mobile stories

Last night we were driving home from a friends house after a lovely day at their Chocolate Fountain party. The girls were tired and it was getting dark so they asked me to tell them a story. Well I am not the greatest at spontanious story telling so I started to use my mobile phone to search for story web sites and I found this excellent site;

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/cgi-bin/read_db.pl?search_field=genre&search_for=children&order_by=rating,length_range,length&page=1&type_ind=stories

We spent the whole of the journey with the girls listening intently to the different stories. A very valuable story resource in my opinion.

A-maize-ing

Both of my girls love crafty things and I am always looking for different crafty ideas (you can only keep them interested in pencils and paints for so long).

Whilst in Austria we attended a kids club session using an excellent product called 'Playmais'. These are made from corn starch and you have probably seen them inside boxes as packaging. The playmais comes in different colours (all natural) and can be shaped and, by using a tiny bit of water, they can be stuck together. You can buy books to help your modelling. My eldest made a triceratops whilst my youngest made a giraffe and a tree. The playmais can also be cut into any shape and it can also be stuck onto paper to make a picture.

If you google it you will see there is a lot of it for sale on amazon, however it appears to be predominantly a German product at the moment and the link below will take you to the German site. It looks like they are working on an English site but it is not up and running yet, but you can get the idea of things that can be made.

http://www.playmais.de/index.php?s=what_can_i_do_with_it-models&l=en

When I first saw the Playmais I could not understand how you were expected to make the things show, but after using it I think this product has a lot of potential. It is very tactile and is easy to mold bringing hours of fun for the younger and older members of the family.

Kind'er holiday for us all

What an excellent week we have just had in the Austrian Alps.
Back in February my husband and I were struggling to find a holiday that would suit us all. Neither myself or the huddy like the heat that much and sitting on a beach or round a pool all day is not our idea of fun. The girls take a lot to entertain and although they would have loved pools and the beach they struggle with the heat. After talking to a friend she recommend the KINDER HOTELS. http://www.kinderhotels.com/uk-index.htm. She had been to one for the skiing and said they were very good. So we looked into it.

We asked for a brochure to be sent and we sifted through all of the hotels, looking at the activities offered and distance from airports. In the end we chose the Post Family Hotel in Unken 30 minutes from Salzberg. http://www.kinderhotelpost.at/en-family-hotel-austria.htm.

This was the most amazing hotel! We were picked up from the airport by a lovely Herren (man) who transferred us from the airport to the hotel and even though he didn't speak much English he tried his hardest to point out local landmarks and mountains. Upon arrival we were greeted by a Damen (lady) in traditional costume who greeted the girls with a soft toy (Smiline- one of the kinder hotel chain mascots). She spoke excellent English and gave us a map of the hotel and pointed out the restaurant and kids club.

We were a little early for our room so we went into the restaurant for a drink. Soft drinks, water, coke and lemonade were constantly available as was fruit and biscuits.

After we had settled into our room we went down to the restaurant for our lunch. We were gobsmacked by the array of food on offer. Mostly traditional German/Austrian food but there was such a selection that there was always something for everyone to eat.

Then we headed over to the swimming lake. The lake had 4 different areas; the baby area was a small beach are with very shallow water which hardly came over the ankles and had sand with buckets and spades for the children to use. A splash pool which was deeper for the under 5's or less confident people and came up to about hip height. Around the edge of the lake was a paddling area which graduated into the lake itself which became deep. There was also a large water slide at the edge of the lake. Around the edge of the lake were little paddle boats for the children to use and i was constantly trying to keep up with my 3 year old as she clambered into one and headed straight out into the lake, she loved it! The weather while we were there averaged at about 30 degrees so the lake was a welcome relief from the heat.

At 3 o'clock the bar by the lake served 'Snack'. I use the term loosely as it was more like a second lunch. There was a selection of cheeses and cooked meats, sandwiches, melon, water melon and a huge array of amazing cakes. All food in the hotel was made in the kitchens using organic ingredients only. Then at 6 the restaurant was opened for dinner for the children and for the adults to have soup and salad, then at 6.30 they started serving the adults a 3 course meal. Needless to say by halfway through the week we had a small salad at lunch and missed snack! The waitresses were lovely and spoke excellent English.

My eldest loved the freedom of the kids club. We were given a weekly rota of events in the kids club and we picked and chose the ones that we wanted to do. If you wanted you could drop the kids off at 9.30 and pick them up at 8pm. They could have their lunch, snack and dinner there at the 'kids table'. A few of the families would drop the children off and go off walking or cycling. We were selective about what we did. The kids club took the children horse riding, out for walks, did crafty things with them as well as taking the children on an evening for rehearsals for a play they put on, on the Friday night for the families to go and watch. It was good, but mostly in German so even though we knew the bones of it we couldn't follow the jokes or other spoken parts. In fact it inspired my eldest to want to learn German!

The hotel housed a huge selection of activities for the kids, ranging from horse riding, tennis, basketball, an indoor heated pool, trampolines, a bike shed full of bikes for everyone to use, a big park, and indoor soft play area, archery, table tennis, golf, and go karts. Every child that came to the hotel had 60 hours child care which was provided by the Kid's Club. For the older children there was a games room with PS3 and a Wii with games changed every day as well as table football and billiards table. There was also white water rafting for the over 7's which did come at an extra charge, but i though the price was reasonable.

There was also saunas, steam bath and a gymnasium for adults included in the price, and the option of having a massage, manicure or pedicure in the wellness centre at an extra cost.

It was the little touches that struck me the most, like the steps and platform at the front desk to allow the children to see what was going on at reception, the sweeties on the bed that awaited the girls as we we entered our room, as well as the quilt origami. Every morning the chambermaid would straighten the room and when we returned the quilts on the bed were arranged into very creative shapes such as hearts and bows. And as we left the children were given a box of PLAYMAIS (which I will write about later) and a DVD of photos taken by the kids club over the week (that was amazing to look through when we got home and will always bring back the lovely memories).
All of this set in an amazing mountain setting. We had an excellent time and would recommend it to anyone and we will definatly be going again in a couple of years!

hair today!

Another possible idea for those wet and rainy holidays;

Next time you are in a pound shop why not stock up on plain hairbands and plastic gems of all shapes and sizes.

My two girls spent quite some time sticking gems onto the hairbands. I used Pinflair Gel glue, I bought mine in a local craft shop. It cost just under £5 but it has lasted me a long time. It comes in a tube and you can squeeze it into a syringe to use. It is not sticky, so there is no fear of the girls glueing their fingers together and it doesn't fix the gem in place for about half an hour so they can remove and reposition their gems on the hairband until they are happy. This glue will also rub off surfaces easily within the first half an hour yet once it is dry it hold firmly on most materials (infact I havn't found any yet that it doesn't work on).

You could also buy big material flowers to stick onto the bands, being as elaborate or refined as you like.

Rainy day

Well we have had a couple of rainy days recently and my eldest is not one for sitting around. So we went into the local town center. I took her to a shop that sells cheap painting canvas' and I bought her a large canvas for about £4, I also bought a smaller one for my youngest daughter.

Now since my eldest can be quite careful painting, we decided to carefully draw a picture of Disney fairies on it. (If you are great at drawing then why not photocopy the picture then enlarge it or reduce it to the size you want and then trace it onto the canvas). So far it has taken her about 4 hours to finish about a third of it and she has really surprised me with the care she has taken. She is really proud of what she has achieved so far and is really excited about hanging it in her bedroom once it is finished.

My youngest decided she was going to paint an owl on hers and I had to watch her as to make sure it did not turn into  a massive brown splodge. In fact it turned into a 'Spotty Slat Monster 1' which she got particularly upset about as it did not look as good as her sisters. I have promised her she can have another canvas next year and we can see how her paining skill progress.

We have also made cakes (the cherry and white chocolate ones were my fav) and jam. We were supposed to be going Damson picking today to make some damson, but rain has stopped play again so hopefully we can do that when the rain stops. All the soft fruits seem to be starting to ripen about now so i better buy some more jam jars.