Chasing Butterflies Daily

Our primary school kid is getting daily tasks sent to her online from her teacher. One of yesterday's tasks was to make a rainbow to stick in one of our windows. Lots of kids all over the country have been doing it in an attempt to cheer up passers by. I've seen some fantastic drawings as well as a beautiful version where people have cut out lots of hearts in the different colours of the rainbow and then stuck them up in arches in their windows. I decided we should try something a little different as well. We had already done an activity with paper plates earlier in the day (we'd made colour wheels that spun to show white while discussing primary and secondary colours) so it's hardly surprising that my inspiration took me back in that direction again. I got the kids to colour in both sides of 8 plates ( pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue & purple ). Then I drew spirals on them to make it easier for them to cut the right shape....

When I was in pre-school in Sweden I remember we had a set of boards that were designed to practice threading and tying laces, I think there possibly were ones with buttons and zips as well. Now our girls have already mastered buttons and zips, they have plenty on their clothes. But, as is the case for many kids these days, they don't really have to deal with laces as most kids shoes either have velcro or elastics. It's still an important skill to master though. I could set them loose on the adult shoes with laces in the house but I liked the larger size of the boards I learnt on as a kid so decided we'd try to make something similar at home. It's handy with the projects that keep the kids busy through different phases, especially when you've literally got nothing but time to kill like most of us do in these covid times. The girls have yet to actually master the tying of the bow but they enjoyed the process of making their boards and threading their ribbons...

So I saw someone else on one of the FB family lockdown pages share this idea and I loved it. Our theme for the time being is looking at colours and light/dark. Partly because I love colours, but also because we've felt inspired by the fab GALT Rainbow Lab activities I posted about on my instagram account recently . This rainbow activity is great fun and uses multiple skills while occupying a fair bit of time. We spent most of the morning doing this.  First step tip out ALL your toys on the floor (admittedly we skipped most of the stuffed toys because it got pretty crowded with four bodies plus the sea of toys). I didn't tell the kids what the end aim of our activity was. Then divide the toys into groups depending on their colour. We used our toy boxes to keep them together as the toddler was pretty adamant he was going to mix things up again. As we worked our way through the toys we talked about what colour they were and what those colours are in English, ...

This morning we had to rush from nursery and school drop off to Dundee for the latest audiology appointment and to collect a new sleep study machine. Elis is full of the cold, and being snotty combined with windy roads had him throwing up halfway there. We arrived at the community hospital without so much as a second to spare before our appointment.  We were meeting up with the audiology team as well as a paediatrician to discuss his hearing loss, which had deteriorated so much last time we were in in January. The tympanometry test ( more about how that works in my previous post on audiology found HERE ) gave no reading, once again confirming glue ear. However his visual reinforcement audiometry went better than last time, still more hearing loss than in the autumn. However it had improved since January.  We were given three possible routes to go down. 1. Do nothing and come back in a couple of months to see how his hearing is progressing. 2. Get...

The last few days I've been craving a slice of carrot cake because it's one of my favourite cakes. I used to hate it as a child, I think mostly because it had a vegetable in it to be perfectly honest. However, I have also tasted some pretty awful carrot cakes, often they're dry and sometimes full of nuts and dried fruit. Now I love nuts, but not a fan of them in cakes; I am however not keen on raisins or any other dried fruits so any cake with them puts me off. I turned to the internet to find inspiration for my homemade carrot cake. I took ideas from several different recipes, partially restricted by what ingredients I had at home as I had no intentions of going to the shop today. Pretty pleased with what I came up with as is the rest of the family!  Ingredients Cake batter 3 eggs 200 ml white sugar 100 ml brown sugar (if I hadn't had any in I would've used white instead for all of it but saw it recommended for more moist...

Ever since becoming a mum I've become introduced to so many different childhood ailments I feel like no one had ever told me about any of them! To be fair I probably wouldn't have listened because prior to having kids I didn't really want to hear about it. And those that were parents before me probably didn't want to tell me about them because most of them are or at least look insanely minging. I mean, why to they all have to come with horrible looking rashes? We all know about chicken pox, but I feel like that's all I knew before my kids turned up despite presumably having had most of these at some point. Three kids down the line I've seen most of the common illnesses by now; basically if you can't vaccinate against it one of my kids probably had it at some point. The toddler years are the worst offenders; admittedly they can catch these bugs at any age but that's the age when they have no understanding of personal hygiene and the con...

Yesterday our youngest, who has the dwarfism condition achondroplasia, had his 6th hearing test since birth. His first two was the standard newborn hearing screening that is done soon after birth. He had failed his first one the day after his birth so we had to come back to the hospital a week later to do the test again. It's not uncommon for newborns to fail the first time as often there's just liquid that needs to clear from after the actual birth. Because of his achondroplasia he is more prone to ear infections and hearing loss as their condition leaves them with smaller ear canals and they often suffer from a build up of fluid in the middle ear canals. Due to this we always knew his hearing would be monitored regardless of how he did at the newborn screening. If he were average height he'd not be offered a hearing test before the age of 4 or 5 unless we had concerns about his ability hear prior to that. If you have any concerns remember to reach out ...