Ladybird Tuesday - The Ladybird Book of The Night Sky

I love how Ladybird books take complicated subjects and condense all that information into a format that is easy for children to understand, yet without any dumbing down. I learned an awful lot from reading The Night Sky. It's in series 536 - A Ladybird Nature Book, and was first published in 1965. Of course things have moved on a bit since then, but most of the information is still relevant and accurate (apart from the demotion of poor Pluto from being a planet of course).

The book was written in a time when there was a lot less light pollution in the sky, and I'm not sure that a stargazer today would be able to see quite as much. But there is plenty of information in the book to help you spot lots of different planets, stars and constellations.

I've challenged myself to identify some more constellations, and this book is going to be a big help as the only constellation that I can currently reliably find is Orion.

The Night Sky is packed with fascinating information. I'll definitely be re-reading it myself, as well as sharing it with the children as they start to take an interest in the skies.

If you love Ladybird books, do pop over and visit Ladybird Tuesday, where Being Mrs C is assembling a really comprehensive catalogue of Ladybird books and reviews.

Below you can find links to all my Ladybird Tuesday book posts.

Snow White and Rose Red
Hansel and Gretel
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The Three Little Pigs
The Old Woman and her Pig
Little Red Riding Hood
The Ugly Duckling
The Railway Children
A Little Princess
A First book of Aesop's Fables

A Ladybird Book about Knitting
More Things to Make - For Special Occasions
Easy to Make Puppets
Learning to Sew
Stamp Collecting
Tricks and Magic

Prehistoric Animals and Fossils
Dinosaurs
Stone Age Man in Britain
Great Civilisations - Crete
Charles Dickens
Nelson
Lives of the Great Composers Book 1
Lives of the Great Composers Book 2
The Story of Music

Plants and How They Grow
The Ladybird Book of the Night Sky
Sea and Air Mammals
The Farm

The Story of Nuclear Power
The Motor Car
How it Works - The Computer
How it Works - The Rocket
The Story of Ships
The Postman and the Postal Service
People at Work - The Nurse

Understanding Numbers
Talkabout Clothes
Going to School
Teaching Reading

Stories of Special Days and Customs
Christmas Customs

Girls and Boys - A Ladybird Book of Childhood

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Messy Construction with sugar cubes and icing

Today I'm delighted to welcome a guest post from Jen, who blogs at Smiles and Trials. Jen loves trying out different messy play activities with her children, and she's sharing the fun that they had with some messy and sticky construction play.

A while ago, thanks to inspiration from Jennie, I purchased a Tuff spot and The Little Book of Tuff Spot Activities to go with it.  When they arrived, almost simultaneously, I flicked through the book and was immediately drawn to the page that showed how to make a beautiful wintry ice scene using sugar cubes.  You could even build an igloo! 

Now, this was back in March and I have often considered the activity since then but never got round to it. However, this all changed today.

Today, I let my children loose with two boxes of sugar cubes and a packet of fondant icing! I provided them with bowls and spoons and invited them to scoop the powdery icing sugar into their bowls.

They oohed and aahed at the consistency.

“It is so fluffy!” remarked Sonny.

They then added water and stirred until what they had somewhat resembled “gloopy glue”, as Jasmine calls it.

Next, I asked them to open up their boxes of sugar cubes.  At this stage, I hadn’t told them the plan.  They did not realise that I intended them to build structures with these materials.  I wanted to see how their minds would work and what they would think when presented with, essentially, two forms of sugar.  Would they see it like this and be confused?  

At first, Sonny thought we may be baking.   Jasmine commented that the “glue” smelled of cake mix.  I gave them a glue spreader and they sat quietly looking at their cubes of sugar.  Then Sonny said, “I will make a tower!” and suddenly they got it. Sonny quietly concentrated on his tower whilst Jasmine contemplated building a house, or even an igloo “where bears and people live”.

I couldn’t resist getting involved and tried to build a wall. 

We also attempted to add “bricks” to the side of Sonny’s tower with the view to creating a bridge, perhaps for his trains to chuff through.

Unfortunately, this didn’t quite go to plan and the bricks quickly and quietly slipped off. It is at this point that I believe my children learned the phrase “Silly old gravity”.

Soon, the construction process dissolved into general anarchy with water being poured and sloshed between jug and bowls and “gloopy glue” quickly turning into sugary mess; Sonny sat in the tray (and in a large puddle) and the boxes of sugar cubes were entirely emptied into one huge, snowy pile. Jasmine caught me looking and said, oh so sagely, “This is messy and we’re playing; it’s everything messy play should be.”

She is entirely right, of course.

What a brilliant idea, this looks like so much fun and I know that mine would love it! Thanks to Jen, you can visit her fantastic blog Smiles and Trials, for lots more creative play ideas.

Treacle Suet Pudding - an Autumn treat!

If you are looking for a warming autumn or winter treat, you can't go far wrong with this delicious treacle suet pudding. This was first baked as part of the Great Bloggers Bake Off, inspired by the Great British Bake Off, and another week with things which I've never even eaten before, let alone baked! The themes for this week were suet pudding, choux pastry and three different types of pastry. I decided that I would make suet pudding as my parents were visiting for the weekend and I knew that they would help me out with the eating of it.

I had never bought suet before, so I had to ask some fellow baking bloggers where to find it in the supermarket (in the baking aisle as it turned out). I went for vegetarian suet as it sounded slightly more appetising.

A quick Google turned up a simple recipe for treacle pudding (sadly no longer available at previous link). I didn't much fancy trying to steam a pudding, and so fortunately this one was made in the microwave. It was incredibly easy to make and tasted delicious when served with custard. So easy to make in fact that I know I'll be making it again. This week, the challenge for me wasn't so much about the baking part but the fact that I've tried something new which I never would have made otherwise and discovered something delicious that I'll be turning to again!

This post was linked up to the Great Bloggers Bake Off hosted by The Crazy Kitchen and Mummy Mishaps.

Ladybird Tuesday - People at Work - The Nurse

'People at Work' The Nurse is a Ladybird book from series 606B, one of a series of books which take a look at people in different lines of work. The books in the series range from The Policeman and The Fireman to The Customs Officer and The Road Makers, and I'd love to see some of the other books in this series! You can read about two of them here - In a Hotel and The Pottery Makers.

People at Work - The Nurse was published in 1963. That doesn't seem that long ago, but even with my fortunately limited experience of hospitals I can guess that the life of a nurse described in this book is very different to that of today. For a start, all the nurses are women, and because of the reference to the fact that they all live together in a nurses' home there is an assumption that they are unmarried.

I love this picture of the nurse sitting in her room in the nurses' home doing her knitting, and still smiling cheerfully even though she is very tired.

Because it is aimed at children, there is a a great deal of emphasis in this book about babies and children in the hospital. A particular point is made that children's wards are happy places, full of story books and toys. The children enjoy staying in hospital until they are better, with jelly and ice-cream which it is fun to eat in bed. There are even two pages which talk about the fun that children in hospital have at Christmas.

There is a great deal of detail in this book about all the different jobs that the nurses do. At the time it would have been a fantastic book for a child that was interested in becoming a nurse, or a child that was going to be spending time in hospital.

If you love Ladybird books, do pop over and visit Ladybird Tuesday, where Being Mrs C is assembling a really comprehensive catalogue of Ladybird books and reviews.

Below you can find links to all my Ladybird Tuesday book posts.

Snow White and Rose Red
Hansel and Gretel
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The Three Little Pigs
The Old Woman and her Pig
Little Red Riding Hood
The Ugly Duckling
The Railway Children
A Little Princess
A First book of Aesop's Fables

A Ladybird Book about Knitting
More Things to Make - For Special Occasions
Easy to Make Puppets
Learning to Sew
Stamp Collecting
Tricks and Magic

Prehistoric Animals and Fossils
Dinosaurs
Stone Age Man in Britain
Great Civilisations - Crete
Charles Dickens
Nelson
Lives of the Great Composers Book 1
Lives of the Great Composers Book 2
The Story of Music

Plants and How They Grow
The Ladybird Book of the Night Sky
Sea and Air Mammals
The Farm

The Story of Nuclear Power
The Motor Car
How it Works - The Computer
How it Works - The Rocket
The Story of Ships
The Postman and the Postal Service
People at Work - The Nurse

Understanding Numbers
Talkabout Clothes
Going to School
Teaching Reading

Stories of Special Days and Customs
Christmas Customs

Girls and Boys - A Ladybird Book of Childhood

Hama bead house designs

If you follow me on any of my various social media channels, you may have noticed my recent Hama bead obsession. Ostensibly bought for the children, I often find myself of an evening positioning beads onto pegs and coming up with my own designs. We have an excellent local craft shop in our village which carries an incredible amount of stock and I have rather got into the habit of stopping by from time to time to pick up a new Hama bead pegboard (it doesn't help that on many days I pass it four times on the way to and from school). I couldn't resist the Hama bead house template.

I assumed that if I looked online I would find loads of inspiration but I couldn't find a great deal so I thought I'd share the houses that I've made using it. They are all made using the Hama Bead House Pegboard, number 306.

This house was my first attempt, a sort of Hama bead cottage complete with potted plant outside. It's quite a difficult pegboard to get to know, so I was working out the best arrangements for windows and doors.

This fairy house doesn't use the entire template. I was trying for a turret effect, which is something that I'll be trying to improve on for future houses.

Finally, this is a Hama bead gingerbread style house for Christmas. Fairly simple for the time being, I can see me revisiting this idea for a more blinged up version!

I do have a plan for these houses (and the others that are still yet to be made...) I'm going to create a little Hama bead village somewhere in our house, possibly in Mia's bedroom. We shall see!

Do your children have Hama beads? Do you play with them too? I hope that I'm not the only adult that puts the kids to bed and then gets out their toys!

Review - Plastic Box Shop

I was recently given the opportunity to review some plastic storage boxes from Plastic Box Shop. I love storage and organising products, so I had a lovely time browsing the website. There are always areas of my home which could do with a little sorting out.

Hama bead storage was high up my list. We've been buying the big tubs of mixed beads, and it was frustrating when Harry was trying to sort through to find the colours that he wanted. It also suited my organised mind have them divided out by colour. I ordered two compartment plastic organiser boxes, which had plenty of space plus some room left over for our growing collection. Sorting out the beads by colour was a bit of a mission I'll admit, but they look so much better now that they're done!

We were lucky enough to inherit a summer house when we bought our house, and it's invaluable for storing the garden toys all year round. It was getting into a bit of a mess though, as we can't resist those end of summer toy bargains. This yellow flexi trug is a really good size and keeps everything together. I'm also thinking that the children could use it in the garden in the summer as a toy in itself, by filling it with water and using it for sitting in or washing toys in.

Finally I really want to sort out our wardrobe. We are very lucky and have a walk in wardrobe, but it has become a bit of a dumping ground for all sorts of things, in particular my husband's cable collection and my handy cardboard box collection. I found these large clear plastic storage boxes which fit perfectly into the spaces on the shelves. They turned out to be a little larger than I expected and because they have a half hinged lid I think they'll also be really useful for easy access toy storage. No photos of these in use I'm afraid as I'm still halfway through this organising job, it's not a quick one!

I was provided with these products for the purposes of this review.