Yesterday we played with some amazingly fun Halloween Slimy Goop that Ethan absolutely loved, and I just couldn't bear to throw it all away when we were done.  So I experimented with it to make it into a dough so that we could keep the fun going for a bit longer!



I added flour and salt to the slimy goop until it was more of a dough like consistency, but it remained slimy from the chia seeds and goopy from the corn flour (corn starch) so it was still an incredibly fun dough to play with.  It's nothing like play dough and it can't be moulded or shaped into anything, but it is sticky and stretchy and great to squish between your fingers to develop those hand muscles.



After being somewhat tentative with the original slimy goop, this time Ethan put in his hands straight in there and started squishing away.  Again I asked him lots of questions about what it felt like and he described that it was sticky and stretchy.  It's the stretchiness that was the most fascinating, because we could grab a hold of it and lift it up so high.  We would each pick up a side and see who could make theirs stretch more.



The dough was so strong that as we played with it and stretched it in every direction as much as we could.  Ethan could even stick his hands in it and it would lift up the whole box along with the dough.  He thought that was absolutely hilarious!



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We love Halloween!  And being a Canadian it's always been a big celebration for our family and we have loads of fun Halloween traditions.  But living in the UK now I know that it hasn't always been such a big deal, but with a lot of influence from North America it is becoming more main stream.  But I do still get a lot of questions from British friends, some who have never carved a pumpkin before, so I hope that anyone who is looking for a few tips finds this helpful!



1. Pick a pumpkin
We love to go to a pumpkin patch to pick the perfect pumpkin (or 2...or 4) as it makes a fun day out and you get some great photos.  In our area it's a local 'pick your own' farm that we also go to in the summer to pick strawberries, but hopefully a quick search online will find you one nearby.  It's also fine to pick one up from the grocery store, but maybe bring the little ones so that they can choose the one they like.


2. Wash it
A pumpkin from the farm will be very dirty!  A good rinse in the garden with the hose is the best plan (and the cold water is good to help preserve it as well).

3. Cut off the top (or bottom)
When you are ready to carve your pumpkin (we often leave it on display for a few days before carving as it's best to do it 3-4 days before Halloween so it's nice and fresh) then you can use a large knife to cut a big circle around the stem of the pumpkin, then lift the lid off with the handle (stem of the pumpkin).  We go the traditional route of having this lid on the top, but many people now prefer to cut a circle out of the bottom of the pumpkin and leave it off, so the choice is up to you.


4. Scoop it out
One of my favourite parts is scooping out all of gunk from the pumpkin.  It's a fun sensory experience for the kids to get messy pulling all of it out.  But if you're looking for an easier option, we love this Super Duper Pumpkin Scooper tool that we got a few years ago as it really does a great job of scooping everything out quite quickly.


5. Draw on a face (or print out a template)
If you're going the traditional route then you or one of the children can use a permanent marker to draw on a nice pumpkin face, but if you're looking to do something a bit out of the ordinary a quick internet search should help you to find pumpkin carving templates in a variety of designs.  We often ask Ethan what he would like and he tends to choose one of his favourite characters or we do one related to his costume, so we've done Superman, Tigger, a dragon and Barnacles from Octonauts.  Then you can either trace it on or just tape your template to your pumpkin.


6. Poke holes around the lines
Then you can use the little poking tool from your pumpkin carving set to poke holes all along your design (either the one you've drawn or through the paper of the template).  Then remove the template to reveal your design in dots.  If the dots are hard to see you can rub a little bit of flour on your pumpkin to make them more clear.


7. Cut along the lines
Next you use the little saw in your pumpkin carving set to cut along the lines of your design, and push through the cut pieces to reveal your open shapes.


8. Soak or spray with a solution
When you have finished carving your pumpkin you may want to take steps to help preserve it so that it doesn't get too mouldy or wrinkly before Halloween.  There are many different recommended ways, but the most widely used seems to be to soak it in water with a couple of drops of bleach and then to make a solution to spray it with daily.  As I don't like to use bleach in our house we'll be going for the more natural option of vinegar and lemon to preserve ours.

9. Seal the edges with Vaseline
Once you've soaked and / or sprayed your pumpkin you can use some Vaseline to rub along the cut edges to keep them from getting too wrinkly as well.

10. Put in an LED candle
Finally your pumpkin is ready to display, we highly recommend using a battery powered LED candle instead of a real one as it's just safer around the kids (especially with worries about flammable Halloween costumes)


Happy Halloween!  We would love to see your pumpkin creations, please share them on our Facebook page!

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We have been having so much fun with our latest creation!  This Halloween slimy goop kept Ethan busy for ages just playing with it in as many different ways as we could think of.


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It's a very exciting time in our house as we've just got our first Sylvanian Families set and I'm not sure who loves them more, me or the kids!  We have the Striped Cat Family and the Country Clinic set to start off our collection.


As soon as the set arrived Ivy couldn't wait for me to open the cat family.  She walked around for the whole day just cuddling all four of them.  She carried them with her everywhere she went, to eat her dinner and to go to bed (nearly in the bath too, but I managed to stop her just in time!)  They are extremely well made and the attention to detail is incredible!  Their little faces are so cute and perfectly formed and the little clothes are absolutely adorable.


The next day we opened up the Country Clinic and I put it all together and decorated it with the stickers included in the set.  As Sylvanian Families are intended for children from aged 3 and older the sets do include quite a few small pieces, so when Ethan plays with it on his own these can stay out but I put them away when Ivy is playing.


The clinic comes with a little doctor's coat and stethoscope, so you can make any of your Sylvanian Family animals into the doctor.  Then they can all be used as doctors and patients in any creative stories that your little ones come up with.  Ethan come up with elaborate situations of how the cats have hurt themselves and why they've come to the doctor, and for Ivy I guide her along with ideas of where the cats should go and what the doctor should do next, which she then takes on and interprets in her own way.


* This is a review post, we were sent the Sylvanian Families Striped Cat Family and Country Clinic to play with and write our honest review about.*

We're always looking for unique gifts to give family members and we've come up with a personal and creative kid made present that people are going to love!

We had the great pleasure of visiting the Discover Children's Story Centre's new Michael Rosen's Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things exhibition the other day and absolutely loved it!



The exhibition features a few of his stories, but as my children are still quite young, we are most familiar with We're Going on a Bear Hunt and were so excited to step into that world.  It's a favourite story to read in our house, so Ethan has almost got it memorised and was so excited reading it again on the way there on the train, he just couldn't wait to go through all of the different obstacles in the story himself.  



We entered the story centre and were ushered downstairs to the Michael Rosen story area, and as soon as you walk through the door you're already stepping through the 'long wavy grass' which was great, but my two went straight for the river!  I don't want to spoil all the fun of walking through there yourself, but the way that they've done all of the areas so uniquely and in ways that children would really respond to was absolutely genius.  The river was projected onto the ground in a way that looked so realistic Ivy was actually bending down to put her hand into the water.





























Walking through the forest was also an amazing experience, the trees look incredible and there are even small tree stumps to sit on a have a read through the book.  Ethan took Ivy by the hand and led her through, just in case she was scared (but she wasn't, he's just a very protective big brother!) My two were far too excited to stop there though, they were keen to keep exploring!



Onto the cave, the dark cave where we found the bear!  There's also a little tunnel that the children can crawl through, which my two absolutely loved!



Then onto the rest of the story centre, which is filled to the brim with fun things to discover.  Even though you've get a set amount of time in the exhibition, you can still explore the rest of the centre which has loads of fun activities inside and outside!  It was perfect as it meant that my two could have a good run around after all that time sitting on the train.  We also got to have a lot of fun with Adam and his Mummy from Adventures of Adam (you can read their review here).



It is definitely worth a visit to see the Michael Rosen exhibition in the next few months.  And keep an eye on the Discover Children's Story Centre's website to see what other special events they have going on, as it really is a fantastic day out!

* This is a review post, we were invited to visit The Discovery Children's Story Centre and the new Michael Rosen exhibition in order to write our honest opinions about the experience it also contains an affiliate link to buy the book.*

What you'll need:

• a nice big basket
• assorted toy farm animals
• shakers
• bells
• baby musical instruments

I filled a basket with a collection of toy farm animals as well as some simple instruments. Then we just started to sing the song together, and I handed her a maraca to shake as we sang.  When it came time to choose an animal I would stop singing and let her choose one from the basket, then I would ask her to say which animal it was and what sound it made, then we kept singing the song until it was time to choose the next animal.  Ivy absolutely loved it, now I just have to find ways to make music baskets for more songs!

If you like this you'll also love:

• Christmas Song Basket
• Shapes Treasure Basket
• Spring Discovery Basket
• Heuristic Play Treasure Basket

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I can't believe that it's taken me 4 years to finally do messy spaghetti play at home with the kids.  I knew how much the nursery kids that I used to teach loved it, but we just hadn't got around to it at home, until today!  Halloween seems like the perfect excuse to play with messy spaghetti, and we even get to pretend that it's worms (but now that we've done it and loved it, I won't need Halloween as an excuse next time!)


It's so simple to make messy spaghetti, you'll ask yourself why you haven't done it before too!  I prepared the spaghetti according to the instructions on the package, going for the slightly shorter cooking time to make them a bit more firm (or al dente) so they don't get too mushy.  Once the spaghetti is cooked I rinsed it under cold water to cool it down, then mixed it with a bit of oil to keep it from sticking.  Finally I added some food colouring to get the desired wormy colour I was going for.


Then I left it to dry for as long as the children would allow me too (to let the food colouring soak in as much as possible to avoid getting their hands too coloured) then I added some plastic spiders, and then we dove right in!


At first they were both a bit apprehensive, just picking up one piece at a time and getting a feel for it. I was asking Ethan questions about what it felt like and what it looked like.  It really is a full sensory experience!  Ethan said that it smelled like spaghetti, it felt slimy and it looked like wriggly worms.  Ivy was just happy to pick up as much as she could and let it slip through her fingers.


Soon they were both picking up handfuls of messy spaghetti, and trying to thread pieces through the spiders.  It was great to watch them get stuck in, but soon it did end up quite messy with spaghetti being thrown around.  Next time I would definitely try to take this activity outside and into a bigger tray!


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I've been feeling a bit guilty for not doing very many crafts with Ivy, at 20 months old she's still a bit young for crafting and it's just so much easier to do them with Ethan as at 4 he's really getting creative and very capable.  But poor little Ivy always wants to join in and absolutely loves to get messy and creative, so I decided while Ethan was at preschool one day to dedicate some crafting time just to her.




We received this fantastic box of craftiness from Bostik, full of possibilities and the only requirement being that we make Halloween crafts.  So instead of making just one thing, and as toddlers tend to have quite short attention spans, we made 5 fantastic Halloween decorations.



We started by making a Halloween wreath using a black paper plate, orange buttons, orange pumpkin shapes (from a long ribbon), a piece of black and orange spider ribbon and Bostik Blu Stick (a glue stick that goes on blue and dries clear!)



Ivy absolutely loved the Blu Stick, she could have just covered everything in blue glue all day long!  I literally had to pry it out of her hands to convince her to start sticking things to her wreath! She then stuck all of the buttons and pumpkins on easily, and I tied the ribbon and used Micro Dots (which will stick to absolutely anything) to attach the bow to the wreath.



Next Ivy made a witches hat using a cardboard cone shape, black feathers and black felt that I cut into triangle shapes.  She stuck everything on using her Blu Stick.



For our little ghost we used a large white pom pom, a white pipe cleaner wrapped around so that he can hang up and two small black pom poms that I used the Micro Dots to get sticky and Ivy placed on.



The candy corn is made from a piece of a white foam sheet that I cut into shape, a strip of stripy orange ribbon and an assortment of yellow bits and bobs that Ivy stuck on using her Blu Stick.


Ivy is very proud of all of her creations, and they're looking very spooky hung up all around the house!  I'll definitely be making the effort to make more crafts with her, especially if she gets to use that Blu Stick!

For more Halloween fun, take a look at our Pinterest board:

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Halloween Fun for Kids on Pinterest.

* This is a review post, we were sent a box of craft goodies and Bostik products from Bostik to use and write our honest opinions about.*