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Painting is always an all time favourite for kids. Puffy Paint is just so much better though! I made 6 different colours and decided to store them in squeezie bottles so that they are easy to use when painting. For those of you in the Johannesburg area, I bought the bottles at Westpack Packaging at the Lifestyle Centre for R3.50 each.

Puffy Paint Recipe

To fill a 250ml bottle for each colour you will need:

  • 125ml flour
  • 125ml salt
  • 125ml water
  • Food colouring of your choice

Mix all ingredients together and fill up your squeezie bottle.

Once your kids are done painting, leave their artwork to dry overnight
 
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I decided to take on a different approach to teaching Genevieve her letters and the phonetic sound they all make.  Instead of the old fashion flash card, or making her write the letter over and over again until she remembers it, I gave her a ball of playdough (after making 8 colourful balls) and asked her build each of her letters with playdough. 

She decided on her own to build both the upper and lower case letter. It was amazing to see how quickly she grasped the ones that she was a little uncertain of. I have tried so many times before with flash cards, yet the information seems to go in one ear and out the rest. 

Not only did she get to learn the shape of the letter and the sound it makes. She had fun playing with the dough and developed fine motor skills too.  

Here is the perfect playdough recipe for you to try at home:

1 cup cake flour
1 cup warm water
¼ cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon oil
food colouring of your choice
food essence of your choice (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together in a pot and place on the stove on high heat. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon scraping from the bottom and the sides until dough forms. Remove the ball from the pot and immediately knead the dough until smooth. Leave to cool and place in a plastic bag to keep from drying. Dough can be kept for as long as it is soft (mine has kept for over a year in the past). It is also non-toxic so no need to worry if they eat it.

I use essence in my dough to give each dough a unique smell ie. orange essence in the orange dough, lemon in the yellow, peppermint in the green, almond in the white, etc. This just adds to the sensory experience. 
 
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Even though we have not officially started our home schooling adventure as yet, we have already started discovering how much fun learning can be. Today we decided to cover Marie biscuits with different coloured icing.  But the trick was that for the girls to get the colours they wanted, they had to guess which colours you had to mix to make right colour.  They then got to mix them up into small containers so got to see exactly how the colours mixed together to make the colour they needed. All the colours you see were made up with exception of the yellow.  

They also spent time having to separate colours with the Smarties and Astros and had to count along with each Smartie/Astro they placed on their Marie biscuit. The kids had so much fun baking that they never even realised that it was actually a learning experience and already can remember all the colours that need to be mixed together to come out at orange, light blue, pink, purple and green.