It’s back- Tuff Tray Tuesday January 2019

Ok so it’s not the first week of January, but it was our first week back doing our Tuff Tray Tuesday activities.

I thought I would start off fairly simple and gave the children play dough to play with. Neither of them could wait for me to get set up. As soon as the Tuff Tray came out they jumped up and got straight onto the Tray. R tried to steal almost all of the play dough, leaving his sister only 1 colour.

I left out a number of tools that they could use with it, including craft sticks, clay/paint spreaders, clay moulding tools and an old potato masher. C was taken with the potato masher and its stamping capabilities- loves nothing better than getting excited with something she can stamp on the ground, on the table, on paper, on a Tuff Tray. However, she got bored quite quickly and then went off to amuse herself with other toys in the room. R took over. He also loved the masher, and he also tried standing it in between his feet and sticking the play dough on it to cover it up.

i tried to get Clara interested in the play dough by making a snail with it. Actually that captured R’s attention and he had a happy half hour making several snails!

Finally, possibly as a result of having watched too many surprise egg videos on YouTube, R decided to cover his PH Masks characters in play dough. Apparently the bad guys did it and he then had to wait for the rest of the heroes to come along and save him!

A lovely start to this year’s Tuff Tray exploits.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 4 December 2018

Today’s Tuff Tray Tuesday activity was painting and glittering Christmas stars.

This was something that R was given by school to decorate for a PTA competition. Of course C wanted to join in so I made her a couple of stars out of white card as well. R states that he wanted the biggest star, and even though I told him that I had used his star as a template so they would be the same size, he measured them and announced that his was bigger.

We started by painting the stars using some paint pens that we have in our cupboard. They are relatively low mess, although my 1 year old likes to touch the brush part and my 4 year old likes to squeeze them as hard as he can, so they are not mess free. We only did one side of the stars so it could dry, so have the second side of them both to do tomorrow night. (Once finished 2 stars will fit together and stand up.)

To be honest it was harder to do with the 2 children than many of the other projects we have done. I think because it was a project set by school, R wanted to do his nicely, and he was attempting a design where he used a different color for each of the points of the star and another one for the middle. Meanwhile C was just splodging some paint on her star and having a great time. Then she wanted to have a go with R’s. Then she wanted to just roll the pens around on the tuff tray, including all over his star. So it all became a little tricky.

Eventually I resorted to putting Peppa Pig on the TV to distract C from what R was up to, which worked until we got the glitter out.

Both children thoroughly enjoyed putting glitter on their stars. Some with their hands, some poured straight from the tube. They did not care. The world is much better with glitter as far as they are concerned and you cannot put too much on. The star was more glitter and glue than paint by the end! And I then spent the rest of the evening clearing it up. Well most of it. The rest I will find all over the house for weeks! And we get to do it all over again with the second side tomorrow night!

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 20 November 2018

A rather lovely and easy to set up and clean up Tuff Tray Tuesday activity this week – making Christmas decorations from air drying clay.

We used DAS air drying clay, cookie cutters and a rolling pin. We also used an old chopstick for the ribbon hole.

We cut out a large circle from the clay and then used a smaller cookie cutter inside the large circle. I then poked a hole at the top of the clay for a ribbon to hang it from the tree.

The clay takes at least 24 hours to dry out, so we are waiting for the ornaments to dry out before painting them.

It was definitely a much better activity for my eldest, who is nearly 4.5 that my 18 month old. But she liked it for about 5 minutes. She did manage to have a go with the rolling pin, rolling the clay out and helping me press down on the cookie cutter to make a small ornament.

R used the whole packet of air drying clay, and wanted to do more. He asked me to get some more as soon as we finished making the decorations. I think I can quite safely say that this was a hit with him.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 13 November 2018

We did a lovely #tufftraytuesdayactivity this evening. We made our own wrapping paper ready for Christmas.

I bought a few sheets of brown wrapping paper for this activity; and this morning spent a little time making some stamps for the children to play with. I wrapped some polystyrene cubes with yarn and stuck foam stickers onto an empty sticky tape roll. (In hindsight, the polystyrene cube and yarn was an error, the cube needed to be harder as did the yarn to make the sort of patterns I was hoping would be made- thick twine on something would have worked better.) I also found some polystyrene vegetable shapes in our cupboard and thought they would make good stamps too. These were set out with the paper, and 3 different colour paints for the children to explore.

I showed the children how to use the stamps with the paint, but then left them to it. I have done painting with C before and she enjoyed it for a few minutes before getting bored and moving on. I suspected, like last week’s activity, that watching her brother get involved, C would participate for longer. I was quite correct. C loved the stamps. She is in quite a bashy, I want to chuck stuff around, phase at the moment anyway so this was right up her street. Whatever her brother did she had a go with it as well but soon went back to stamping on the paper.

R liked trying out all of the stamps. As mentioned above, though, the cubes with yarn wrapped around didn’t quite work the way I hoped they would, so R just used them as a thick paintbrush! He decided to paint his hand and make handprints, and then rubbed his hands all over the paper. He had a whale of a time and his clothes were almost as covered in paint as the paper!

The finished result wasn’t quite as pretty as I had envisaged. There were no lovely repeating patterns, but I quite like them and their abstract nature. Even the one part of C’s sheet that looks a bit like it may be depicting a massacre or something. I will use them for Christmas presents.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 6 November 2018

For today’s Tuff Tray Tuesday activity we made firework pictures.

We used glue and glitter on black card. I did this activity with both of the children after school. I have done most of the Tuff Tray messyplay activities with just my 1 year old daughter and she loses concentration very quickly. I have often wondered if she would get more out of them if she could see her brother enjoying them so I thought we would delay Tuff Tray Tuesday until tonight. I was right.

R loved using glue spreaders to make vague shapes ready for his firework pictures. He loved putting the sequins on with the glitter. And C, well any chance to give things a good shake is good as far as she is concerned.

The mess was unbelievable and took me ages to clear up. My house is now covered in glitter and probably wi be until after Christmas now. But it was so much fun and both children enjoyed it. It was highly worth it!

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 23 October

How is it Tuesday already? It seems only 5 minutes since I was last writing about Tuff Tray Tuesday.

This week I did a very simple Tuff Tray activity with C because I had arranged to meet a friend and her baby for an early lunch before C’s nap. So I needed something that didn’t take too much clearing up or set up. So we played with water.

I don’t know about your children, but mine both love water. It’s the best thing in the world, ever. If they are fighting, or bored, or stuck in the house, or grizzly, then adding water to the situation sorts them both out and order and joy is restored. So I knew this would be a hit with C.

What did we use for the activity?:

• Tuff Tray
• Various utensils including the kitchen utensils set I bought from Ikea the other day
• Cups, saucepans etc from the children’s play kitchen
• A plastic funnel
• A large plastic cup
• Some play food (we have one set of play food that can be cut up, and I don’t use that for water play as it would ruin the Velcro)
• Water
• Jug

C got stuck in straight away with the utensils and play food etc as soon as I put them down. Similarly, as soon as I put the Tuff Tray down she knew we were about to play, and got straight on it, waiting for me to finish setting up.

She loved the water. It was stirred, poured, transferred from one container to another, spilt on the Tuff Tray and all over herself, and splashed about it. Of course, because she does this with everything, it was put in her mouth as well using the cups and spoons. She put play food in with the water and stirred it, and we talked about making soup or stew with the play food. We scooped the play food out of the water and into another container.

She had a whale of a time and was absolutely soaked at the end. If you do this yourself, make sure you have a towel on hand for the end.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 16 October

We did this activity yesterday and I did start to write it up in the evening, but then C woke up. Several times. So I didn’t manage to finish and post it. She is going through YET ANOTHER bout of bad sleeping, and while I do know that it will end one day because I have an older child who was also dreadful at sleeping, it currently feels like she will never ever sleep through the night!

So anyway, Tuff Tray Tuesday:

This week’s Tuff Tray Tuesday is one of the simplest. It takes very little time to prepare, but it does take a little time to clear up. This week C and I did some painting together. For this activity I gave her:

• Paint – this week green, purple and orange as it is close to Halloween- we used this paint Scola Artmix
• Small plastic mixing bowls- we used these
• A selection of different size and shape paintbrushes – we used some of these
• A selection of utensils from the children’s play kitchen
• A small polystyrene pumpkin for stamping
• Sponge shapes

C got stuck in straight away even before I added the paint using the utensils to stir in the bowls, and transferring the sponge shapes into the bowls.

I added the paint and different coloured pieces of paper and let her explore. I think it is safe to say she enjoyed herself. Especially when I showed her how to use the pumpkin as a stamp. She had a ball.

However, while she clearly enjoyed painting it lasted for just 10 minutes and then took me about 20 minutes to clear up. Entirely worth I do think, but you do have to be prepared for the clear up! C is still only 17 months old, so she will do this sort of thing for longer when she is older, but for now this is a short lived activity.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 9 October

For today’s Tuff Tray Tuesday I went with a very simple activity- rainbow died oats. These are very simple to make using just 3 ingredients- oats (I used the porridge oats we had in the house, but it would have worked better with whole rolled oats instead), water and food colouring. You can also use liquid watercolours to dye the oats, but I cannot because C still tastes everything!

You to dye the oats, I mixed 1.5 tablespoons of water with food colouring- more than I thought I would as I wanted the colours to be quite strong and vibrant. I then added oats and mixed them in so that they were covered in the water/food colouring mixture. I didn’t have any specific amount of oats, just enough to soak up all the dye. In retrospect I should have added more oats to the blue mix as it was too damp to be used today. I then poured the dyed oats onto kitchen towel and left them to dry overnight.

C was quite interested in the kitchen towel this morning when I showed her.

The oats looked amazing lined up ready to be played with this morning.

I set up the Tuff Tray with some cups, containers and utensils from C’s play kitchen, together with a large plastic cup and funnel and the rainbow oats.

C was initially most interested in playing with just the utensils, but then she started to scoop up the oats with the spoon. Soon she was using all the different containers and utensils to stir, scoop, pour and dump the rainbow oats until they were all mixed and looked like confetti. The funnel did not work-I think it was because the oats weren’t quite dry.

C really enjoyed this, but only for about 15 minutes. It was great for her playing independently, but I think she would have played with it for longer if her brother had been playing with it too.

We will play with them again. Next time I may add in the blue oats.

Tuff Tray Tuesday – 25 September

For this week’s Tuff Tray Tuesday I made some taste safe cloud dough. The recipe for this I found on Pinterest, and can be viewed here: https://www.powerfulmothering.com/how-to-make-cloud-dough-recipe/

It was very easy to make. I simply mixed the ingredients together, divided it up to add the food colouring, and hey presto- cloud dough ready to use.

This morning I put the cloud dough out on the Tuff Tray together with some items from C’s play kitchen, a couple of cookie cutters, the lids from Options Hot Chocolate jars and a triangular kitchen towel holder.

Initially C ignored it. She had a little go with it, but wanted to spread the dough around the room, and was not keen with my encouragement to stay on the Tuff Tray. So she gave up with it pretty quickly.

I sat next to the Tuff Tray and started playing with it on my own- squashing it, making “sandcastles” etc and C became a bit more curious about it.

After a little while she really got into it. Especially squishing any of the shapes I made for her. She liked pressing on the cookie cutter, scooping it up in the spoon and transferring it from one container into another. I enjoyed making triangle sandcastles more than I probably should!

And thank goodness it was taste safe because she put a good few spoonfuls in her mouth. We ended up playing with the cloud dough for about 40 minutes. C was occupied enough by it that I got to listen to most of Woman’s Hour while she was playing.