I've got a super quick and easy craft for you today, one that could keep the kids busy for ages and that you've probably got all the supplies for already!




What you'll need to make Sticker Pictures:

• paper (card is good)
• stickers (puffy ones work well, but any will do)
• pencil
• eraser

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We are trying out our first Toucan Box!  I've heard how great they are from lots of people, but now we're giving them a try ourselves.  Our first impression was a good one, as they are small enough boxes that they fit through the letterbox, and each of the children knew right away that it was for them as their name is written right on it!




Opening the boxes was exciting, to see what the theme would be and all of the little touches to personalise the boxes for each child.




Ivy's box contained the Racing Jellyfish craft, and she loved the little note on the inside of the box with her name on it again and some quick info about what she would be able to make with the craft supplies inside.




I also appreciated that this craft included some easy to do threading, which is great for Ivy's coordination and fine motor development.




And the best part for both children, when Ivy was finished the jellyfish could be played with!  They now hang up on the back window and the kids have jellyfish races whenever they like.  We do love a craft that we can play with after!




Next it was Ethan's turn to dive into his Toucan Box.  The theme of his box was Alien Invasion, which is right up his street!




He was very happy to get creating and got stuck in straight away, making as many different aliens as he could out of the clay provided.




He even named each of his aliens (mostly based on how many eyes they had!)




We had lots of fun with our Toucan Boxes and I could definitely see how children would really look forward to these arriving every month!  If you would like to try Toucan Box for yourself then sign up here to get your first box free!


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* This is a review post and also contains affiliate links, we were sent two Toucan boxes in order to try them out and write our honest opinions.*

It's summer time and we're spending lots of time on long car trips, and sometimes train and plane trips too!  Orchard Toys have a lovely range of Mini Games that are absolutely perfect for travel!




The winner of the game is the first to fill their whole bingo card with counters (but we keep playing until everyone finishes).



Build a Beetle is a little bit different, it comes with a spinner and lots of beetle body parts which are colour coded and numbered at the back.


Both of these games are perfect for travel, they can be played by the whole family, but they are also simple enough that the children could play on their own without any adult help.  They come in small boxes which are easy to pack away when you're finished with them.  We can't wait to take Little Bug Bingo and Build a Beetle on our next trip!
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* This is a review post, we were sent the Mini Games from Orchard Toys in order to play with them and write our honest opinions.*

The children are going back to school in a few weeks time, so it's time to start preparing!  I always loved back to school shopping when I was little, so it's one of my favourite things to do with the children as well, to let them choose a few things that they like to get them excited about the school year ahead.  





It's fun to stick to a theme and to let the kids choose characters that they love, and as Ethan is absolutely Lego mad, we thought that we would round up a list of all of the most fun Lego stationery and other back to school supplies that we could find!

Lego Stationery

• pencil case
• stationery set
• pencils
• pens
• markers
• ruler
• journal

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It's the summer holidays!  We are loving these long, lazy days of just going with the flow, playing all day long and relaxing.  If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you may have noticed that there is one thing that I am trying to do each day with the children, and that's read!  It's so important to keep Ethan reading over the summer and to build on Ivy's growing love of books as she is just learning to read.  So every day I make smoothies for all of us (get some healthy food in there too!) and we each choose a book to read!  It's called Smoothies and Books and it's one of our favourite parts of the day!

🥤📚 Smoothies & Books 🥤📚 It’s the first day of summer break and we’re starting a new daily routine of #smoothiesandbooks 🥤📚 The children can choose any reading material they like and find a nice cosy spot for reading together or on their own whilst drinking a healthy smoothie (a sneaky way to get in some extra nutrients to balance out all the summer treats 🍦🍧🍭) #summer #summerbreak #schoolholidays

A post shared by Niki - Play & Learn Every Day (@playandlearneveryday) on Jul 23, 2018 at 4:01am PDT

We have a great selection of books at home, and we have also been visiting the library and we're taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge here in the UK, which we highly recommend (hopefully libraries worldwide have similar programs).  It's another great way to inspire the kids to keep reading all summer long.

🥤📚 Smoothies and Library Books 🥤📚 We went to the library to sign up for the summer reading challenge today! Love this program to keep children reading over the summer by rewarding them with stickers throughout and a medal at the end! Ethan did it last year and loved it, and Ivy gets to join in this year because she starts school in September 📚 (you can check out the rest of our daily smoothies and books posts in our stories) #smoothiesandbooks #SummerReadingChallenge @readingagency #SOBeano #MischiefMakers #libraries #childrensreading #bookstagram #summerholidays

A post shared by Niki - Play & Learn Every Day (@playandlearneveryday) on Jul 25, 2018 at 6:41am PDT

At home I allow the children to choose any book that they like for our Smoothies and Books time.  It can be a reading scheme book (at any level), a picture book, a chapter book, a comic or a joke book.  Any reading will do in this house, we are not book snobs, we love them all!  In fact, we have so many books that we love, that we don't want to keep them to ourselves any more, here are some of our favourites:

Our Favourite Reading Scheme Books

• Songbirds - these are part of Oxford Reading Tree so they follow the same levels, but they are written by Julia Donaldson, whom we adore, so they're a fun option to have at home

• Oxford Reading Tree - these are the ones that they use at Ethan and Ivy's school, so they're great to keep us on the right level (but we try not to read too many so that they haven't then read all of the schools' books!)

• Read Write Inc Phonics - this is the reading scheme that I used when I was a teacher and I really loved the whole process, so the books are great, especially at the lower levels.

• Read it Yourself with Ladybird - a lot of these books are of characters or stories that are familiar to the children, which is a fun way for them to get into the books.

Our Favourite Picture Books

• The Gruffalo (and anything else by Julia Donaldson) - a modern classic and just so much fun to read and do all the different voices!

• Old Tracks, New Tricks - a fun book about train tracks that makes you see them in a completely different way, and is a great starting point for fun activities (we made tracks in play dough after reading it)

• Green Eggs and Ham (and anything else by Dr Seuss) - my childhood favourites that I love to share with the children

• Semicolons, Cupcakes and Cucumbers - a really cute and funny book that the children really enjoy, and a great opportunity to introduce or review basic punctuation (we also did a punctuation activity for it)

• Where the Wild Things Are - another one of my favourites that the kids also love (Ethan even dressed up as Max for World Book Day once!)

• The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes - a great introduction to Patricia Bath and a great stepping stone for learning more about great women in history.

• Peter Rabbit - another classic which has inspired us to do many fun activities (and another costume for World Book Day!)

• Oi Frog! (and the other books in the series; Oi Dog!, Oi Cat!) - a hilarious series of books that makes fantastic use of rhyming words and I absolutely never get tired of reading!

• How to Catch a Star (and anything else by Oliver Jeffers) - such a sweet and funny book about a boy on a mission who never gives up.

Our Favourite Chapter Books

• Zoey and Sassafras series - finally a series that is aimed at younger children and features a fantastically clever and strong girl character, we love Zoey!

• How to Train Your Dragon series - another great series that isn't too intense for younger children and that Ethan loves to follow along with, great for imagining up situations with real dragons and adventure!

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - my personal favourite by Roald Dahl that inspires a whole lot of creativity!

• Royal Rabbits of London - we've just started this one, but so far we're loving the tough rabbit characters

• Treehouse series - a fun adventure with an ever growing and incredible treehouse

• Grandpa's Great Escape - a funny one by David Walliams

• Captain Underpants - because sometimes you just have to be silly!

Our Favourite Comic Books (and other non traditional reading books)

• Lego Superheroes Space Justice - a fun way to read about characters that Ethan loves in an easy to read format

• Pokemon Handbook - kids don't even know they're reading when it's all about their favourite Pokemon characters!

• Ninjago Graphic Novels - another fun way to read and relax with characters that they love

We are always looking for book suggestions, what are your favourites?  And we'd love you to join us for Smoothies and Books, just use #smoothiesandbooks to share what you're reading (and drinking!)

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* This is a review post and also contains affiliate links, we were sent some of these books to review, all opinions are our own.*

We've been reading Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers by Steve Newberry and loving it.  Who knew that a book about punctuation could be so much fun?



Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers has been on our bookshelf for a few months now, but it wasn't until today when we were reading it together again that we were inspired to write our own page from the book.



I won't give away the brilliance of the story, but basically each of the characters speaks in sentences using their type of punctuation.  So we created our own pages, with any chosen theme and wrote a speech bubble for each of the four main characters using their punctuation.


This was the perfect activity for Ethan as he has learned about each of these punctuation marks at school this year.  So it was a great review of the period (full stop), question mark, exclamation mark and comma (and an introduction to the semi colon).  Ethan is crazy about football, so he decided that his page would have a sports theme.  Ivy is more about process at this age, and just had some fun drawing different punctuation marks and doing some mark making.


Ethan drew his punctuation characters very carefully, even adding their little eyes and drawing the speech bubbles in matching colours.


Then he wrote a speech sentence for each one.  Question mark says "What team is playing?" Period says "I like football." Exclamation mark says "I hope England wins!" and Comma says "I love football, rugby, and basketball."


It's a very simple and fun activity to go along with the Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers book and great for reinforcing punctuation use.

Or pin this idea for later:


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* This is a review post, we were sent a copy of Semicolons, Cupcakes, and Cucumbers from The Innovation Press in order to read it and write our honest opinions.*

It's summer holidays and we are home for the summer!  We may go on a little road trip later in August, but for the most part we are home and enjoying the break.  Ethan is going into Year 2 in September, so he needs a few really active days here and there to tire him out, but Ivy is just going into Reception in September, so I'm mostly keeping her with me!  So between our fun days out at the park and play dates with friends I've also booked Ethan in for a few scattered days at summer camps.  This week he went to a gardening camp for a day, next week he'll go to a science camp and later this month he will spend 3 days at Harlequins Rugby Camp and he is so excited!


There are still places at many of the camps across the South East part of the country, so do have a look at the available locations and book in if you are interested.  Ethan is crazy about football, but just starting to get interested in rugby, so it seemed the perfect time to take him for a tour around the Harlequins Stadium (The Twickenham Stoop) to get him even more excited about going to camp later this summer.



Seeing the rugby pitch where the Harlequins really play and hearing all about the team truly did get him excited about rugby (I have a feeling we'll be regularly visiting The Stoop to watch games now as well!) And he can't wait for rugby camp.  I think it will be so beneficial for him to learn the rules and practice his skills with professionals right when he starts learning to play.  It's such a great opportunity for children to really immerse themselves in a sport for a few days, they're such little sponges at this age, that I know that after three days of rugby camp he will playing a full game and teaching me all the rules!


Of course on our way out of the stadium we did pop into the shop to buy Ethan a Harlequins rugby top, just so he has something a bit special to wear on the first day of rugby camp.  


If you're interested then please have a look at the information about the Harlequins Rugby Camp to read more about their teaching philosophy and how they balance out skill development with fun games.  Also look at the available camps and dates to book in.

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* This is a review post, we have been given a tour of the Harlequins stadium and will be attending the Harlequins Rugby Camp in order to write this series of posts, all opinions are our own.*