We laid out a table with a couple of tiny tea sets….
…and a tray with a jug of warm water, a couple of bowls of tea leaves, a bowl of different types of fruit tea bags, and some tools (tiny whisk, tea strainer, tiny sieve and tea spoons)…
Time for lots of discovery…
Pouring….
Smelling…
Soaking….
‘Whisking’….
Squeezing…
Straining…and of course tasting!
🙂
Nydalsparken lies in Tensta, on the outskirts of Stockholm, and for locals with older children, it’s well worth a visit!
Leon tells us he’s been wanting to go for sometime now – pictures he’s seen of the climbing rope set up inspired him – and didn’t disappoint…
The unusual climbing wall was fun too..
…as were the physical electronic games….
…but the absolute best thing, was the parkour training course!
‘Parkour’ is, according to Wikipedia, ‘a holistic training discipline using movement that developed out of military obstacle course training’.
Leon has been interested in this for a while, and tells me that he and a friend often make up their own parkour courses at school – plus recently he’s been practising his forward flips on the trampoline, as an added bonus!
So imagine how pleased he was to find a whole parkour course….
Ted tried a little ‘baby parkour’…
Alfie took it easy….
…and we ALL enjoyed watching the ‘professionals’….
…amazing young guys walking along the top bars, jumping from one high wall to another, and turning graceful somersaults over the highest bars….
🙂
Today the kids buried a baby squirrel.
We don’t really know if Blackie, our cat, is the culprit…
Such an amazingly beautiful little squirrel…
Leon and Maya dug a grave…
…and we made and painted a cross, and planted him a flower….
Rest in peace little squirrel
xxx
Yesterday was a national holiday, so we went to the zoo in Eskilstuna.
Like many people, I have mixed feelings about zoos. No-one likes to see an animal in captivity, especially if they seem unhappy. I still remember visiting an ‘aquarium’ at the back of a shop once, on the coastal route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and I remain disgusted.
Fortunately, here, in Sweden, animal rights are well and strong, and I feel that, while reading stories and fact books about animal life, and watching nature programmes are educational, there’s nothing like seeing the real thing …. albeit in captivity!
The kids were super excited – I think the two hour journey was spent in silence…
We spent a good few hours looking at the animals..
Okay. Here’s some real ones..
…and these are for you mum…
Leon was very much taken by the axolotl, Maya and Alfie really enjoyed the otters, and Ted, well he just enjoyed everything! Such enthusiasm – and he kept it going right to the end!
I was overjoyed to see the tigers and their cub, though unfortunately they were hiding in the ‘jungle’ – but mostly I found the baboon amazing! We got to see him close up, face to face, an incredibly powerful and fierce looking animal.
However, we all enjoyed, more than anything, the dinosaurs! Oh yes. Dinosaurs!
An amazing robotic exhibition travelling from the US, and very realistic! Alfie wanted me to take this picture (we don’t know the girl)…
We chose not to take Teddy in to the exhibition area – he instead spent a longer time in the fantastic playground (which I unfortunately didn’t get any other photos of, due to keeping an eye on the kidlets…)
Later, however, Teddy spied the T-Rex’s head over the top of the exhibition fence, and spent a nervous twenty minutes keeping his eye out, and asking me where the dinosaur had gone…
So we decided to do the last leg of our outing – the funfair! Well, always a favourite of my kids, though only tame rides, they had a wonderful time…
Alfie was beaming with pride through bravery, insisting Leon went with him on the tiny caterpillar roller coaster nearly ten times over, and Teddy, who didn’t bat an eyelid in Maya’s escort, had a wonderful time – despite never have been on a ride in his life before!
🙂
Teddy just loves sensory play. LOVES it! And the wetter, the stickier and the more covered in whatever material it is, the better…!
After our spider’s web activity, this sensory activity seemed to fit in nicely…
I filled our water tray with warm water, tinted with blue food colouring, added cooked spaghetti and a number of kitchen tools (tongs, fish slice, a spaghetti ‘ladle’, a whisk and a potato masher) – and last of all, a collection of plastic spiders…
Teddy literally squealed with delight when he saw the spiders, but interestingly enough, they weren’t the first thing he went for…
The spaghetti ladle was by far the most interesting object. He started to pick up the spaghetti using the tool in the correct way almost straight away…
…and it wasn’t long before he had his own ‘pick up and deposit’ game going on….
I guessed the chickens and the birds would soon pick up the spaghetti, so I wasn’t bothered about the mess – but it was interesting to see that he wouldn’t dare to pick up the spiders until AFTER all the spaghetti had been removed from the tray!
I guess you never know what could be lurking…..
🙂
We were reading this wonderful book…
…with its embossed web, so lovely for touching….
It got us talking about spider’s webs, and we decided to print out a few images that we liked from the internet…
Alfie wanted to draw one, but frustration quickly set in, so we decided to make a big one outside, using four chairs as our ‘posts’…
We tied the wool on to one ‘post’, then threw the ball of wool to eachother to wind it in, around and out of each chair leg… and eventually through each individual piece of wool…
Ted became involved in his own way…
…and it soon became a great place to relax…
We love our spider’s web…!
🙂
Lately I’ve been reading the animal books by Jill Tomlinson, to Alfie. It started with the more famous “The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark”, and the well loved “…Cat Who Wanted To Go Home” – and we have since read through the whole series…
The last book we read was “The Otter Who Wanted To Know”.
Recently Alfie found a stash of nuts from Christmas time. Since we mislaid our nut cracker a while back, he has been attempting to open them with the wrench on the woodwork bench.
I realised we could use our recent informative read to open our nuts… “I wonder if we could crack them open with a stone?” I asked, “like when the otters crack open their oysters with pebbles…” I said.
It wasn’t long before he had found a stone…
….to go with our nuts….
Alfie was soon ‘cracking’ away! At first he tried to crack a nut with the stone on an indoor shelf – it worked – but I suggested perhaps a hard surface outside…
It worked really well! Walnuts were the easiest – almonds were extremely difficult to open. We soon had a patio covered with nut shells!
Ted gave it a try too. He didn’t quite understand however, and banged a nut against a nut instead…
This kept them both happy for a very long time….!
And I almost forgot to mention – a beady eyed crow homed in for a bit of action – Alfie threw him a nut – and we actually had luck in watching it use its beak to bang the nut against the ground to open it!
How lucky could we be?!
🙂
I wanted a quick afternoon activity to occupy two tired children – and this was great! So easy to set up, they enjoyed it and it kept them busy for quite a while!
The garden treasure hunt…
I took our homemade clipboards and clipped a piece of paper labelled A to Z on to each one…
Ready to go…!
I explained to them that they just had to find one thing that started with each letter of the alphabet in the garden, and record it in some way on the paper.
Alfie decided to write a strike beside each letter when he found something, whereas Maya decided to write down the word.
This was great for two different age groups – one learning beginning sounds of letters, another learning vocabulary..
Park days are here again…!
Squashed Tomatoes 