We got a little bit seasonal and decided to turn our giant orange paper pom-pom into a PUMPKIN! So here’s a halloween pumpkin FREE printable for you to download, print off and stick with a Pritt stick onto to the paper pom-pom – how cool is this! If you like this, you’ll like 11yo’s spin on it – with his FREE downloadable Witch’s face here.
Really easy Pumpkin face – halloween pumpkin free printable, have a go by clicking here for our FREE downloadable template just print off, and cut out the shapes, in fact, print two, and use one as a template for your pumpkin this year too!!
12 simple steps – really easy to follow, our kids have been making them in ALL sorts of colours – we’ve even mixed up different shades of green here… If you fancy having a go yourself click here.
Free printable Pumpkin face, just attach to giant paper pom-pom or use as a template to carve your pumpkin!
If you have a thing for giant paper pompoms, click here to see our crepe paper version, with raindrops!
When you are trying to ensure that your child will have a good start in life, it all comes down to their development, and ensuring that this is as strong as can be. There are actually quite a few elements to this that you will need to consider, and it’s important to make sure that you are going to think about early development. A strong early development is the kind of thing that can really help your child in many ways, so it’s definitely important to focus on this.
However, you might be wondering what the secret is to your child’s development working out as it should. As it happens, there are a number of ingredients to this that you will want to look out for and actively encourage if you are going to ensure this is going to work as well as possible. So let’s take a look at what those ingredients are and how you can help your child to build them.
Love and Acceptance
This is one of the main things that you will always want to make sure you are providing, as, if there is enough of this, it really will make a huge difference to your child’s life in quite a powerful way. It’s incredible actually, how well this can work, and you should definitely make sure that you are thinking about this if you want to try and encourage your child to develop as fully as possible. Love and acceptance are going to mean that pretty much everything else falls into place easily.
Of course, you don’t need to learn how to love your child, but you will find that the acceptance part can take a while. And what is most important is not only that you are feeling love and acceptance, but that you are actively expressing it to them. This is what will make the difference, and what they will notice, and you will find that it will help with their development more than pretty much anything else at all.
So be sure to express this as early as possible and frequently too. You will find that it’s going to make a world of difference to how effectively they develop.
Encouragement
At every stage of development, no matter what the specific skills are that are being developed, you will need to make sure that you try to encourage your children as best as you can. Encouragement is going to mean that you are much more likely to actively and effectively expect their development to go well. Put simply, children are always going to find that their own development is stronger and better when there is plenty of encouragement from the parent.
Strong encouragement from you means that they are going to feel that anything is possible. Of course, it can take a while to get this right and you might find that you need to figure out for yourself what kinds of encouragement work and what kinds don’t seem to work so well. But all in all, having a strong ability to encourage your child in whatever they are doing is one of the best things you can give them. You will notice the effects of this quickly, and it’s really amazing what it can do for your child in general.
Learning Types
It’s also a good idea to try and figure out the learning types of your child, as everyone has their own combination and this is something that you are going to find really useful to consider. For instance, some people tend to learn better through kinetic movement, and some people find it much easier to learn by rote. Those are just two examples, and perhaps something that you are going to want to help your child to discover for themselves, but the point is that you should be looking out for what their learning type is so that you can hopefully encourage them to make full use of this.
It’s also important to make sure your child has the best possible chance of learning well. So from making use of resources like those available from DoodleLearning to ensuring that you are doing all you can to encourage them, you’ll find that this makes a huge difference overall. It’s absolutely something that will help your child to develop.
The earlier you do this, the more of a positive impact it can have on their own overall development, and it’s really quite incredible how well this can work in the long run. So make sure that you are thinking about this if you want to keep your child’s development as strong as possible, as it’s the kind of thing that is going to be hugely important to them now and later on as well.
Play
People often forget this, but one of the most important ingredients to any development is play. Your child needs to have plenty of play in their life, and this is one of the main things that should be encouraged at every step of the journey. Play is so central, and vitally important to your child’s development that they are simply not going to get anywhere without it. Not only is it enjoyable and fun, it’s also one of the main early ways that children learn, and it’s a naturally powerful way to make use of one’s curiosity in trying to find out more about the world.
With that in mind, it’s really important to make sure that you are encouraging play as much as you can, and that your child is going to be able to make full use of it as a way of being. The more that this is the case, the better that it’s going to be for their development, and it really is incredible how much of a difference this can make.
As it happens, just as there are different learning styles, so too there are a range of play types, and you might want to try and figure out which type your child tends to enjoy the most. They might be able to get more out of that way of playing, as well as trying out some others, so a general awareness of both can be really useful all in all.
Building Blocks of Education
As well as those qualities, there are also a few building blocks to their education which you are going to want to encourage too and which can help a great deal. In fact, you would probably consider these to be absolutely essential if you are going to try and ensure your child’s development is as strong as possible. That’s the kind of thing that you should absolutely make sure you are not overlooking if you can help it.
These include basic numeracy skills as well as early literacy skills too. That is the kind of thing that you are going to want to think about, and it’s vital that you are going to try and do all you can to keep this as strong as possible. The building blocks of education are going to be really important for you to think about, so make sure that you are.
Those are the main ingredients to your child’s development you will want to encourage.
Fairy Tale crafts – taking inspiration from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves we decided to upcycle a charity shop mirror and create the famous Mirror Mirror on the Wall….
This was a fabulous team effort, and my son now proudly has this Fairy Tale Craft beauty hanging on the wall in his bedroom.
You will need:
Old sheets of newspaper
Cocktail stick
Glue stick
Stronger glue, (I recommend a glue gun!)
Instructions:
1) Roll the newspaper sheet diagonally from the corner, using the cocktail stick to get you started, so that the roll is nice and tight. When the cocktail stick starts to disappear inside the paper, gently pull it out, and continue to tightly roll the newspaper to create a long ‘stick’ – the first of MANY!
2) Flatten the ‘stick’ using a hard surface.
3) Taking your cocktail stick, start to roll the flattened ‘stick’ into a tight spiral, securing it with glue as you get to the end of the spiral.
4) When you have enough of these spirals, you can start to build up the pattern around the mirror – we found that the glue gun was the best tool for this!
You could also spray paint the spirals, however we like the newspaper spirals in their natural form!
Ali also blogs over on incredibusy.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello! And I’ll be adding this to Lizzie’s#MagpieMonday as I love to salvage, upcycle and re-use stuff!
If you’d like to see more Fairy Tale crafts, firstly pop over to see our Jack and the Beanstalk Reward Chart, and then click the youtube link here, as I got together with Missie Lizzie who talked magic beans, Anthea with her elves’ shoes, Kelly talked Rapunzel, and Maggy at Red Ted Art (talking three little pigs) who hosted a Fairy Tale Craft google+ hangout.
Here’s a very simple stick craft we’ve been doing this week… great shadow puppets inspired by Chinese New Year:
You’ll need some sticks (!) from the garden, or as we do, collected on weekend walks by small children. Some black card, sellotape, a pencil, scissors and some ‘brads’ (the pins with bendy legs, I never remember what their name is!) Oh, and some coloured tissue paper or sweet wrappers. AND a torch if you fancy doing a shadow puppet show!
We drew the dragon ‘pieces’ out onto the black card – cut them out, and joined them together with the brads (we used a bit of plasticine behind the card, and pushed a pencil through to make the hole for the brad).
Attach the sticks with tape at the back and you’re ready to go! You’ll need a couple of characters for the shadow puppet show – standing behind a large white sheet – we dimmed the lights, shone the torch and tried them out. We made up some short stories for our characters and put on a fun silhouette show!!
Well, thanks for stopping by – this post has now moved to HERE:
If you want to know how to make the LONG newspaper straws and rolling them to create a FREE craft material! click here for a ‘how to’. (with a great video too from @incredibusy)
Family time together just so special as our boys get older – they are more independent and dare I say a little ‘feral’ this year? We’ve had the best of times and made new friends, made memories, and given us something to look forward to next summer too – why? what? how? you ask? Well, a week at Fforest gather, that’s what!
Over to Spike age 15:
If you’ve not heard about Fforest gather – you’re clearly not following @incredibusy on the instagram – or @coldatnight, which you should remedy forthwith – follow us here and here… It’s through instagram that Mum, and it transpires on chatting to fellow campers at Fforest gather, many others, have ‘met’ Sian and fallen in love with what she and husband James have been doing in Cardigan, Wales for the last couple of years…
A small intimate ‘festival’, not really a festival, but that explains the basis of the event – week long holiday with accommodation (optional, you can also bring your own tent/camper van) and daily workshops you won’t want to miss… a new kind of holiday in fact! Two family friendly weeks of adventures in nature, music, culture, creativity and simple pleasures.
We stayed in one of the ‘group tents‘ – our family in one end, in two bedrooms, and our friends and their three small children in the facing ‘tent’. We brought our own sleeping bags and pillows, and the shared bathrooms a short walk away were positive luxury compared to some campsites we’ve stayed in! The group tents have a communal cooking, and eating area in the centre – and an amazing view across the fields. However, after trying the first catered meal in the canteen, we decided that we’d ditch the camp cooking, and eat with the majority of the other campers – the breakfast and evening meals were just amazing – and the dining area was super conducive to socialising too.
The beauty of the Fforest gather is that the workshops, talks, walks, performances and activities are all included in the ticket price. Two sessions a day, one at a very civilised 10am, and the afternoon sessions start at 2pm – Between our two families, we tried Screenprinting, Nature illustration; natural dyeing, canoeing, Tamsin with her pencil and puppet making, Bees make honey with the honey farm, making bacon, smoking fish, making cheese, cooking with fire; axe & knife craft; yoga and wellness; drumming; beer cocktail classes; bird illustrations, silver ring making; forest school sessions; den building; tree climbing; wild swimming and learnt about foraging with Jade and coppicing with Bruce – woah, all in one week?!
The evenings were equally entertaining, with, Music from Eyre Llew, and DJs and chatting, and Fforest Island discs, and beer drinking at the adorable little ‘Bwthyn pub‘. Candle lit, and roaring fire – this little pub is located at the heart of the Fforest camp.
A brief selection of our favourite workshops: Natural dyeing with Hazel Stark – Indigo Shibori (a Japanese pattern technique) – we were so blessed with the weather, so a day spent outside in the Fforest vegetable gardens, patiently folding, pegging and dipping our canvas tote bags was well spent.
Indigo Dye
Bird drawing with Matt Sewell, such a delight; as was the glasses onto inanimate objects with Finn Thomson making faces and giving objects sight – such a fun workshop! Seeing objects – using wire, paper, glue, and a LOT of imagination, in the project barn.
Cheese making was a revelation (and made for the best photos! #instagramthat) Curds and whey with cheese chief Max – who it transpires, can also tell a tale, and sing a song….
Beer was high on the agenda for the grown-ups, with Evil Gordon doing a turn talking beer cocktails, Beerbods, and sourdough bread making in the wood fired oven.
And then there was foraging! @wildpickings🍃🌿 Jade took us on a walk; foraging for edible hedgerow wonders – we’ve learnt such a LOT this week 🍃🌿
Seriously, this is an event/holiday/week long party I would recommend – such a lovely way to spend time with your family.
We went with good friends, and came away with even more…
The Farmhouse
Music from Eyre Llew
Beer cocktails in the Farmhouse
Coppice College
In the tool shed
walk into Cardigan to visit the PizziTipi
Sunset over the Tipi
Forage baskets
making sour dough
Coppice College Woodburner
Time to plan for 2018… 23 JULY – 5 AUGUST 2018 www.fforestgather.co.uk
A new kind of holiday.
Two family friendly weeks of adventures in nature, music, culture, creativity, making, growing & simple pleasures.
500 acres of bliss. Only 300 tickets available each week.
Week 1 – Monday 23rd – Sunday 29th of july
Week 2 – Monday 30th july – Sunday 5th of august
We have a few rainbow crafts on the blog that we can call upon, however, having teenagers and pre-teens in the house, it’s good to push and encourage their creativity, as they have become more and more drawn to staring at their screens and not wanting to be quite as creative as they used to be…
So we have FOUND A WAY and that is stop motion animation – so – check this out, we set up a tripod, take a series of photos, and make an animation! What fun…
For this particular craft, we took a square canvas* and some old crayons, and got busy, you can watch the stop motion in the youtube link below….
You will need:
A Canvas
Some Crayons
Hair Dryer
Glue Gun (or tape, glue gun is quick and easy though!)
Watch the video here for instructions, basically, glue the crayons to the top half of the canvas.
Prop the canvas at an angle and start warming the crayons with the hair dryer.
Move the hair dryer to the top of the crayons, and start heating from the top so that they melt DOWN… note, the red didn’t melt as fast as the other colours, yet it still looks OK in the final result.
Lower the canvas to a smaller angle so that the crayons don’t drip off the end of the canvas, have fun, and don’t worry if the crayons ‘splatter’ that’s all part of the fun and creativity!
Thank you so much for dropping by, this post has been moved to my site incredibusy.com – do pop over there for exciting news on porridge and all the info you need on perfect porridge!
Community gardener and founder of yourspace.sutton Kevin Plicio runs local community garden nursery Seears Park Nursery in Sutton. This nursery runs on pure volunteer manpower and community spirit, running training courses and therapeutic activities in a calming and peaceful environment. He has been running the beautiful non-profit nursery for almost six years, transforming it from a run-down nursery to a social and stunning community hub which has just recently been opened to the public.
As his daughter, Hannah, I’ve grown up around the transformation of the park, seeing it go from overgrown and slightly wild, to open space and inviting. Perfect for family days out and picnics, the nursery offers scenic and photogenic open areas, free for the public to utilise.
Q- So, tell us about what made you want to run a community project? Well, the idea originally stemmed from me working at other projects, but these projects were all tailored to one specific group of people, or had one specific service, and I wanted to do something more socially integrating and open to all users, regardless of their background, age, or ability.
Q- What is there to see? Honestly, there’s so much! We have this really great pond that’s just teeming with life, frogs, fish, newts, and even in the evening we get the occasional duck family coming to stay – it’s such a sight! We also have vegetable patches, some art display inside the main classroom from a local artist Santiago Plicio, the polytunnels have a great plant selection, including a great cactus area. We’re also in the process of making smaller gardens as part of the garden nursery, where 6 out of the 16 planned are complete. We also have this really stunning willow circle, which is just beautiful.
thanks to Stephanie Krist for this photo
Q- Tell us about your volunteers, and who helps run the nursery. We have quite a large group of volunteers here at the nursery, and without them, there would be no way that the place could be running. Some people volunteer for a month, and some have been volunteering for years, and we appreciate every bit of help we get. Their generosity and time is something I’m always going to be so grateful for.
Q- You’ve just opened to the public for the first time in almost six years, how does that feel? It feels amazing, we’ve been getting this place ready for the public for so long and now it feels as if our work is finally paid off, and we can do what we’ve always set out to do, create a community project that everyone can benefit for. We’ve been running training courses and school placements for years which is so amazing, but now we can finally make it open to everyone, which was always the plan. We now run a plant sale every Saturday from 10:00am until 4:00pm, and the nursery is otherwise open Monday-Thursday from 9:30 until 5:30.
Q- Got any last words or comments that you want everyone to know? I’d just love to see you there! Bring your friends, family, dogs, come and experience and enjoy the nursery, see what’s here, and if you want to contribute in any way then we’d love to hear from you too!
Seears Park Nursery is open to the public from 9:30am-5:30pm Monday to Thursday, and 10:am-4:00pm on a Saturday for the plant sale and general public use. Follow them on Facebook for events and updates here
Note from Ali – Thank you so much, Hannah, for introducing me to your dad’s amazing community project. Here’s a picture of a pond that my 13-year-old son made, with the addition of the Junctus that he bought from the Nursery!
September means birthday cakes in our house, and every year the boys put in their requests for party fun and cake style and flavour… from a Star Wars themed Yoda, to a Dragon (same food colouring, so that was OK!) through to your standard Lemon Drizzle Cake… This year however, the party request was for trampolining, ‘free jumping’ and his OWN chocolate cake recipe! So 10yo-soon-to-be-11yo spent the evening before his birthday MAKING and BAKING his own cake, and a quick dash for some Maltesers in the morning, decorated it himself before we bundled five of his friends off to Acton for some bouncing action over at Oxygen FreeJumping. Well, we couldn’t be more impressed – all of us (five boys, and two mums) LOVED it – we started off with a game of dodge-ball – this was a great introduction, as we weren’t quite sure where to try first – the Oxygen FreeJumping staff were lovely and organised a game, explaining the rules, so we got stuck straight in! And guess what? I won!The design of the venue is stunning, the bold bright blues and yellows are really striking – loved the strong graphics – this place really IS jumping.
The boys’ absolute favourite activity was the Gladiator style jousting area over a large pool of blue foam… they spent AGES battling and giggling, and tumbling into a pit of spongy foam blocks.
I personally loved bouncing on the trampolines around the basketball hoops, probably because a simple bounce helped you score with EVERY throw!
Every participant wears a pair of ‘jumping socks’ which caused some amusement, and then delight that they got to keep them – and it was great to see the kids having such a brilliant time on the expanse of trampolines – we so want to go again!
A big thank you to the team at Oxygen FreeJumping, for their fabulous facilities, great family fun, and to the cafe staff who also made us so welcome with great coffee too.
We got a little bit seasonal and decided to turn our giant orange paper pom-pom into a PUMPKIN!
click here for FULL HOW TO instructions on making the paper pom-poms
Fforest gather – a new kind of family holiday
We stayed in one of the ‘
The evenings were equally entertaining, with, Music from 
Beer was high on the agenda for the grown-ups, with 
Q- So, tell us about what made you want to run a community project?
The design of the venue is stunning, the bold bright blues and yellows are really striking – loved the strong graphics – this place really IS jumping.
