Not being able to go away on a nice sunny holiday over the summertime forces me to think creatively. Joel is at home for 2 weeks so I will take ful advantage of the fact he is around - and that is a special thing for the children to be aware of so we must make the most of everyday. If you are reading this I hope you find some of my ideas helpful, managable - in fact - if my ideas could be anything I could choose them to be -it would be 'simple genius'. I do hate getting ideas books, resource sessions, recipe books etc - youth work, home, life -they are all thrown at you - that are full of things that would be great if your local tesco express actually stocked shiney corregated crepe paper or psyllium seeds and if you had all the DIY, cookery, artistic skills to assemble all the ideas and if you had an extra 60 hours to add on to your current week. Well I work very last minute and believe that simplicity is a very important key to bringing up my children.
Today we went for a walk in the woods - Joel is keen to give the children a heart for the great outdoors but Holly acted the same way I remember being when I was dragged around the counrtyside when I was 14 so when Joel suggested she would grow out of moaning about it I was not so hopeful. We ended up engaging her a fair bit - doing the classic collection of different things we found and talking about each one to have a little leg rest. Sitting on the kitchen table as I write is a little wooden pot of dead buttercups, twigs, feathers etc all ready for making a collage tomorrow. So to improve her impression of the woods we have decided to go back tomorrow - but this time we are more prepared.
Our Fairy/Grizzly Bear Woodland Picnic
Tonight Holly helped me to get our picnic bag ready - we have packed it with beach mats to sit on and a net. We have one of those over the bed mosquito nets - it was about £4 from Ikea and comes in really handy. I sewed some fake flowers onto it to make it look that bit prettier and found after it fell off the ceiling that it comes in useful for outside as can hang off to make a gorgeous little outside den. We're taking that to hang off a tree somewhere and have a picnic inside. We will go in fancy dress. We always have a boys theme as well as a girls theme - Elijah will have his say when he is speaking but for now Holly decides. So fairies and grizzly bears it is. As parents we make an effort to dress up a bit too - we do not have outfits for every occasion but at least a token effort I think should be made. I don't like to be the sort of parent that distances themselves from the childs imagination play when we can be involved and make it more fun for them. And what better way to grow a deep and lasting friendship with your children than by actually playing with them and involving yourself in what they are thinking about.
Tonight I'm getting a bit of food ready and a few little touches to make it memorable.
ADVENTURE I have printed a letter on some glittery paper to put for Holly to find in the the morning...
Dear Holly, Princess of the Woodland Fairies,
We would like you to come to the woods tomorrow for a woodland fairy and grizzly bear picnic. Please bring some yummy food with you and a few of your grizzly bear friends.
We will probably be sleeping in our beautiful fairy beds so you will have to come and wake us.
Love from the Woodland Fairies
xx
p.s. the woods look a bit dull. Could you please sprinkle them with fairy dust when you arrive.
I have spent a couple of pounds - not necesary as things from around the house can help to create the same experience - *a grizzly bear toy for Elijah to find -one of those little plastic animals. *A chearleader pompom - for shaking over the plants and trees - an imagination excercise of sprinkling the woods with fairy dust - this is something I saw at a party by an amazingly creative party workshop/dance teacher does. *2 little fairies to hide in the woods. I am making them a blanket out of scraps of material and these will be hidden for holly to find at some point tomorrow. Today we were looking for big leaves that looked like they might be fairy beds so tomorrow we are going to find some faries actually asleep in them. I always remember once my next door neighbour in our back garden telling me that fairies had been in the night and had left treasure in trees. The trees that divided our gardens were hiding a handful of quality streets or something but I just remember the magical feeling when I saw bright shiney wrappers underneath some of the branches. I totally believed that faries had been and for ages afterwards I used to look through those brances hoping the fairies had been back. So it really isn't necessary to spend money. The wonder of childhood is never about being spoilt with stuff to play with - it's in those few special memories, experiences that totally capture you and take you somewhere really different. Tomorrow I want Holly to believe we are going to theland of the woodland fairies and she will get that from the littlest things.
I think we'll collect things again - but I will take paper and glue with me - not much extra to throw in the bag but it will be again a totally different experience to be doing a collage there and bringing it home.
FOOD again simple. I am terrible when it comes to food. I also have had the tendency to go over the top - and get EVERYTHING that i could possibly think of that might be nice on a nice occasion. I have learnt that this is expensive, and stupid. Putting a theme in your activity should help this. So tomorrow as it's a woodland picnic I have made some fairy cakes - the treat - however they are basically crap and look nothing like fairy cakes - but they are different to normal so it ticks that box! I will cut sanwiches with biscuit cutters to make them interesting, and it is a good opportunity to have a couple of things we wouldn't normally eat - dates, dried mango, extra veggies and fruit- if it looks woodlandy I do run the risk that they wont eat anything but if they are captured by the make believe then they will eat within that idea.
I am a firm believer that the more random something is and totally out of the ordinary the more it will stand out amongst the memories later on and I know I remember lots of unrelated strange places, bizarre people and funny experiences but have forgotton pretty much all of my safe, structured, routine days. I would hate o deprive my children of memories by sticking to what I know works with them. Before me and Joel got married we talked about how we would bring up children and ideas that we still look forward to in a couple of years time like country nights where we dress up in traditional costume from another counrty and work on creating our outfits together, learn about that culture, eat the food and learn some of the language together as a family, and that we would have nights where we all pile under the table downstairs for the night in a mass sleepover and other such bizarre things - all under the roof of our own home! I will keep writing about how they all go!
Today we went for a walk in the woods - Joel is keen to give the children a heart for the great outdoors but Holly acted the same way I remember being when I was dragged around the counrtyside when I was 14 so when Joel suggested she would grow out of moaning about it I was not so hopeful. We ended up engaging her a fair bit - doing the classic collection of different things we found and talking about each one to have a little leg rest. Sitting on the kitchen table as I write is a little wooden pot of dead buttercups, twigs, feathers etc all ready for making a collage tomorrow. So to improve her impression of the woods we have decided to go back tomorrow - but this time we are more prepared.
Our Fairy/Grizzly Bear Woodland Picnic
Tonight Holly helped me to get our picnic bag ready - we have packed it with beach mats to sit on and a net. We have one of those over the bed mosquito nets - it was about £4 from Ikea and comes in really handy. I sewed some fake flowers onto it to make it look that bit prettier and found after it fell off the ceiling that it comes in useful for outside as can hang off to make a gorgeous little outside den. We're taking that to hang off a tree somewhere and have a picnic inside. We will go in fancy dress. We always have a boys theme as well as a girls theme - Elijah will have his say when he is speaking but for now Holly decides. So fairies and grizzly bears it is. As parents we make an effort to dress up a bit too - we do not have outfits for every occasion but at least a token effort I think should be made. I don't like to be the sort of parent that distances themselves from the childs imagination play when we can be involved and make it more fun for them. And what better way to grow a deep and lasting friendship with your children than by actually playing with them and involving yourself in what they are thinking about.
Tonight I'm getting a bit of food ready and a few little touches to make it memorable.
ADVENTURE I have printed a letter on some glittery paper to put for Holly to find in the the morning...
Dear Holly, Princess of the Woodland Fairies,
We would like you to come to the woods tomorrow for a woodland fairy and grizzly bear picnic. Please bring some yummy food with you and a few of your grizzly bear friends.
We will probably be sleeping in our beautiful fairy beds so you will have to come and wake us.
Love from the Woodland Fairies
xx
p.s. the woods look a bit dull. Could you please sprinkle them with fairy dust when you arrive.
I have spent a couple of pounds - not necesary as things from around the house can help to create the same experience - *a grizzly bear toy for Elijah to find -one of those little plastic animals. *A chearleader pompom - for shaking over the plants and trees - an imagination excercise of sprinkling the woods with fairy dust - this is something I saw at a party by an amazingly creative party workshop/dance teacher does. *2 little fairies to hide in the woods. I am making them a blanket out of scraps of material and these will be hidden for holly to find at some point tomorrow. Today we were looking for big leaves that looked like they might be fairy beds so tomorrow we are going to find some faries actually asleep in them. I always remember once my next door neighbour in our back garden telling me that fairies had been in the night and had left treasure in trees. The trees that divided our gardens were hiding a handful of quality streets or something but I just remember the magical feeling when I saw bright shiney wrappers underneath some of the branches. I totally believed that faries had been and for ages afterwards I used to look through those brances hoping the fairies had been back. So it really isn't necessary to spend money. The wonder of childhood is never about being spoilt with stuff to play with - it's in those few special memories, experiences that totally capture you and take you somewhere really different. Tomorrow I want Holly to believe we are going to theland of the woodland fairies and she will get that from the littlest things.
I think we'll collect things again - but I will take paper and glue with me - not much extra to throw in the bag but it will be again a totally different experience to be doing a collage there and bringing it home.
FOOD again simple. I am terrible when it comes to food. I also have had the tendency to go over the top - and get EVERYTHING that i could possibly think of that might be nice on a nice occasion. I have learnt that this is expensive, and stupid. Putting a theme in your activity should help this. So tomorrow as it's a woodland picnic I have made some fairy cakes - the treat - however they are basically crap and look nothing like fairy cakes - but they are different to normal so it ticks that box! I will cut sanwiches with biscuit cutters to make them interesting, and it is a good opportunity to have a couple of things we wouldn't normally eat - dates, dried mango, extra veggies and fruit- if it looks woodlandy I do run the risk that they wont eat anything but if they are captured by the make believe then they will eat within that idea.
I am a firm believer that the more random something is and totally out of the ordinary the more it will stand out amongst the memories later on and I know I remember lots of unrelated strange places, bizarre people and funny experiences but have forgotton pretty much all of my safe, structured, routine days. I would hate o deprive my children of memories by sticking to what I know works with them. Before me and Joel got married we talked about how we would bring up children and ideas that we still look forward to in a couple of years time like country nights where we dress up in traditional costume from another counrty and work on creating our outfits together, learn about that culture, eat the food and learn some of the language together as a family, and that we would have nights where we all pile under the table downstairs for the night in a mass sleepover and other such bizarre things - all under the roof of our own home! I will keep writing about how they all go!
