Painting Shamrocks

Grunny and Grumpy are here for the week much to everyone's delight so I tried a little St Patrick's Day painting activity at the parent and toddler group yesterday while Girl and Grumpy got to know each other. It felt like a strange super-ability to suddenly have two arms to myself for a whole hour.

I started by cutting out a few shamrock shapes out of card. These were a bit dodgy; more a cross between a Club on a deck of cards and a conjoined trio of deformed love hearts than a shamrock but as Grumpy kindly pointed out, nothing in nature is perfect.

So then I put out two pots of green paint and a small selection of brushes and painting sponges. I stuck one or two Shamrocks on a sheet of paper using a small piece of rolled up Sellotape. Blue tack might have worked better, but the Sellotape was fine.

The children began to wander over to see what was going on and each was given a sheet of paper. Then they were given free rein to slap on the green paint. Once finished we took off the taped on shamrocks to leave a silhouette shape.

Grumpy kindly pointed out while shamrocks are green, my shamrock shapes would be, well, not green. So if you are after accurate horticultural replication you may wish to use white paint on green paper, or red paint on white paper and then let children colour in the white shapes with green crayon... I could go on. In the end using green paint on green or white paper was the most successful but the other colours worked quite nicely too.

The older children painted the actual shamrocks rather than the space around them, and some were a little put out when I said I was going to remove them, though they enjoyed shouting 'ready steady GO!'. In fact the younger children probably enjoyed the actual activity better, while the older ones appreciated the end result.

The parents' input was interesting too. Some parents sat right back and let their kids get on with it, some sat and helped their children do it 'right' and one daddy stared over his tiny toddler daughter's shoulder with such intense pride as - was that a tear I saw him blink back? - she slapped green paint all over her picture, the table and herself with a mini sponge paint-roller that I was slightly relieved when he finally enlightened me with a beaming smile: "I'm a painter too."

The Pancake and the Pig

Stop! You look like a delicious pancake. Please let me eat you.

My impromptu pancake art for the parent and toddler group this morning consisted of colouring/drawing a face on a circle of paper and sticking on a couple of lollypop sticks for arms (and legs, and hair, in the case of one wee girl who really got into it). And calling it a pancake man helped too.

But the real fun came from the retelling of The Big Pancake, a classic fairy story which happens to be part of the Ladybird 606D "Well-Loved Tales" series of the 1970s. Sadly I own very few of these books for my children to enjoy, and although I wish they could see the wonderful artwork by Robert Lumley and Eric Winter, the stories themselves are fondly emblazoned onto my memory from my own childhood.

The Big Pancake is a tale of a pancake cooked up for seven hungry little boys who end up chasing it down the street. In a similar fashion to The Gingerbread Boy the pancake is chased by various people and animals who want to eat it up but it rolls on down the street refusing to stop until a savvy pig offers to accompany the pancake into a forest. The pancake accepts a ride across the river on the pig's snout, and snap, the pig gobbles him up. If only he'd read The Gingerbread Boy he would have surely seen this coming (though the cunning beneficiary was a fox in that story, I think). As with so many of these stories, the greatest enjoyment comes from the repetition and simplicity that makes children feel like the story is an old favourite from just a few pages in.

If you do look for a copy of this story I would strongly recommend picking up an earlier Ladybird edition as the publishers replaced the vastly superior Lumley illustrations in later editions for some unfathomable reason. Or maybe that's the nostalgia speaking.

In case you were wondering, we did eat pancakes today too. Our lovely neighbour threw a little pancake party, though Girl was only interested in chewing a magazine and Boy spent the entire evening demanding chocolate cake - he'd seen me bring over the remaining cookie cups we made yesterday. I got mine though...and it was a delicious pancake!

Bounce and Rhyme

Wind the bobbin up
Wind the bobbin up
Pull, pull, clap clap clap

Wind it back again
Wind it back again
Pull, pull, clap clap clap

Point to the ceiling, point to the floor, 
Point to the window, point to the door. 
Clap your hands together, one, two, three
Put your hands upon your knee.

I started running Bounce and Rhyme classes when Boy turned 7 months. Coincidentally, I restarted them when Girl reached the same age. Once a week, on Wednesday afternoons, a small crowd of parents, babies and toddlers meet up in a corner of a local entertainment centre  and we sing nursery rhymes, play simple percussion instruments and enjoy other songs, rhymes, puppets and bubbles. The class is a drop-in, so no two weeks are the same. One week may full of busy toddlers running around and demanding their favourite song, while the next may be primarily small babies who sit and bounce on their mammy's knee and expending more energy chewing tambourines rather than hitting them.

Today was a rather smaller group than usual, maybe due to the half-term break. Despite this, there was every age group, from the smallest snoozing newborn, through sitters, crawlers and wobblers right up to the two and three year old pros, some of whom have been coming since they were really tiny.

There is Girl and her wee buddy who sit clapping, dribbling and chuckling through Horsie Horsie, a two year old who spends most of the class running round in circles, only pausing to wag his finger fiercely during Five Little Monkeys and Miss Polly Had a Dolly. Another older toddler who takes great delight in shrieking when we pretend to sleep for Sleeping Bunnies. A 9 month old who has come for her first class threatens to fall asleep during Twinkle Twinkle but soon perks up when the instruments come out. And for myself and the other Scottish mum who showed up today, there's nothing quite like hearing a room full of Irish mammies singing Ali Bali Bee and Ye Canny Shove yer Granny aff a Bus.

When the class is over, the children enjoy the ball pool while the mammies enjoy a well-earned cup of coffee. I feel sad that Boy is missing out on Bounce and Rhyme these days, but not quite sad enough to torture myself by having to mind both my babies while protecting my stash of bubbles and jumping around like a Dingle Dangle Scarecrow. Or am I?

Bounce and Rhyme for children aged 3 months to 3 years is on at City Limits, Oranmore every Wednesday at 2.30pm. No booking necessary.

The Messiest Cupboard in the World

Recently I was asked to run arts and crafts at one of the local weekly parent and toddler groups. So this morning, laden down with cereal box cut out hearts, I celebrated a quick weight watchers victory (congratulations! You're back down to the weight you were a month ago - you know, that weight goal you celebrated by eating chips for the next three weeks) and hurried off to the Parent and Toddler group.

This group is held in a soft play centre, so I was surprised when so many little faces appeared in the craft corner just minutes after I arrived. On opening the art cupboard I felt, for the first time ever, an odd sense of smug pride that someone somewhere was indeed capable of maintaining a messier cupboard than I. After raking through shelves and shelves of half finished creations, crunchy paintbrushes and a surprising number of empty crisp packets and raisin boxes (ick) I finally scraped together three Pritt sticks (two of which where completely dried up) two broken red crayons (itched to steal for my collection, but resisted), five tiny scraps of red felt and a few sheets of pink sugar paper. Good enough!

If I do say it myself, the project was a resounding success. So much so that all the decorated hearts and Valentine cards were made and taken away before I got a chance to snap them. (The one below came from Boy, made at crèche). Now let's be clear: we are talking about 2 year olds here. It was a resounding success for about 9 minutes. 11 if you count the kids who showed up after everyone else had finished. But a success nevertheless. Especially considering I was competing with a bouncy castle.

I spent the next half hour clearing out one section of the Messiest Cupboard in the World. Externally I was tutting and shaking my head as any tidy, organised Supermammy should. But inside I was beaming with pride and couldn't help thinking, "imagine if Grunny could see me now?"