Love and Lollipops

It's goodbye for now.

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 15:48:00 +0000

Dear lovely readers,

I've put off writing this post for some time now, because, honestly, it's hard for me to write this. Nothing earth shattering. Just that I'm not going to be blogging here for awhile. Maybe not forever.

Love and Lollipops has been my little project. Something I did for myself and hoped that others like you, would enjoy what I shared. I started it when Little One, now aged six, was very young, and it was a lovely escape from being at home all day, changing diapers, breastfeeding. You know.

Along the way I've gotten to "meet" some of you via comments and emails and some of us have even become friends. I am so very grateful. Grateful to all of you, whether you read this to support me or because you enjoyed it. I want to say a heartfelt thank you.

I'm not finished sharing playful and creative pursuits... and for now I have replaced this space with Instagram. If you click on this link : https://www.instagram.com/georgiasetzer/, you can see what I get up too there. Recently I've shared crafts and fun there, that I haven't shared here.

By the way you don't have to be an active Instagram user (post pictures) to be a follower of other's accounts, but you do have to join Instagram to follow along (I think).

I won't be on the Love and Lollipops Facebook page either. Taking a break there too.

Here's some Instagram fun that I've been up to:

Keep having fun with your kiddos!

All the very best to you.

Georgia :)

Bottle Top Snowmen Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 15:22:00 +0000

I have an idea in my head when I start a project. My boys have their own ideas! I love that. Yes, it does mean that my craft ideas don't always come to fruition, but I choose to see my ideas as "prompts" for their wonderful creativity.

So when I glued these bottle tops together, I envisioned bottle top snowmen ornaments, like you see in the photo at the top. Yip, that's my attempt. (I used a glue gun to glue these tops together by the way.)

But, when my boys saw bottle top snowmen, they saw this...

and this... Little One's creation below. Little One often takes the lead from big brother. :)

This activity kept them busy for more than an hour. A great success in my book. I'm sure you love your kiddos' ideas too... have they ever "bettered" your idea?

This will be my last post for the year. We will be returning to my home town for Christmas and the New Year. I do wish you a blessed and beautiful Christmas time with your families and friends. If you are traveling, be safe. Take care, till next time.

Georgia x

Christmas Ornament Alphabet Game

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:47:00 +0000

Here's an easy and fun way to practice the alphabet.

Type out and cut up the letters of the alphabet. If you have an alphabet puzzle or any other alphabet toy, which has all the loose letters, that would work well too.

Hide each letter with a Christmas ornament around your home. Then send your little person to look for all the ornaments. When they find the letter and the ornament, they must tell you what the letter is. You can extend this activity by asking them to shout out a word starting with that letter.

After they have found all the ornaments, they get to hang them on the tree. Simple and fun.

Hope you are enjoying this lovely time of year. Till next time.

Christmas Cards 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 16:50:00 +0000

I love the idea that we make our own cards. The boys aren't always as keen as I am. :)

This year we went for something more arty looking.

Long time ago, we made our own Eric Carle style paper. To see what I mean, you can read this post. There was still lots left over over in the craft cupboard and it came in very handy for the idea I had.

So to make these, we used our own handmade paper. We cut out the background scene and the trees. We then used a punch (Little One loved doing this) to make the decorations and the snow. We had a small production line going on the dining room table, with each of us doing a different "job".

I love how they turned out.

Till next time, enjoy this wonderful season.

Design your own T-Shirt

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:48:00 +0000

I had seen this idea in our local ideas magazine and have always wanted to try it.

I found a fairly easy and cool picture to copy, a Star Wars Clone Trooper, via the Coloring Pages for Kids website and printed it out. I used an inexpensive white T-shirt and a fabric marker/pen,
which is available at most craft stores.

A white T-shirt is the best way to go if you are going to trace a design and not do it free-hand. Remember to place a thick piece of cardboard into the T-shirt and underneath the picture you are copying, otherwise the pen will go right through and make marks on the back of the T. You also need a fairly steady hand and good light.

Little One likes it!

If you are wanting more inspiration, I'm posting almost daily on Instagram. I would love for you to follow along.
http://instagram.com/loveandlollipops/

Till next time.

Making Art for your Child's Room

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 12:05:00 +0000

It's been almost a year since we moved to Pretoria, but I wanted to share this post with you, as old as it is. Before moving out of our home last year, I did many things to fix up the house. One of those chores was to finalise a nice wall of art in Little One's room. His room was definitely one of my favourites in the house. The light in this room was beautiful and of course, who can resist children's decor?

So using the art work from free printable packs, provided by the wonderful blogs Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1, as well as some other ideas, I made all the art for the wall myself.

One very easy idea is to cut out the first letter of your child's name from black craft paper and then using Tipp-Ex or white paint, turn it into a road. Stick on some toy cars, preferably plastic ones if you can find them, with a nice strong glue. I used light plastic cars from a popular old game. I took the glass out of the frame, so that I could stick the cars directly onto the cardboard. The poster next to the "S", as well as the two yellow framed pictures, were made from the art work in the printable packs, as mentioned above.

In this picture below you can see how I created the Bus and Taxi. Adding photo faces of our family members made it fun and personal.

I love how it turned out and Little One and I spent some great creative time sitting at that little white table.

I also love that it didn't cost lots of money to make a great wall of art.

Do you have some personal walls of art in your home?

PS. Here's a link to all the other posts I've written about homemade wall art - Wall Art Ideas. Just in case you like the topic. :)

U is for Umbrella

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 15:59:00 +0000

Another in my "I'm-very-behind" alphabet series.

In South Africa our children learn the phonetic pronounciation of a letter, so "u" as in "umbrella", not "u" as in "unicorn".

At the blog 3 dinosaurs you can download some super alphabet printable packs. I used this great picture of an umbrella to do our first craft. Little One had to decorate the umbrella with fingerprints.

(The link to this printable is not working at the moment. I will try to fix it.)

This cute umbrella cupcake idea comes from a Woman's Value magazine party supplement, April 2004. In their version, they used blue and cream icing (half/half) to represent the sand and the beach. I went the easy route - my cupcakes came from Pick n Pay. :)

"If all the raindrops were Smarties and Jelly Tots, Oh what a rain that would be! "

Using bendy straws and paper cupcake liners, Little One created some cute umbrellas. And the rain... well that was Smarties and Jelly Tots of course.

As you can tell in that last picture, the sweetie rain went down a treat. You think he may have some in his mouth? :)

Till next time, have fun.

C is for Car

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sun, 12 Oct 2014 17:16:00 +0000

Earlier this year I kind of promised you an alphabet series. One should never promise such things. The year has raced on and Little One will be going into his last term of the school year tomorrow. The spring holidays are over, sniff, sniff. On the upside, it's count down to the Christmas holidays.

I have shared these in the series so far:

A is for Astronaut

O is for Octopus

S is for The Very Busy Spider

I'm not very far, am I.

Let's see if I can catch up a bit.

Little One won an awesome prize at his school carnival and this week we went down to the Zwartkops Race Track and both boys got the opportunity to race around the track with racing driver George Smallberger. It was such a cool afternoon.

Perfect timing for this post. So here I share not only our car activities, but also some pictures of our afternoon.

This cute letter "c" idea is from this post.

These are inspired by these Teddy Racing Cars.

(I used small Bar Ones, Smarties and some icing.)

A chocolate traffic light treat, or robot, as we call them here in South Africa.

(Kit Kat, small Bar Ones, Smarties and icing.)

Both my boys (aged 6 and 12) loved creating this car banner for the bookshelf.

If you children love drawing, creating a banner is a great boredom buster.

Little One in the car, all ready to go.

Those little fingers make me smile.

Can you spot him?

Another alphabet post coming up soon.

Till next time.

Ten Super Bottle Top Crafts

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 17:11:00 +0000

My passion for bottle tops has been a longstanding one (sounds a bit weird I know), but somehow on this blogging journey, I was introduced to the concept of these being a creative tool and I was changed. I could never throw them away again. In fact, when we relocated up country earlier this year, my husband had to convince me that I could not allocate precious moving boxes to my collection (my big collection) of recycling. Bottle tops, milk bottles, egg cartons - I keep these! Hehe, okay, perhaps I am a bit strange. Please don't unsubscribe. :)

Today's post is a little trip down memory lane, sharing some of my favourite bottle top creations from the past few years with you and a new one!

1. I think my very first inspiration for bottle top crafts came via the lovely Silly Eagle Books blog. Vanessa created some wonderful bottle top animals. Pop on over to this post (Bottle Top Animals) to also see a caterpillar, dog, cat, bird, bunny and spider.

2. A pretty "you are the apple of my eye" card.

3. More wonderful inspiration came from the very creative Amanda from Crafts by Amanda. I loved and made her bottle top ladybirds and ladybird jar. (Bottle Top Ladybirds and Jar)

4. I enjoyed making these bats with Little One. They were a great fine motor activity too. They looked spooky and cool when put up on his cupboard door. (Bottle Top Bats)

5. Bottle tops and stickers make for great stamps. Add play dough and you have a fun activity for a little one. And a cute gift! You could also use these to do some printing of course. (Bottle Top Stamps)

6. Bottle tops, glue and sequence make for some fun easy art.
(Bottle Top Art)

7. Who doesn't like Dr. Seuss? This bottle top town was Seuss-inspired. (Seussville Bottle Top Town)

8. A fun Christmas Craft... 82 days and counting down... bottle top snowmen. (Bottle Top Snowmen)

9. Here's a great craft to do at a girl's birthday party. Make some designer miniature cakes using bottle tops, play dough and pretty beads. (Designer Bottle Top Cakes)

10. And last, but not least, a new bottle top craft for you, croaked up recently and not shared before. I give you... Bottle Top Frogs! Easy to make, by simply adding pom poms and googly eyes to bottle tops (the star of this show).

My all time favourite bottle top picture must be the one at the top of this post. Those were bottle top cards I made some time back for a children's home party.

PS. And that's not all folks! If you click on the "Bottle Tops" tag in the sidebar of the blog, you will find even more cute bottle top crafts. (yes, more I tell you!)

Till next time.

Instagram

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 17:07:00 +0000

I'm on Instagram now, if you would like to follow. I've been there for a short while, so there's a bit to look at. Sometimes I share a Love and Lollipops post, but I also share other ideas that I haven't blogged about.

You can find me here:

http://instagram.com/loveandlollipops

If you do follow me over there, please say "hi". I'll "hi" back!

Till next time.

14 of the best Shaving Cream activities ever!

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sat, 13 Sep 2014 20:00:00 +0000

I cream, You cream, We all love Shaving cream!

(sorry, couldn't help myself) :)

What can you get up to with Shaving cream? Well, it's definitely more than just for shaving. Before writing this post, I had not let my kids play enough with this stuff , so after finding two big cans for under R35 at Discem Pharmacy, I grabbed them (with a smile) and came home ready for some shaving cream fun. And you get the benefit of me having scoured the web for the best ideas and sharing some of them here.

But first off, here's a couple of quick and easy activities we got up to.

1. Shaving cream and paint play. I gave Little One a brush and water and told him to wet the water colours and to mix it into the shaving cream. He loved it! You could use tempera or acrylic paints too.

2. Shaving cream, toy cars and a spray bottle of water to wash them off. The full post is here. We did this back in 2012. (If I had a little girl, I'd still do this, but substitute the cars for small plastic bath toys or dolls perhaps?)

3. Earlier this year we made shaving cream puffy paint to create a lunar landscape. The full post is here.

4. Ocean in a bag. I saw this neat idea over at Pink and Green Mama and adapted it a bit. Take a big zip lock bag, fill it with shaving cream, some blue food colouring and add some sea-themed stickers. Seal the bag and let your kiddo explore. I loved how the shaving cream in the bag felt... I couldn't help but play with it too. I think this is a great activity for a younger child and if you added different colours, you would get a lovely rainbow effect. We'll try that next time.

5. Shaving cream in the bath is a blast. I purchased a nice old-fashioned razor (no blade) from Checkers and Little One shaved just like Dad - I loved his expressions.

We are lucky enough to have a mirror running the length of the bath, so Little One can smear shaving cream all over and use it as a canvas to draw and do letter practice. If you don't have a mirror, smearing it onto the bath sides can work just as well.

6. Shaving Cream Desert. Another great bath activity, although no bath required. Provide silicone cup cake holders, shaving cream and sparkly beads and some spoons. Let the fun begin. (Honestly, not a hit with my Little One, but I think that little girls would love this.)

Here are some other wonderful ideas I haven't tried - yet!

Shaving Cream Painting (Mom it Forward)

Shaving Cream Balloons - you read right! (Aluminum Foiled)

Erupting Sensory Shaving Cream Snow (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shimmery Shaving Cream Paint Recipe (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Shaving Cream Dough (Growing a Jeweled Rose)

Make Indoor Snowmen (Modern Parents Messy Kids)
Teaching spreading skills with shaving-cream and foam blocks (Happy Hooligans)

And last, but not least, Shaving Cream Bath Paint (Meet the Dubiens). This last idea looks fantastic and I'm dying to try it, BUT I'm not brave enough to use food colours in the bath. What if it stains? Those who've tried it, claim it doesn't and perhaps it depends on what type of food colouring you use. Of course you can purchase coloured shaving foam, so that's perhaps the "safer" alternative.

And if after all this, you are actually really worried about letting your kiddos play with shaving cream, here's the infamous shaving cream article (a lengthy read).

I know this goes without saying, but Shaving Cream should not be eaten, so please don't leave your very little person alone with it.

Till next time, have some super shaving cream fun!

Please come back and tell me what you got up to.

Army Party

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 18:06:00 +0000

My little man is SIX! Six. I wanted him to be five for just a bit longer. Birthdays sure are happy-sad events for me.

We celebrated with an Army party. It was bound to happen - we almost had one last year. But I'm so pleased Little One changed his mind about it, because this year we could be outdoors (Pretoria has a summer rainfall) and the landscape was perfect for all the outdoor activities.

At 14h00 on Saturday afternoon, 13 little soldiers descended upon our home, all dressed up with their firearms. :)

The afternoon looked something like this...

"Report for Duty" followed by an "Obstacle course/Basic training". A simple course where the boys were divided into two teams. They had to carry certain items through the course, which involved climbing, crawling and hopping over rocks. The teams were timed and the fastest team won the challenge. The items carried were half-filled water bottles (the big ones), a rope and a cardboard box with pretend supplies.

Then we had "Search and Rescue", where the soldiers had to look for army guys that were missing in action - small plastic army men that I hid in the field.

Then it was "Mess Hall", when we sang to the birthday boy and also handed out party packets. The awesome tank cake was baked by Little One's very special teacher.

The last activity of the day was "Target Practice". We purchased a very inexpensive BB gun and my husband, who played Sergeant Major for the afternoon, oversaw this one closely. We printed out sufficient targets so that each soldier could take home his target with him. A nice keepsake of how well he shot on the day.

A great target to print out can be found here.

After that it was free play!

Another fun idea was to make and fly paper aeroplanes,

but we just didn't get around to it.

An easy to make sweet for the party were these Marshmallow Treats.

Ingredients:

30 grams - butter or margarine

60 grams - marshmallows

70 grams - Rice Crispies (I used Coco Pops)

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Add the marshmallows and stir over a low heat until melted.

Remove from the heat, add the Rice Crispies and mix together until well coated.

Press into a tray and cut when cool OR put the mixture into cupcake holders.

That's it!

Another birthday and party over. Big One has had eleven parties (he didn't have one this year) and Little One six - seventeen parties! - wonder if that makes me a party pro?

Think it makes me a good Mommy ;).

Till next time.

Back to School Giveaway and Shaving Cream Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 09:11:00 +0000

I don't often do product endorsements on the blog, but when I recommend something, do know that it's a great product. Today I want to share an alphabet product with you that I'm using to help Little One learn how to read and write.

Created by none other than my Mom, there are in my opinion, no other local alphabet products on the market that can compare to the quality and versatility of this one. Why is it so great? Oooh many reasons... for starters the letters are made from a very durable material; they don't easily bend and cannot break and I must add they have a nice feel to them. The fonts used are correct for the South African Curriculum and the alphabet comes in black or white (not multicoloured as many others do). One of the best things about the alphabet is that a child can touch and feel each letter, giving them a three-dimensional experience of what each letter is about. Needless to say, the letters can be used in a variety of games that make letter recognition and word building fun both in the classroom and at home. And that's not all (hehe, I sound like one of those infomercials), there is a magnetic and non-magnetic version available, as well as a variety of different sets, including a numeracy set, and alphabet "bottle top" stickers.

There are so many ways to incorporate this product into alphabet teaching, but today I'm sharing a shaving cream activity Little One and I did about a month ago. If you haven't given your little person shaving cream to play with yet, do give it a go. My little guy lights up when he knows shaving cream is involved!

To play, I placed the letters in a random order on our bricks outside. I gave Little One the shaving cream and I called out letters one at a time. He had to correctly identify them and when he had, he was allowed to cream them... his favourite part. After he had creamed all the letters, I gave him a squirt bottle with water in and once again called out the letters and he could squirt them clean. This activity took much longer than expected and in the end I got quite tired (not him) before all the cleaning up was done. :)

An additional idea is to ask your child to think of a word starting with the letter, when they correctly identify the letter.

So now the best part, would you like to win a 26 piece Learners Alphabet (non-magnetic)? The set used above is an 83 piece and is perfect for word building, but with a 26 piece many games can be played. The prize will also include two sheets of alphabet "bottle top" stickers.

Here's how you can win: Visit the Little People's Products website and come back here and tell me what your favourite product is in the comments section OR pop on over to my Love and Lollipops Facebook Page and share the competition via the link there. Leave a comment there saying that you shared it. If you do both, you will get two entries.

The competition is open to all South African residents. (Apologies to my other readers.) Entries will close on Sunday the 27th of July and a winner will be announced on Monday the 28th. Good luck!

Till next time.

(And the winner is... Loandi Kok. Congratulations! I will be in touch with you via the Love and Lollipops Facebook Page.)

Fun with Dinosaurs {A Dinosaur Tea Party}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 08:11:00 +0000

(Source: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia, Volume 3)

(Whoops! In the last post I shared a lot of photographs of the Small Dinosaur World we made, but forgot to put in the most important photo - the one showing the whole small world, in it's entirety. I've gone back and added it in, if you want to go and check it out.)

To bring this awesome theme to a close, what could be better than a dinosaur tea party with real yummy fossil dinosaur cookies.

The recipe I used is for roll-into-balls-and-squash-down-with-a-fork-cookies. The original recipe called for brown sugar, but as I didn't have any, I used white sugar instead.

Basic recipe

225 grams / 1/2 lb. butter

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

500ml. / 2 cups of flour (I used cake flour)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolk and beat further. Fold in the flour and then using your hands knead into a dough. The texture is quite crumbly, but keep kneading until you have a nice dough. Roll the dough into small balls about 1.5/2cm across in size. Use a fork to flatten them or invite in a friendly dinosaur to stomp on them for you. :)

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 8 to 10 minutes.

These cookies are better the day after I think. They become more crunchy.

Adapted Gluten free/Casein free Cookies

225 grams / 1/2 lb.dairy free margarine (I used Blossom Light)

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

625ml. / 2 and a half cups of flour (I used Glutagon GF Cake flour)

The texture of this dough is very different to the basic recipe. It is not crumbly at all; rather quite sticky, which is why I added the extra flour. My oldest, the eater of these, gave them a big thumbs up. This is definitely one of the better GF/CF biscuits I've made over the years.

We needed a special serving plate for our dinosaur cookies, so using this amazing inspiration from Three Little Monkey's Studio blog, I made this T-Rex dish from a paper plate. It's an easy alternative to the melamine plate that Gretchen used.

To end off all the dinosaur fun, here are three really nice dinosaur links:

Some more DIY dinosaur eggs (these are so cool)

DIY plastic dinosaur bookends

A girl's dino birthday party (with free printables)

If you are a South African reader, I do hope you enjoy these last few days of Winter holidays.

Till next time.

PS. Sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op.

Fun with Dinosaurs {Make a Small Dinosaur World and Salt Dough Fossils}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:19:00 +0000

Dinosaur week(s) has been lots of fun and the best part for me was the day Little One spent in the garden playing with a friend - ALL DAY - digging for dino fossils. The fossils were some white shells we found on a walk on the beach a long time ago. I hid them in the ground, gave them each a spade and a paint brush, and I demonstrated how to be a Paleontologist (well best I could). After they got tired of looking for the seashell "fossils", they turned to the interesting bits of rock in the garden and then requested hammers, so that some hammering could happen too.

Perhaps it's too wet or cold where you are though to play outside, so I thought it would be fun to share and create a small indoor dinosaur world... for the indoor Paleontologists ;).

I actually made this scene on my patio table, so technically it's still outdoors, but you can easily duplicate this indoors of course.

(I must apologise for the very distracting table cloth.)

I used two cardboard boxes and connected them with a long piece of brown felt. I thought the sides of the boxes kept the scene fairly contained, which is helpful for tidying up purposes, and the sides also created a barrier for the dinosaurs to climb over.

The following things were used to create the scene:

Pebbles/River stones collected from beach walks

White stones (can be purchased at a garden centre)

Small river stones (purchased from The Crazy Store for R20)

Shells that looked like fossils found at the beach

Blue felt to make a dam

Home-made salt dough fossils (recipe below)

Egg boxes

Home-made volcano

Waterfall made from bubble wrap

Cave made from a tissue box

I forgot to add greenery, but that's pretty simple, as all the greenery you need can be found in your garden. I added the big egg boxes, which Little One painted, to be the scary volcanic rocks around the erupting volcano. The dinosaurs had to tread rather carefully when crossing the perilous volcanic rock. :) The egg boxes also allowed me to create some height, as they are nice to stack on top of each other.

The volcano was made from a foam cup, which I covered with brown felt as best I could. I then cut a red square and folded it over the top and glued it on. It took me a few minutes to make it. (A glue gun does come in very handy here.)

The cave was created from a tissue box. I added some recycled biscuit box cardboard to the outside of it.

The recipe for our salt dough fossils is as follows:

2 cups of flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

Mix it together and then roll it out to make a nice smooth dough.

Once you have made the fossils (or anything else for that matter), put it on a baking tray and bake for a few hours at 180 degrees Celsius.

Even though the children are very ready to move on to a new theme, I have decided to share one more dinosaur post, so hold on tight...it's a goodie.

Fun with Dinosaurs {The South African Museum Visit}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 17:19:00 +0000

If you are a Cape Townian and you haven't visited The South African Museum, you are definitely missing out. This post is not about the museum though; rather to share some pictures of the very cool dinosaur exhibit. These photos are from two separate visits, in 2011 and 2013.

Don't these baby dinosaurs look so realistic? These are Massospondylus eggs hatching in central South Africa. This reconstruction is based on dinosaur egg fossils found in The Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa.

Absolutely a fantastic outing for the family. After your visit, take a stroll through the Company's Garden and feed the squirrels and pigeons.

Till next time, happy exploring.

Fun with Dinosaurs {Dinosaur Diorama}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 18:13:00 +0000

I'm having so much fun with this theme that I'm stretching the activities into week two of our holidays. I cannot believe the first week is over... it went way too fast :(

I decided that we definitely needed to make a dinosaur diorama. I saw this really great idea over at Made by Joel (a great Dad Blogger) and knew it would be perfect for our project.

So we got a shoebox and Big One was put in charge of colouring the scenery. He did this on paper first, which we cut to fit perfectly inside the box. Little One drew some additions to the diorama that we placed inside and around the box. This included an "active volcano" (as he put it) and some palm trees with coconuts on. My job was to stick the dinosaur stickers onto light cardstock and then cut them out. I used the paper clips to make them stand (as you can see in the picture below). This is actually a great cutting activity for the kiddos, except I can rarely get Little One to cut anything out.

The book we used for all our stickers is called Let's Decorate Dinosaur Stickers. There are plenty of stickers in this book and I highly recommend getting it or something similar if you like this project. It's certainly easier than finding and printing pictures from the internet.

Some more dinosaur fun is still coming up. I do hope that you have enjoyed the activities we have done so far.

Just by the way... are there any themes you would love to see explored here at Love and Lollipops? I'm always open to suggestions. Drop me an email at gsetzer(at)mweb(dot)co(dot)za or leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Till next time.

PS. Sharing this at the wonderful Weekly Kids Co-Op.

Fun with Dinosaurs {Hatching Dinosaur Eggs}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 16:37:00 +0000

After scouring Pinterest for some cool and fun dinosaur activities, I came across this recipe at Growing a Jeweled Rose for some sizzling, fizzling dinosaur eggs. I had to try it!

The only change I made to the recipe was that Crystal added food colouring, but instead of that, I added some soil from our garden.

Here's the recipe:

500 grams of Bicarbonate of Soda/Baking Soda (found a box at Pick n Pay for R11)

3 tablespoons of soil (not essential)

About 2/3rds a cup of water

Small plastic dinosaurs (usually available in tubes from The Crazy Store)

White vinegar in a squirt bottle (for the hatching to happen)

Mix the bicarb and the sand and then slowly add water until the mixture can be molded. Place some of it into your cupped hand. Add a small dinosaur to the top of the mixture you have in your hand and then cover it with more of the mixture. You should be able to mold the egg fairly easily. If the mixture is too sloppy, you need to add more bicarb. I then used a large sized plastic egg to help me get nicely shaped eggs. I used only the one half, just to help shape the egg a bit. Let it dry for 24 hours.

When the eggs are dry, place them in the garden for the children to find. Give them a spray bottle with the vinegar in it and let them squirt away. That's when the sizzling, fizzling part happens. :)

This last picture looks quite authentic and gross, don't you think?

All in all a really successful activity. Little One had a friend over to play for the day and after this activity, she told me that she wasn't ever going home. Hehe :)

PS. Some more very cool dinosaur books to read:
Tyrannosaurus Drip - Julia Donaldson (one of our favourites)
Dinosaurs - priddy books (a sticker book)
Find Out About Dinosaurs - Dougal Dixon

Sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op.

Fun with Dinosaurs {Dinosaur Fossil Pasta Pictures}

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 19:24:00 +0000

I quite like a theme. Okay. That's an understatement. :) It's been awhile since we've had a theme over here.

It's also three weeks Winter holidays. Whoohoo! Great time for a theme or two.

Dinosaurs. I've wanted to have some dinosaur fun for f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

I don't have dinosaur boys just btw. I have boys who love lego and vehicles and characters, but dinosaurs - no biggie. However I figured, that if I present them with the activities, they'll bite. So we made these. So easy and Little One loved it. In fact he said: "This is the best day." :) That made me happy.

I found some fossil pictures over at this cool site and used them to help me draw/glue dinosaur outlines that actually looked like dinosaurs. I glued the outline and all over, in between, so that Little One could simply fill in all the bones/pasta. As simple as that... Dinosaur Fossil Pasta Pictures.

I have challenged myself to read at least three books a day to Little One, every day of the holidays. This week we have read all our dinosaur books, to get him in a real dinosaur mood.

Some of the books we have read are:

If the Dinosaurs came back - Bernard Most

How do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? - Jane Yolen

Dinosaur Dig! - Penny Dale

Do you have any favourite dinosaur books?

More dinosaur fun coming up. :)

PS. Big One called his a "Noodlesaurus". :) And, we are sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op.

How to make an Aircraft Carrier

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 15:49:00 +0000

Inspired by a picture in Little One's all time favourite book, I thought it couldn't be too hard to make an Aircraft Carrier and I knew Little One would love the idea! This little man is C.R.A.Z.Y about all forms of military transportation.

I grabbed a big cardboard box (and cut off the lid), a big juice box and some smaller boxes we've been collecting. Using the book mentioned (My Big Book of Cars, Ships and Planes) as a guideline, I cut out the top of the aircraft carrier, after marking the lines in pencil.

That little hand you see in the picture was just there to help my camera focus on my blank cardboard canvas. :) If I had a bigger piece of cardboard available, I would have cut the Carrier a bit longer in shape.

Then we got to decorating the top of the Ship, using a black marker, some white masking tape (painter's tape) and a yellow highlighter.

Jerry Palotta's, The Boat Alphabet Book, is another one of Little One's favourites and this inspired our tower buildings.

I used my glue gun to glue it all together. Only thing to be aware of before you glue it, is that the top piece of board must be balanced correctly on top of the juice box, as the tower buildings make it heavier on one side.

And there you have it. Have fun!

Using Photos to Make Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Sat, 31 May 2014 16:36:00 +0000

Using photos to make cards is probably one of the easiest and nicest ways to make a special card for somebody.

I really enjoy photographing natural elements and both my Mom and Mom-in-law's gardens offer plenty of opportunity to do this. To make a special and very personal collection of cards for each Mom, I used store-bought craft cards and I chose a selection of favourite photographs taken in their gardens. They both loved it. :)

More card making ideas:

Squeezy art cards - a fun arty way to make cards and Using your children's art to make cards.

S is for The Very Busy Spider

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Mon, 05 May 2014 18:57:00 +0000

When I planned these "S" activities, I completely forgot about this post in my archives. Do go have a look if you want some more spider ideas. :)

Do you know the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle? It's a great book with lovely illustrations. In the hard cover version, the spider web is raised, so it's fun to feel how it gets bigger and bigger in the story. It's a very simple story line, so it's an ideal book for a young child.

I've seen so many lollipop spiders on the internet and this inspired our very busy spider lollipop . For the head you need one green pipe cleaner. For the legs cut two orange pipe cleaners in half. Simply wrap the pipe cleaners around the lollipop stick to make the spider. The eyes and mouth were cut out from felt and glued on.

Our very busy spider also got her own real life web. Little one punched some holes in a paper plate and was then supposed to thread the string through the holes to make the web. I was told, however, quite emphatically, that he doesn't like threading, so I did end up doing it myself. If you can get your little one to do the threading, it's really a great fine motor activity.

We also found some Very Busy Spider activities at Making Learning Fun.

I thought it would be fun to build a "S'" with little spiders. The "S" we used was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you go to this link and look for a-z lowercase worksheets, you will find all the letters of the alphabet ready to print. Thank you Heather!

Our last bit of spider fun was a small spider building station (Idea via Fantastic Fun and Learning). To make the play dough, I used my favourite recipe - no stove required! Here it is:

1 cup flour
2 Tbs cream of tarter
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of granulated salt

Add some essence for a nice aroma (orange, almond, peppermint)

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a cup of boiling water. Stir until combined and turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Colour can be added to the boiling water or at the kneading stage. Just a tip - wear gloves when kneading - the food colouring does stain your skin and it isn't very easy to clean off. Store your dough in an airtight container.

To make black play dough, I combined blue, green and red food colouring. I kept adding and mixing it until I was happy with the colour.

Here are some more fun Spider crafts on the blog:

Bottle Top Crafts

Spider Party

Till next time, have fun.

PS. Linking to The Weekly Kids Co-Op, For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars and Kids Activities Blog.

O is for Octopus

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 09:42:00 +0000

My alphabet posts are in no particular order. I'm going to do the letters that Little One has already covered at school. You can find letter "a" here.

A long while back we did some activities O is for Ostrich and not wanting to be boring, I decided this time around to focus on an Octopus.

First off we did this awesome paint activity, which Little One loved. He was completely oblivious to the final idea I had in mind and simply enjoyed the process of it. I often remind myself that it's really the process and not the product that's most important. Us mommy bloggers tend to want a nice final product to photograph for our blog and we can forget that it's about these little people and the p.r.o.c.e.s.s. :)

To do this activity, I took acrylic paint, mixed it with some water so that it was runny, and gave him some syringes. As you can see from the picture, the activity was a hit. I then took some white paper and, with his permission, rubbed it over his paint creations. The result was some pretty paper to make an octopus from.

I would love to tell you that he enjoyed cutting out the tentacles and sticking on the suckers... but he was not at all interested. So the final craft here was all my doing. I cannot lie. :)

He does like having the picture up in his room though, so I'm glad about that.

The next craft was this cute sock octopus - a Soctopus! I first saw this idea on Pinterest and I love sock softies. I've made a few before (a bunny, a cat, a caterpillar/butterfly and a snowman). You can see them here, if you like.

Follow the wonderful and easy directions for the octopus at The Gold Jellybean. (I just didn't do that last part, where Shaleah added pipe cleaners to the tentacles).

Till next time, have fun!

The Lego Movie Memory Game

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:17:00 +0000

So we have been having a super holiday and have spent a lot of time relaxing at home, playing, crafting, watching TV.

We have also been to see The Lego Movie and my boys LOVED it. I managed to get through the movie without being thoroughly bored or agitated (been there!), so it's not too bad for grown-ups either. :)

We came home with the theme song "Everything is AWESOME" ringing in our heads and the boys were also super-psyched to play Lego.

I had spoilt each of them to a minifigure after the movie and thought it would be fun to use the cute sheet of characters to make a Memory Game. Little One has just recently started playing Memory Match and really enjoys it, so my guess was that the game would be a winner.

Good call. The boys loved it.

To make this you will need two sheets of characters from inside The Lego Movie minifigure packets. Cut them out and paste them onto punched-out circles. If you don't have a circle punch, cut small squares of white cardboard. It will work just as well.

I knew that if they played with the cards as much I expected, the cards would get damaged quickly and they would also not be very easy to pick up from the table. To get around this, I stuck the circles onto bottle tops using Prestick (stick putty).

We all ended up playing the game - even the Dad. Easy Mommy-made Fun!

Have you checked out The Lego Movie website yet? Pretty cool. You can even create your own Lego movie character. Till next time, have fun!

PS. Have shared this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op Party.

Getting crafty with Shopping Bags

noreply@blogger.com (Love and Lollipops) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 18:34:00 +0000

I really like Woolworths' re-usable shopping bags. Besides using them for shopping, I use mine as going-out bags to throw in extra clothes for the kids and I also love using them as beach/swimming bags. I have even made a few as Baby Shower gifts for friends, because with baby there is always so much stuff to carry around. And, I don't have a picture, but I once gave one as a teacher appreciation gift - I chose a black bag and added a nice red felt apple.

You can even decorate your bag to match a season or a special holiday.

All the designs here were cut out from felt (except for the bunting - I used an old pair of jeans for that one) and glued on with my glue gun. Really easy and fun to create. :)

Have you ever decorated or embellished a re-usable shopping bag? I'd love to see it.

Till next time.

PS. The Christmas tree template you can find here at Whimsy Couture Sewing Blog and the bunny here at Punkin Patterns.