Who’s Mr Squiggle?

Mr Squiggle; The Man From The Moon. Remember him?
My gosh he was my absolute favourite when I was young. Growing up out in the country and living behind the only mountain in miles, meant that we couldn’t receive TV signal.

Now as an adult I’m so thankful for this. The amount of time spent playing outside has left me with lasting memories and not to mention a healthier body. I could only dream of that sort of lifestyle for my kids.
On the very odd occasion, if the wind was up, our TV antenna would blow in the perfect position and be stuck for a few days. It was on those days that I got to watch Mr Squiggle.   

 

Today while doing some bookwork with my oldest, Mr 4 created a master piece with recycled bits and pieces. “Oh wow! He looks like Mr Squiggle” I said. There was a long pause and then I heard “Who is Mr Squiggle?” It was time to introduce them to my favourite drawing Moon Man.

Now that I’ve seen the old clip, I can see that this creation actually looks more like Mr Squiggles friend (Gus I think?) than it does Mr Squiggle. It has been a long time.

 

We watched the following youtube clip here. The kids were totally glued to it.  http://youtu.be/qNll00NXzB8

 

Then they decided they would like to have a go at creating pictures from little squiggles. So I drew down a few little bits on some paper and I was so amazed at what they came out with.

An asteroid hitting Earth and Mars just off to the side. Also above is a satellite and a rocket ship going out into space.

 

 

Was this drawing his most perfect creation? Maybe not, but the story behind the picture was amazing and went on and on and on. A lizard that lives in the mountains and is bigger than earth and it eats people and….. and…. and.... It was very beautiful.

 

By the end we had a pretty big collection of drawings and the kids even made me a few squiggles to create a picture with.

Did you have a favourite cartoon when you were younger? Or maybe it was special book that sparked your imagination. I would love to hear about it.  

 

 

Jelly Stacking.

The boys have been asking about Jelly lately. We follow a pretty healthy diet and to be honest I am not really up for my boys having Jelly. Maybe on the very odd occasion, I’m ok with them consuming sugar crystals but I don’t think I would ever consciously make Jelly, just for a treat.

 

 

But seen as this journey is about exploring their interests, I conjured up a deal and they were super happy with it. We could make the Jelly and then do some Jelly sculpturing, so long as.... only the odd bit of Jelly goes into their mouth.

 

Do you know what?? They were so amazed by the cold and sticky texture and bright colours, that they didn’t even stop to try and eat some.

I know that activities where children are exploring through all of their senses is really important, yet it can be hard to find one that includes stimulating their sense of smell. However this one was certainly working their sense of smell.

The negative of this activity would have to be the heat. Even though the end result was really nice and cooling on their little hands, the heat made the moulds melt way too fast. The boys only got to build a few towers, before the stacking became squishing.  

 

I love that my children’s desire for Jelly was able to be explored without it impacting on their healthy little bodies. They were so happy just to be able to play among it. And do you know what, I even loved playing in it. My hands were so relaxed feeling the cold Jelly, I could have done it for ages hehehe.

 

What Organic Shampoo ? ? ?

 

 

 

After I discovered that half of my Organic Shampoo had disappeared down the shower drain, I got the message that my boy's needed to experiment with something of similar texture, simular smell, simular appearance and nowhere near simular in cost!!!!

 

 

So here I made an invitation to play and get messy, with something that is sooooo much cheaper. Go for it... use as much as you like. At $1 something I really couldn’t care how many bottles I go through (still deep breathing through the loss of my much loved Shampoo!)

Use it they did. Squirting and spraying, filling and sqwishing. This activity has to be, by far the most messy one that I've ever done. Ever!! Don't do this inside and have lot's of water and spare rags handy if you're going to do it.

 

 

 

They created for ages. We went though three bottles of shaving cream but really we could have used another 2 or 3. However even after the cans were empty, they still played with what was left. They even wanted to keep their master pieces for the next day. So we had trays of shaving cream laying around for days. The smell was not nice,  not even the dog was interested in that.

This was so much fun.

Coloured Water Play

With extreme temperatures here yet again, we’ve been doing everything we can do avoid the heat. Including not venturing too far from our air-conditioning.

 

 

This colored water activity was a massive hit. The boy's played with this for over an hour. They have asked for it many times since. So easy, not very expensive and well worth the few minutes it takes to fill some buckets.

 

 

 

Some syringes, cups, spoons and various bucket of coloured water...that's all we needed to keep them going for ages.

 

 

 The syringes in particular were great fun! These here were Zombie potions (should we ever meet any Zombies, they will be very helpful I'm sure).

 

In the end, the tipping and pouring of coloured water got turned into Soup. We then had a little resturant going. I highly recommend this easy activity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This activity was during another one of our extremely hot heat waves. For the few minutes that we were able to peel ourselves out of the cooled air conditioning house and into the heat, we enjoyed this icy cold activity.

This easy activity has to be a favourite here. I cannot even count the times that my kids will go to the freezer during the week with a container of some sort, full of water. They are constantly freezing different things so, that couriosity is what lead us here.

The hardest part of this activity would have to be, finding the freezer space. I only have a tiny freezer, so tying to freeze so many balloons and other random containers proved hard. Lucky I hadn't been shopping in awhile.

 

 

The boy's crushed and explored until every last bit was completely melted. We hid little toy's among the ice, which didn't take long to find but the excitement was worth it. Loving summer.

 

Back in action

Well finally..... FINALLY!!!! I am able to up-load a picture onto my blog. Seriously how hard can it be? To tell you the truth I had kind of put all this blog stuff aside because it was getting way too frustrating for me. So the next few activities I post, will no doubt be catching up on all the fun things that I didn't get to share with you.

 

Welcome back everyone, we have lift off.