Autumn is officially here and the children have been very excitedly collecting conkers everywhere we go!  We always end up with a house full of conkers, they're in pockets and backpacks and all over the place, so we use conkers in as many ways as we possibly can! They're not always easy to make things out of because of their shiny surface, but today we've found a way to make monsters!


What you'll need to make Conker Monsters:

• conkers
• Bostik glu dots
• Bostik foam pads
• googly eyes
• pom poms
• pipe cleaners
• foam shapes
• other assorted craft supplies

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* This is a review post, we were sent a box of craft supplies from Bostik in order to make our craft, all opinions are our own.*

We are definitely a house full of Lego fans, in fact Ethan is completely Lego mad!  He loves all of the different types of Lego sets, from Lego City to Nexo Knights and is always asking for new sets for every birthday and Christmas (and every time we see any in the shops!) These sets are fantastic and help Ethan to develop loads of skills by following the instructions and building the set.  Then he enjoys playing with whatever he has built and using his imagination to make up little stories about them.  But the real secret to Lego, the way to keep the creativity going without buying all of these new sets is to buy a big box of assorted Lego and use your imagination to build anything that you like.


So of course when the good people at John Lewis asked us to try out a Lego Classic Large Creative Brick Box and see what we could build, we jumped at the chance!  They want to reveal the secret world of Lego that can be found in these boxes, to unleash the creativity in all of us and to get us thinking.


Ethan and Ivy were very excited to see such a big box of Lego arrive and couldn't wait to get building.  When you open up the box the Lego is sorted by colour in little bags, so we poured each of these out into a plastic pot so that we could see all of the Lego that we had to work with.  The set comes with a small green base plate, so Ivy used this for her building and Ethan went to get the large base plate that we already had.  He had bigger plans for this Lego!


It's fascinating to watch the way that each of the children play with Lego in different ways.  At 3 1/2 Ivy dove right in, piling blocks on top of each other and making little structures.  She didn't have a plan, she was mostly just choosing her favourite colours and stacking them up in different ways.  Clicking those blocks together is great for building those little hand muscles that she will need for writing, and for her find motor control.  She made all sorts of little creations, then picked up each one and told me what she had made.  Mostly she was just making it up as she went along, but it really kept her focused and she enjoyed having an open ended task that she didn't have to follow any instructions for.


Ivy is more of a free spirit and isn't quite ready for the instruction led Lego sets yet, she loses interest and needs to much help to get it all right.  She's fiercely independent so being able to just build Lego in any way she likes without any help at all is the perfect activity for her.


Now Ethan plays with Lego in a completely different way, he loves those instruction led sets so he does like to have a plan before he starts building, and he always thinks big!  So straight away with all of this Lego and this huge base plate in front of him he is inspired by the jail door that he spots in the grey pot and decides that he wants to build a police station.  He wants it to have a staircase, and for the jail cells to be upstairs.  The front of the police station is where the officers work and at the back there is a coffee shop.  He overwhelms himself a bit with his plans and asks for some help to get started.  Of course I am more than happy to get stuck in with building and help make his vision come to life.  He gets to work on the staircase as I start building the walls around the police station.


Eventually Ivy has finished her creations and now all three of us were building those walls up and trying to create an upstairs to this police station.  It's great to work together like this, Ethan was in charge and asking for pieces to be passed around and telling us how he wanted the walls to be.  



Then of course as soon as it starts to resemble a building he just can't wait to play with it, so he rushes off to find some minifigures and starts to play police station!  This has now stayed out for over a week, Ethan has made a police car to go along with it and plays with it every single day after school.  


I love how it has changed and grown, he pretends that it's other buildings and adds to it. There really is a secret world of Lego and I'm so glad that Ethan and Ivy are a part of it. They pick up so many skills by playing with Lego and literally have no idea at all that they are learning.  It's perfect.

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* This is a review post, we were sent a Lego Classic Creative Box from John Lewis in order to write this post.  All views are our own.*

I was doing a quick search for some first day of school signs, and I couldn't find any for 'Reception' or 'Year One' the terms that we use here in England, so I've quickly made a few of my own and thought that I would share them in case anyone else wanted a quick sign to print out.





Click on the title to download and print the image (please get in touch if there are any issues downloading)



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We're going back to school next week and one thing that I'm really worried about is getting out of the house on time!  We have to be out even earlier in the morning than we did last year, and we've become very used to our lazy summer mornings.  The stumbling blocks we have in the morning are getting the kids to eat breakfast, get dressed and brushing teeth as well as getting Ivy to sit still while I do her hair!


So we were very excited to be sent the Barbie Flip & Reveal Styling Head from Flair as it seems the perfect way to keep Ivy busy doing Barbie's hair as I do her hair in the mornings. We can even do matching styles on Ivy and Barbie (or attempt to, ha ha!)


The Barbie Flip & Reveal has a few other features that I wasn't expecting, but that were a welcome surprise for Ivy!  Not only does Barbie have blonde hair, but she also has pink hair which can be shown by parting her hair in different places or 'flipped' over.  Ivy really enjoys going from blonde hair to pink hair on Barbie and using the pink hair in the styles that she does.


Barbie also comes with some make up accessories, her lipstick and nail polish change colours with different temperatures of water.  So we just fill the little jug either with warm or ice cold water then use the little makeup applicator brush to apply the water and watch the colour change.  This hasn't worked extremely well for us, we need to work on getting the right temperature of water I think.


Barbie also comes with hair accessories including 3 hair clips and a few hair elastics.  There is also a special marker that can draw in pink onto the blonde hair.  The hair clips work as stencils, then Ivy can colour inside the shape to create a pink design.  She loves this and wants to colour all of Barbie's hair in pink!


There are also accessories like a brush and foils so that you can pretend that you are colouring Barbie's hair, as well as nail accessories to stick on different coloured nails and nail stickers.


Flair also offer a Barbie Dreamtopia Styling Head if you're looking for something a bit different.

Wish us luck with getting ready for school on time this week!

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Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

*This is a review post, we were sent the Barbie Flip & Reveal Styling Head from Flair in order the play with it and write our honest opinions.*