What A Busy Day!

Yesterday we got up to rain, lots and lots of rain. Not quite as much as Meg but a lot non the less. Babyebi looked out of the window and started shouting 'hurray, hurray, rainy day, yataaaaaa' I asked him why he was so happy and he told me it was because he can do rainy days crafts! Quick panic by me because I hadn't got any rainy day crafts organised!

I managed to talk him into doing some 'work' first which would give me some time to organise something, I have got an emergency rainy day craft box but I don't like to touch it if I can rustle something else up. So, he set to work with the binomial cube, this surprised me, it has been on the shelf and I gave him the presentation a good while ago, I asked him if he wanted me to show him how to do it again, his response was 'No, I can do it' ...and he did.

He spent the rest of the time dinosaur counting and then it was snack time. He wanted yoghurt, raspberries (frozen) and pretzels to dip, he mixed the yoghurt and raspberries to make a nice pink goo then dipped in the pretzels, strange child this kid of mine. He did go through a stage where he wanted to dip all his dinner into yoghurt, yep, chicken, cucumber, toast, egg...urgh. At least he ate it all.

After he had cleaned up we did a bit of kitchen science. The first experiment was 'scaring pepper' you will need...

• white or pale coloured bowl or dish (if using black pepper a dark dish for white pepper)
• ground pepper
• bar of soap
• sugar
• jug of water
• cloth for spills

1. Pour the water into the bowl.
2. sprinkle pepper on the top of the water, plenty of it so it has a complete layer.
3. touch the centre of the pepper with the soap and see the pepper run!
4. sprinkle sugar in the hole made by the pepper and the pepper with come back.

I have NO idea why this happens and I am sure an older child would want to know why, luckily BabyEbi was just impessed as it was - phew.

We cleared the pepper experiment up and then we we did coin cleaning, he tried scrubbing with soap and toothbrush first

then we dropped the coins into a salt and vinegar solution, this works really quickly, quick enough to keep a toddler interested, he really liked doing this

and then he dried the coins off

and before I could get them back in my purse he had nicked off upstairs with them and put them in his money box!

By this time he was still complaining he hadn't do a rainy day craft, I asked him what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to make magnet monsters. We had done this on another rainy day but he had the kit for Christmas and we were all out of monsters, I bribed him into doing exciting painting instead - it worked.

What you will need

• well watered down water colour paints or food colour would work
• kitchen roll
• place to dry the wet pictures

1. get the little one to fold up a piece of kitchen roll, any way will do
2. dip a corner of the folded kitchen roll into one of the paint colours, let it soak up the paint
3. turn the cloth round and dip another colour, continue until all corners are dipped
4. slowly and carefully open the kitchen roll and leave to dry

BabyEbi was excited to see what kind of pattern would be on the towel once it was opened, this reminded me of those tie-dyed student days *blush*

After all that it still wasn't lunch time so we made some Peanut Butter Granola Cups, one of the recipes I got from the postcard snack swap. Thanks Meg! I will do a full post on that though, they are really good. I also managed to make BabyEbi a new apron when he was taking his nap but the batteries are dead on the camera so I can't show you just yet.

Well the sun is out and I have a feeling there might be a wee dinosaur running loose in the garden....

And if you are still lurking, come out and leave me a comment, I won't bite, promise :o)