More Exciting Things To Do With Toy Cars and A Bit Of Baking Too

Tyre Painting

What You Need:

• Toys cars, trucks or trains, 
• pieces of paper, 
• washable paint, 
• lots of plastic sheeting, 
• big trays/plates

How To Do It: 

• Put the paint on the plates or trays thinly spread around.
• Load up the cars by pushing the cars through the paint so their tyres get covered in paint, then drive them across the paper.
• If you’re feeling adventurous, try it in the garden with push along toys, scooters/bikes, make a big puddle of coloured water with food colouring (or paint if you have a lot of paper or plastic to cover the garden with) and peddle through the puddle on the bikes, they can ride around the garden leaving coloured trails behind.

Cooking Scones

Try this recipe at BBC Good Food for perfect scones.

Why not try different flavours? Add an ounce or two (50-100g) of cheese, marshmallows, raisins, olives, cherries or anything else that strikes your child's fancy! (Don't forget to take out the sugar if you are making savoury scones)

If You Go Down To The Woods Today, Your Child Can Eat Jelly And Become An Arborist

Teddy Bear’s Picnic

Gather a few favourite teddies in your child’s back pack, a picnic blanket, plastic cups and saucers, a few cucumber sandwiches and some juice then head to the park for a teddy bear’s picnic... or the living room floor if it won’t stop raining!

Tearing up jelly - easier than it looks!

Combine it with a bit of baking by making individual fruity jellies for a picnic pudding:

• Small jelly moulds can be found cheaply in supermarkets and poundshops but if you haven't got any kids plastic cups work really well. 
• Simply make up the jelly - kids can help cutting it into cubes or stirring the hot water until the cubes dissolve. 
• Chop up a few pieves of fruit (not kiwi, papaya or pineapple or the jelly won't set) pop them in the bottom of each jelly mould/cup and then pour the jelly on top. 
• The jelly will take a few hours to set, so best to make it first thing or the night before.

Our super-cheap jelly moulds

 

How Old Are the Trees In Your Park?

You will need:                                                                                                           

• A fabric tape measure (or a paper one from Ikea)
• Some trees
• A notebook and pen

How to work it out:

• Take the tape measure and wrap it around the tree trunk of your chosen tree to measure the circumference.
• Because of the average rate of growth of your average British tree, the tree will be roughly as many years old as it is inches around the middle, or the number of centimetres divided by 2.5.
• Try measuring other trees to compare, put the tape measure at roughly the same height you measured the first tree at.
• Are all the trees in the park a similar age? Were the trees all planted at the same time, or were groups planted at different times?