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Cute Sandwich Cutter

Written on February 5th, 2011 by Hear Mum Roar in Baby, February 2011, Food, In the home, Preschool aged, School aged, Toddler

I got this cute little gadget when I had a bento splurge recently at J List.

I get so bloody sick of making the same old boring sandwiches everyday. Sure, Missy 10 helps out when she can, but it’s nice to break up the monotony for the kids and I. All you do is press the cutter into a sandwich, and it cuts four bite-sized sandwiches with crusts removed. (The crust that was cut off was so thin, I was hardly wasting any at all)

I love that it’s probably easier than dragging a knife through the bread and ripping it. I love knowing that the kids are more likely to sit down for longer and actually eat what I’ve made them. Most of all, I love the smile it brings to their faces. Plus, it’s so much more fun to open your lunch box to something so cute.

PS – this isn’t a sponsored post, just something I bought myself and loved the idea of.

Gelli baff

Written on November 18th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in In the home, Messy play, November 2010, Reviews

‘scuse the messy sink!

I’d like to start out this post by stating that I didn’t receive any free product or payment for writing this. We’ve been desperate to try out Gelli Baff for a long time, and have only just gotten our mitts on a packet now.

Now, with my partner’s petrochemical allergy, it was pretty important to us to find out what is actually in this stuff. We read the packet and were none the wiser. The listed ingredients on the box are: sodium polyacrylate, sodium chloride, parfum CI 17200.

Whatever the heck that means. It doesn’t sound as though it contains petrochemicals, but we decided to let the kids have a try of it just for fun. My man just wouldn’t bathe in it. Some of the warnings and instructions didn’t sound all that great, either:

‘we recommend the use of a moisturiser after use’

‘avoid contact with eyes, if contact occurs, rinse with plenty of cold water for 10 minutes; seek medical advice if any problems persist.’

‘Not recommended for children under 5 years of age.’ What?? Of course, I didn’t see this one, and had Mr 4 and Missy 2 in it. But then it goes on: ‘unless supervised by an adult’. Phew. At their ages, I do anyway.

By now, I was a bit miffed as to what sort of chemicals are in this stuff! Anyway, I figured one try for curiosity’s sake won’t hurt anyone if we’re careful.

First, I had to fill the bath to 6cm high of water. I planned to put all three kids in at once, and after forking out nine bucks for a box of this stuff that only makes one bath worth, I thought, this better be good. In all fairness though, it did expand quite a bit. Although, I won’t be taking their friendly tip to ‘make every night a Gelli Baff night’.

Next, I had to sprinkle the coloured crystals over the water and leave it for five minutes.

After this, you stir it, and that’s when it thickens and becomes heavy. It wasn’t actually ‘goo’, as the box describes.

It was very granular, much like the gel crystals in disposable nappies (diapers, for our foreign counterparts).

It felt pretty heavy, and quite amazing. I loved the feeling. I don’t think I’d like to sit in it though, it’d be like getting sand in your bum crack at the beach. It smelt overpoweringly synthetic.

The children, (who, for obvious reasons, won’t be in any photos for this post) loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It was great in terms of sensory exploration, and discussing matter. We talked about the concepts of liquids and solids. How much heavier it is than water.

It was pretty obvious that this stuff won’t wash your children clean. In fact, because my kids were covered with lumps of jelly crystals, it had to be washed off before they could get out! The upside is that the dyes didn’t mark their skin, or the bath, for that matter.

Anyway, then I sprinkled the sachet to turn it back into water. This, my friends, as part of the nine bucks, one-time bath treat, was common salt! Mmm hmm…

You’re meant to mix it in well until the goo ‘magically turns back into water!’ My poor kids mixed and mixed, thankfully they had fun doing it, because although the substance did turn more liquid, we never quite got rid of the granular crud all over their bodies. It was all through the water, right until we finished up. The box says you can top up the bath with water and add bubbles. Ok, I thought, maybe by then all the granular bits might have dissolved. Nope. No magic there.

The kids were devastated to have to get out of the bath, this was, after all, the most fun bath they’d ever had in their lives. As my fiance dried off the two little ones, I set about cleaning the bath. Now, like I said, it didn’t stain. But we had those crystals smeared from here to kingdom come! I nearly broke my neck slipping on the crystal coated floor, and it was a bugger of a thing trying to rinse away all traces of this stuff.

So, my verdict? The most fun my kids have ever had in a bath, bar none. Even Mr 4 who is known to be a mess-a-phobe was thrilled with it. I love the whole concept of this stuff. The reality though? Not so much. I think it’s a rip-off, and the sound of the ingredients (with all the warnings, but no real explanation of what it is) really concerned me. Not that I think it did my kids any harm at all to try it out once.

I think the advertising and description on the box was very misleading as well. I would probably get it again, but not very often, and use it more for the kids to just dip their hands in, I think. All in all, my kids felt it lived up to the hype, I didn’t.

Have you tried Gelli Baff? What’s your opinion on it?

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Pull Along Activities For Toddlers

Written on July 21st, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Gross motor, July 2010, Toddler

Missy Two has been a real, typical toddler of late, in the games she likes to play. I mentioned recently how she loves to post things, and here’s another example of a toddler classic: the pull along toy. It doesn’t have to be a store-bought toy, you could make something similar for your child out of the useful box.

Gumboots and underpants worn over jumpsuits are the latest in winter fashion. Just sayin’, in case you didn’t know…

Examples of pull along play can be a bunch of train carriages, a car on a string, this walk-along puppy you see, heck, we even have a pull-along elephant that has been handed down to us! It’s good if the string isn’t too long, so that they can’t wrap it around their necks too easily and strangle themselves. If your child has made up a game with something that is too long, you’ll need to supervise. But you guys know that, right? Yeeah…

The appeal of simple games such as pulling things along is the basic repetition. Toddlers love repetition. Missy Two will pull this puppy loudly along our floor boards back and forth…

They like the sound the wheels make (if it has wheels, most pull along toys do, but homemade toys might not), learning about the concept of pulling, enjoying the challenge of trying to keep the toy steadily upright (in the case of wheels, generally) whilst pulling at the same time. It encourages a certain level of coordination, as the child looks back to check the toy is how they want it to be, they keep moving as they walk, and they work out, via trial and error, how to do this without the toy coming up off the floor. Whew! That’s hard work!

As they gain competence at this simple task, they will repeat it over and over again, for the sheer joy of it all.

My older two children are still enjoying pull along toys also. But in a different way. They like to sit on top of our pull along elephant, as our puppy pulls them along by the string! So cute, and it gets a lot of giggles out of the kids.

Do you have anything your kids like to use as pull along play?

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Toddlers like to post

Written on July 8th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Fine motor, July 2010, Toddler

So, you may have just read my post about how we decluttered a bunch of plastic out of our kitchen. Missy 2 spontaneously started posting with a container that has a pour spout on it.

What is posting? Well, it couldn’t be simpler. It’s putting something in a hole. I’m ignoring your snickers by the way, this is a family site! Hehe.

Toddlers love the repetition of putting in one object after another, taking them all out, starting again.

Toddlers like to post letters:

They like coins in slots, fish in tanks…

Or in anything from your Useful Box:

A toddler can learn so much from such a simple task. They enhance their eye-hand co-ordination, they learn about concepts such as ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘through’, ‘push’ and sometimes, ‘open,’ ‘close’. If an adult talks with them about what they are doing, they can reinforce the words as a language experience. Posting can take on a dramatic part in childrens’ play, too.

Do you have anything around the house that your toddlers play posting activities with? The ideas are endless!

Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up

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Cuisenaire rods

Written on June 27th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Constructive, Fine motor, June 2010, Preschool aged, School aged

I hope you’re all enjoying your weekend! Our three here have been having fun playing with these cuisenaire rods. Remember using these for maths at school? I found these at a local discount store a few years ago and snagged them as soon as I saw them.

Cuisenaire rods

They do have small parts in the set, so although I do let Missy 2 occasionally play with small parts with close supervision, this time I simply picked out the smaller blocks so that my fiance and I could let the kids play with these blocks as we rushed around doing other jobs.

Cuisenaire rods are fantastic for teaching maths concepts, as each colour is a different size and represents a different number. The smallest unit represents 1, and the rods go all the way up to 10. If you’re not feeling all teachy, the rods are also a brilliant, simple, open-ended play idea for imaginary play. Children also can experience the cognitive benefits of constructive/destructive play, as my kids are doing above. They also love banging them on the table. Lots.

I’ve done a quick little search on the net to see where you could buy them online, and for Australia I’ve found this site and for America I’ve found this site. (I haven’t purchased from these stores, so can’t vouch for the quality, but it gives anyone interested a starting point)

Does anyone else have these? We love them!

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Canvas painting for kids

Written on June 25th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Art, June 2010, Messy play, Preschool aged, Saving money, School aged, Toddler

This is a nice, simple, open-ended media that kids can paint on. Here is a canvas my eldest daughter painted that is now a cherished gift at her grandparents’ house.

Painted canvas gift

Visitors love to admire it and talk about what they see in it, often. It’s also a lovely way for parents to decorate the home, capturing a time, an age, a memory. Best of all, they are cheap and easy to buy! Here’s some painted canvases we’ve done over the years:

More painted canvases
Extra canvases

Have you ever given your children canvas to work with? Next time you’re stuck for a gift, you could give this a try.

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We love Hama beads

Written on June 25th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Constructive, Craft, Fine motor, June 2010, School aged

Hama board

You can see in the photo above, a very well-loved Hama bead bulletin board. My daughter made this a few years ago as a present for her Grandpa. He’s kindly taken all his messages off to send me a photo so I can show you. I purchased the board ready-made, then we glued the Hama bead designs in place.

The first time my partner went into hospital for his paint poisoning, she made him this cute little fridge magnet to cheer him up.
Cat magnet

Have you ever used/tried these wonderful, melty beads? If you haven’t, I’ll give you a brief run down. If you’d like a tutorial, let me know and I’ll do one in the near future (they’re still packed away for now). Basically, you buy these great little beads from craft/toy stores. You need a plastic template that has little stumps sticking out. The beads are placed on top of the stumps, so the stump is sitting inside the hole of the bead. Your childs’ fine motor skills and eye hand coordination are challenged as they carefully put on the Hama beads. Designs can be made out of these, with either pre made shaped templates, or children can place the beads in their own creative patterns.

Once they’re happy with their design, an adult needs to place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of the beads and iron it until the beads have melted enough to stick together. It’s then left to cool down and harden. Then you’re left with something like you see in the photos above! If you have some craft glue or a hot glue gun, then you can stick the designs to a cork board, a magnet, or whatever you wish. At my daughter’s old school, many kids used to hang them on their bags as a keyring.

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Our new playroom

Written on June 17th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in June 2010, Projects

It’s been about five months since we’ve moved into our new place. Our old new place, that is. The front of the house is at least one hundred years old!

We have been itching to start up a playroom for the kids, but it’s had to wait until now. What with my fiance’s health setbacks, and major flooding of our playroom in the early months, we had to take care of those issues first. The cause of the flooding has been fixed, so it’s safe to put the childrens’ toys in there without worry of them getting water damage. The carpet is still stained from the flooding, but we intend to get that tiled one day. Ah, patience!

In the meantime, the poor old play area became somewhat of a dumping ground for crap. You know what it’s like; you have an unused room in a house, and things get piled up there, until you deal with it ‘someday’.

‘Someday’ came two days ago.

We have the oh-so-classy use the old lounge as a gate trick going on, nice…

A place for some of the toys and books of this house. This is an old bookcase I inherited from my grandmother, soon I’ll be thrifting it to look more inviting. The kids’ rooms and the lounge room are looking a lot less cluttered as a result! The window above is the kitchen window, meaning whoever is in there can still see the kids as they play.

Because my son is still overexcited about having new animals in the house, we can separate him from the pets when it all gets a bit out of hand. They can still enjoy each others’ hijinks, as you can see!

They can look closely at the rain, and hear it pounding the roof as they play inside, snug and warm.

Because I’m phasing BPA-laden tupperware out of the kitchen, the kids have inherited this platter to sort Grandma’s old buttons into different sections. Mr Three decided to sort sections into colours. He told me he was ‘solving the mystery’.

I also moved his favourite alphabet puzzle into the playroom. It’ll be easier to keep the pieces together in here, away from his bedroom. Speaking of which, five pieces were missing.

Mr Three was quite anxious to get them back. Considering his love for solving problems, I gave him another ‘mystery’ to solve.

I made a list of the pieces that were missing. He took the list around the house and found a piece. Then he wanted help, so we went around the house together, trying to solve the mystery. I helped him to tip big boxes of toys out, and each time we found a piece, I asked him if that letter was on his list. ‘Yes!’ he said, three times. We are still missing two more pieces, so we’re keeping the list so we can go around and do this a few more times. He loved it, and can’t wait to find the last pieces.

Soon, I’m going to start painting! This is the first house we’ve ever owned, and I can’t believe we’ve not painted anything yet. I think we need to lose the ‘renter’ mentality we’ve become accustomed to, and let ourselves enjoy being home owners even more.

I’m excited too, because if this weather clears, on Monday, we’re getting a load of fruit trees planted! Pictures to come…

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New toy from Mattel – Peek a Boo clock

Written on June 4th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Baby, Cognitive, Fine motor, July 2010, Language, Music, Preschool aged, Reviews, Toddler

Sponsored by Nuffnang
It’s time for another Mattel review! Last time it was the adorable Flip Phone, and this time we were lucky enough to receive the Peek a Boo clock in the post. You can imagine how excited my little ones were. In case you can’t imagine, you can watch Missy Two’s reaction below.

The Peek a Boo clock is so cute! It has so many surprises for children to enjoy. This toy is aimed at children aged six months to three years old. You can press the green button on the top of the clock to see a little bird pop out of the door (just like a cuckoo clock) and light up brightly. Each time it pops out, it makes a different sound. Some of the sounds are:
Peek a boo! I see you!
Cuckoo!

Hello! Then when the door closes again, good bye!

It also plays a variety of songs when the bird pops out. My daughter also likes to pull the door open to make the bird pop out, and this is easy to do, as it has an indent for little fingers.

Little kids can turn the handles on the clock, and in the centre of the handles, is a little light-up button. This also plays a huge number of songs, Mr Three’s favourites being the alphabet song and the counting one. He enjoyed reading the alphabet displayed along the top of the toy, and counting the numbers on the clock.

There is a little disc on the side at the top, that displays a sun and a moon as you turn it, to represent day and night. Of course, this cool clock takes it one further, and actually says ‘day’ and ‘night’ at the right times! There is a little spot on the other side with little sliding shapes for the younger babies to play with; my two year old still enjoyed looking at those, too. On the other side is a key that makes a rewarding clicking noise when the child turns it.

I found even Missy Nine really thought it was cute and enjoyed playing with it, too. Her and Mr Three took turns at holding it facing each other and saying, ‘now I’m going to put on a show with the clock, who wants to watch?’ In this household, the more kids who enjoy one toy, the better. Because there’s a large age gap between Missy Nine and the younger two, it’s nice when no one feels left out. Plus, I always feel if all the children get some enjoyment out of our toys, then we’re getting good value.

I was so impressed with this clock. I love the fact that the volume can be adjusted, and that it explores the concept of cause and effect with my children. The most important thing to me is that my kids like it, and if you watch my little video below, you will see how much Missy Two loved it, and hear her squeals of delight.