Australia Day Beach Pool

In 2014 I shared with you two Australia Day inspired swimming pools. Today I'm sharing with you another.

Colour Sorting {Learning with DUPLO®}

Welcome back to #toolsforlearning! Every Tuesday an awesome team of bloggers will be taking on the challenge of activities with common educational manipulatives! We want learning to be hands-on, interactive and fun! This week we're featuring all things LEGO® and LEGO DUPLO®!

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Lemonade Paddling Pool

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may remember earlier in the year I posted the below picture and promised to blog about it. Unfortunately I didn't quite get there, until now!

Fairy Pool

I've mentioned before how much I love Growing A Jeweled Rose's baths and how I sometimes use those ideas in the paddling pool outside. Today I'd like to share with you one of those ideas, our Fairy Paddling Pool, inspired by Growing A Jeweled Rose's Princess Bath.

 To make the pool I simply filled the pool with water, added a few drops of red food dye, a squirt of strawberry body wash and some heart abd butterfly foam shapes. I also filled an old herb jar with salt to act as 'fairy dust' and a 'magic potion' bottle filled with blue water.

 Bubbles had great fun pouring the salt out and watching it float in the wind and fall into the pool. I had to fill the shaker up several times!

 She also loved pouring the 'magic potion' into the pool and proudly telling me that 'Blue and red makes purple!'.

Have you played fairies in the pool before? How did you do it?

-Victoria

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.

Two Pools to Celebrate Australia Day

Crystal Underwood from Growing a Jeweled Rose is one of my all time favourite bloggers. I first discovered her when she and Rebekah from The Golden Gleam were doing their Messy Play in the Bath and Sink series. Golden Gleam's Bugs and Dirt in the Sink and Growing a Jeweled Rose's Jello Ocean were the very first messy play activities I did with Bubbles and that series is what opened the door to messy play in our house, it allowed me to let go of my dislike of getting dirty and really encourage Bubbles to explore with all her senses. Since then I've branched out to all types of messy play and will quite happily sit back and watch as Bubbles splashes in muddy puddles, so thank-you for that Crystal and Rebekah.

 Whilst following along with the Messy Play in the Bath and Sink series I discovered Crystal's amazing baths and bathtime has never quite been the same at our place since. I began by copying or at least modifying Crystal's ideas but eventually branched out with baths of our own and recently I realised that most if not all of those bath ideas can also be used to brighten up a paddling pool too. So after that massive introduction, I'd like to share with you two pools we've had this week as part of our lead up to Australia Day, an Aboriginal Flag pool and a Koala pool.

Originally I tried to do an Australian flag pool but I just couldn't quite get it right so I opted for an Aborignal Flag instead. To make this pool I filled the paddling pool with water and added about 6 drops of red food dye on one side and 6 drops of black food dye on the other. Once the colours had drifted accross the pool (a process which had bothe Bubbles and Squiggles transfixed) I placed a yellow frisbee in the centre. The pool only stayed two colours for a very short period of time before it mixed to a dark red but it was a great way to open up dialogue with Bubbles about the first people of Australia. The girls then played in the pool as they normally would-splashing each other and tipping water into cups and through funnels.

Over the last week or so Bubbles has been collecting gumnuts each time we walk to the park, this has resulted in rather a large collection of gumnuts just lying around at our place. I was trying to come up with ways to play with them and as it was yet another scorcher of a day, I thought why not use them in the pool? Bubbles and I talked about it and decided to make a Koala Pool, we added a few drops of black food  dye to try and make the pool a grey colour although it looked more blue than anything else and then we added the gumnuts and a few leaves from a tree in our front yard (not a gum tree but Bubbles didn't mind). Rather than play with her normal pool toys Bubbles decided to get her fishing net and catch all of the gumnuts-she had lots of fun catching them all, throwing them back in the water and then catching them again. Squiggles thought it was hilarious when the gumnuts were thrown in the water and had lots of fun throwing them in herself.

How are you planning on celebrating Australia Day this year?

-Victoria

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.