brush.

2 years 3 months

Last week during a cooking lesson (I’m a home economics teacher) a student asked my if I was going to teach A how to cook. I laughed and told him I already was.

One of the meals I get A’s help with is pizza.

He helps to spread the sauce - I help to spread it evenly because he’s not that good at it 😆. Sorry I didn’t get a photo of him doing it!

He helps to sprinkle the cheese - after he makes a pile I help to spread it evenly out.

He helps to lay out the ham - tonight he did pretty well at this.

2 years 3 months

I know everyone knows about puzzles. I love wooden ones, but the ones I love tend to be expensive. I look for puzzles that have realistic images and or gives us plenty to talk about while we do it.

I’m posting this though to talk to you about where to buy them. Most of my puzzles are actually second hand. Second hand shops and Op shops are a good source. I also get them from on Facebook Buy, Swap and Sell groups. Join a local community group or a focused toy group in your state or country.

The above puzzle was from a Facebook group, I bought a few things to combine postage. The edges are a little worn but still in good condition.

2 years 3 months

A really likes this activity. We squirted some paint out - naming the colours, opened up his art book, and used the car to paint with.

We talked about how blue and yellow made green. We talked about the tracks the car made. We talked about the ‘farting’ noise the car made as it rolled along 😅

I saw this idea from Play to Learn Preschool. Click the link to go to the original post.

The last step was ‘clean up’ which I feel most mummy bloggers don’t talk about 😊