Day Care Thursday- Washing crystals,wet felting bees and snails, crayon leaf rubbings

***Firstly for anyone hasnt seen it yet (or hasn't gone over to vote today) my Waldorf inspired toy give away is still going on Garden mama, head over and enter to win a $35 voucher for my shop***


Her are some of the things we have been doing this week

 Since I began making Crystal pouches for my shop my crystals have become much loved by the children. I had them in my bedroom before as their not safe for the little ones yet. Ive been getting them out at nap time for the older ones to play with quietly while the little ones sleep. I dont think the little ones have ever enjoy such peace and quiet during their nap:) They love washing them, sorting them, and make all sorts of nice games together.

 Today we made some felted animals. I only planned on making bees as Ive seen tutorials on blogs (sorry I cant remember where) but I was asked 'what about a spider' by a little boy.
 Of course I couldnt turn down a crafty challenge so I helped him make two different spiders. one is four pieces of thick black wool knotted several times (the knot makes the body ) The bigger yellow one was made from a chunk of fleece. We knotted the middle a few times to form the head, I needle felted on some black wool for eyes and helped him divide the legs which he wet felted. They turned out quite cute, they'd make a nice Halloween decoration too.

 I knew that they would be most excited to dangle them (you will notice many things we make have string attatched for dangling them, its always requested by the children!) so I drilled tiny holes in pop sticks and attatched some of the rainbow cotton that I dyed the other day to the stick and then each animal. 

Weve also collected all sorts of leaves from the garden to do leaf rubbing. They were rather excited that they could nibble on the leaves that had come from the veggie patch (not that they ate them, they just thought it was novel:)

I recieved another gorgeous package from my super tallented friend Alison of Rumpelfeltskin  in the mail yesterday! I ordered four pieces of her rainbow felt and the adorable little girls crown and she was so kind as to gift me the adorable little boys crown pictured in the first photo!

For those of you in Australia, Alison will be sharing a pattern for one of her christmas felt crafts in Australian Homespun Magazine next month!!! (Im so excited, I cant wait to see it!) 

As you can see I cut straight into the rainbow felt and the children love the pretty felt pieces already without me even having to turn it into any thing!