Gallery for the little ones

I love art and love the idea of introducing it early. We are lucky to live close enough to pop up to the London galleries, but sometimes its difficult to find art that is accessible to really young children. While browsing Family Style I came across Little Collector.

It's a nice idea, they source art from the contemporary art world. Working with artists they create pieces specially inspired by little ones. The pictures are reasonably priced (although we would need to pay for shipping as they are a US company) and you can get them pre-framed so they can go straight on the nursery wall.

As well as this they have "art 101" a section on their website where you can look up famous artists and art movements with your children. I love the idea of little ones browsing the site and choosing their next picture to add to their collection, and you never know it might end up being an investment too (the picture below is by Shepard Fairey the man behind the Obama poster, and a famous graffiti artist).

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Lovely Alphabet posters

I was looking through this month's Elle Decoration and came across a page of lovely posters based on the collective nouns for different animals. Thought the prints were lovely and then discovered that Woop Stuidos have almost 2 complete alphabets worth.

I thought they would be lovely to use to make a slightly more interesting alphabet frieze. I emailed the gallery to see if they were available as postcards (as don't quite have money or space for 26 posters) and the the very lovely man emailed back saying they are looking into it. He also said that they have a children's book coming out-an alphabet with facts and also some flash cards, so that may be worth a look too.

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Pasta

Ok, so my little boy has lots of lovely toys (more than his fair share probably) but his most favourite thing at the moment is a big bowl of dry pasta.


Once I realised that I could contain the mess in the paddling pool, my enjoyment of the pasta also increased! He enjoyed swiping the pasta far and wide, and became really engrossed in dropping bits one by one onto the tray and hearing the noise it made.



Trying to add to his exploration I grabbed a bowl and spoon from the kitchen and any little containers I could find.


A few days later we were playing and I thought maybe he'd like to try threading, wasn't sure if he would care but he actually did seem to enjoy it. We were threading onto the string of one of his pull along toys but he needed a lot help. He held the pasta while I poked the string through. I wanted to make it something he could do a bit more independently and thought maybe pipe cleaners would be easier. It worked well and he did a really good job. But as is a toddlers want on the first attempt his interest lasted for just the one bit of pasta.


My Mum had found some furry soft wire stuff that I had bought years ago to decorate presents with. I had been threading bits of pasta on this and discovered that my little boy much preferred unthreading mine to threading his own. He is a dismantler at present buy hey it's all good fine motor skills fun!

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Underwater adventure

So, being slightly neurotic I had had the aim of no telly at all until he was 2, I had read it somewhere. This high moral stand point may have slightly slipped but has left me with my standard underlying guilt. So we have our own set of rules for tv watching. We always watch with him and have limited programmes we like. We have decided wildlife documentaries are fine (this is a broad catergory encompassing all of David Attenborough's back catalogue as well as the slightly less high-brow Dogs 101). But me being me, I still feel the need to augment his watching, as well as pester him with my own special commentary the whole way through. Poor baby. One example of this was when watching the coral reef episode of Blue Planet, I decided to try and create him his very own reef!

I was very pleased with myself for this creative use of a duster!

By filling this ball with some of our little fish, his fine motor skills got a bit of a work out as he tried to retrieve them.

Ah here I had got a bit over excited and added pretty much everything I could find! At this point I think I was the one having fun.

Better late than never

Before my little one was born I had big plans to keep a blog diary that I could share with family and friends. Once he arrived and decided sleep and being put down were for losers, many of my big plans went out the window, along with sitting down and eating at the same time as another grown up.
A year and a bit later I have decided that maybe I would like to start something. I am an early years teacher by trade and slightly obsessive about all things small children and thought it would be nice to remember the things that occupy my mind during this exciting, scary, guilt-ridden but brilliantly fun stage of life. I'm hoping it will be a mixture of lovely finds, fab shops, good toddler friendly places and activities that have captured my little ones imagination.


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