Kids Co-op Link up (#9 for me)

 
<center> <a href="http://tamingthegoblin.blogspot.com/"></font></p> <p> <font color="#808080" face="'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/FkLk8.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a> </font></p> <p> <font color="#808080" face="'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></center> Its that time again: Time to link up your great ideas and browse through some of the other great ideas linked up. And here is what I will be linking up:

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Butterfly play scape
(Goblin is 31 months)

Goblin and I have been watching 5 caterpillars grow. Soon they will form chrysalis and then they will emerge as beautiful butterflies. He has taken quite an interest, asking to see them several times a day. This inspired me to make Goblin a butterfly play scape this week.

I spent my one hour commute home last night cutting out lots of tiny paper butterflies. I got the pictures from Google Images (typed in butterflies), and printed them out on a colour printer. I glued most of them to the top of clothes pegs. This took ages but I realised that it was worth it because there are lots of things I can do with these butterflies, including matching games; counting games; and hide and seek. If you have any other ideas please leave me a comment, I'd love some more options. 

I also scattered some smaller butterflies around the plastic mat like confetti. 

On my way home from work I walk up a lane lined with Cow Parsley. The other day I saw how tall it was growing and thought Goblin would like that it is taller than him. So I took a few cuttings. I used a big plastic waste paper bin as a vase and filled it with a bit of water to keep the Cow parsley stems fresh over night. I pegged the butterflies to the Cow parsley. I also pegged a few butterflies to the curtains, the shelves, and all around the room so Goblin could randomly find them through out the day.

 

The main sensory tray contained some twigs (picked on my walk home from the train). I have some plastic butterflies from Amazon that I used as stocking fillers for Goblin last Christmas. I balanced these on the twigs, as well as in the 'land' and 'water' areas of the tray. The land area had some 'texture' made of green tea - its been sitting unused in my larder for two years, - and some dried lavender. The tea and lavender combined to make a great smell. This, as well as the Cow parsley and the Freesias I 'floated' in the waterbeads made the butterfly play scape a very smelly sensory experience (in a good way).

I was so inspired by the butterfly theme I even made Goblin a butterfly fruit snack to go with the play scape.

While I remember, there are butterfly crafts in the ebook Small Hands Creating Hope, which can be sent to anyone donating $15 or more to the Amerian Cancer Society. Find out all about it at MamaSmiles.

So you've seen what we've been up to, lets see what everyone else has been up to - To the linky!

I'm linking this to