Golf tees and hammers!

We've been having lots of fun with golf tees this week! Definitely a great 'toy' to have in the house! We had an old bit of polystyrene packaging lying around so I gave Eden a hammer (the meat tenderiser from the kitchen drawer) and the golf tees and let him go for it!
He spent a long time to start with with just the one tee trying to get it in just right

 He then really got the hang of it and just went mad!

 I cut up a pound shop pool noodle thinking Eden could help make a sculpture and made him a 'robot' to give him an idea.

Poor Robot was hammered down to the block though!!

 When Joplin came home from school he took over and had a great time hammering slices of noodle to the board and creating a 'work of art'!

Brands Hatch

I have a 'guest blogger' this week as Dan took the boys on an outing last Sunday! ......

Heading to Brands Hatch for the German touring cars (DTM) with the boys brought back loads of great memories for me - as a kid going to rallies with Dad and later in my teens racing a car myself with Dad as crew. It was an early start as we wanted to get there for the pit lane walk. Joplin did a fantastic job of guiding us to the track even when Daddy took a wrong turn. 

It was my first time at Brands and I have to say it is a brilliant track for spectating. We managed to get up close to the cars and crew as we walked through pit lane as they were doing pit stop practise. 

We then went to find our seats in the grandstand and watched the Formula 3 race. 

The cars sounded awesome! The grandstand we were in was at the end of the front straight and we got to hear them off throttle for the corner with loads of backfiring and also full throttle exiting the pits. Eden even managed to sleep through half the race!

It was time for something to eat and we spotted a playground on the the map so headed over there for some lunch and a play before the big race. Brilliant idea to have this at a track as kids ( and Mums) can only watch cars go round a track for so long. 

Time to head back to our seats. We bumped in to a few more guys from work and their families so sat with them for race. The racing was top notch with lots of over taking. The sun even made an appearance and luckily the free hats they were giving out in the pits came in handy, although still managed to have a bit of a red face for work monday morning. 

All in all a really cool boys day out. All this for just £10 through work, not bad eh? Joplin is looking forward to our next race outing, might do Silverstone as it's only 20min up the road.

Stomp and catch / launch board / Joey Jump

Not really sure what these are called in the UK as they seem to have a lot of names around the world but I can't seem to find one here! Actually that is one of the reasons that I decided to make them as I couldn't find them anywhere. I'm glad I did though as it took under an hour to make 3 and £7 total cost.  Eden has been loving playing with one in his gym class and I thought it would be both a great toy from my boys and also at a games obstacle course style party. I took inspiration here and made my own!

I found a plank of wood 2400mm X 6mm X 90mm for £6 in B&Q and a pvc waste pipe for £1 in Wicks. (Screws were discovered in our shed!). B&Q cut the plank into 3 for me in the store so each board measured 800mm X 90mm 6mm.

I measured 5" from one end of the plank (originally 6" but the 5" ones seemed to work better) and then after sawing a length of pipe the width of the plank (with my hacksaw from Deddington Natural Parenting Playgroup's swapshop!) I screwed it on. I drew a line to help where the screws went in. (Yes I know I've switched to imperial measures but the ruler I was using at the time at this point was in inches!)

(I need to still sand the edges - the screws are far enough in to be safe though.)

I finished by sticking on some sticky back foam to the end (after the noise of the first few goes by the boys on the wooden floor!!)

These are some of the action shots of the fun! I didn't have bean bags to hand but I did have a few beanie babies which fitted the bill perfectly - who says that kiwi's don't fly!?

Colour sorting in egg cartons

I have seen a few ideas on Pinterest lately using Egg cartons for a colour matching game. We are trying to encourage Eden to learn his colours still and this seemed like a quick and fun game to set up. 

I cut circles of foam to put in the base - I thought the colours would be more vibrant than colouring them in.

  I then simply let Eden find what he could to fill it! This was the result! (with a little help from JJ!)

 I then gave hime the box of lego to re-do it with. He seemed to really enjoy it and did great!

All done before 8am!! (Not my usual morning style!)