Ghostly grub

Starter - pumpkin and tomato soup from within a hollowed pumpkin, with garlic bread to keep away the vampires

Main course - Witches Brew (sausage carrot and bean hotpot),
Monster Mash (parsnip and potato mashed)

Dessert - spookey spongecakes


Accompanied by such tunes as Ghost busters, devil woman, Monster Mash and Witch Doctor
Served under pumpkin candle light, guests with their homemade masks.

:-)

Halloween at Birdworld

http://beta.photoshow.com/watch/SV2FX7ez (this photoshow expires in 30 days time, so it may not be there if it takes you months before you find this link.....)

In the underwater world, we saw alligators, still as a log in the water....C saw one move and was happy....'the other one isn't working' he said.....

Ollie kept asking when we were going to get to the park all the way through birdworld.....to which I decided next time I wouldn't bother and we could just go to the local park if he kept on!

The goats in the farm greedily jumped up at the fence, so I keenly demonstrated how to feed them with your hand out flat, using the seed we had purchased on the way in....then I saw a sign saying 'please don't feed the goats the seed, it may give them tummy ache.' Mmmmm, am sure goats eat anything don't they? The sign was all the way round the other side in my defence, not the side they were begging from!!

The Halloween groto was really special and C went through it 3 times, would have done more had I let him!

Oh and there were some birds of course, being birdworld of course....but the children didn't seem so interested in them!

shops

No, I didn't just drag them round (though I do sometimes do asda with them, learning to shop there is a skill needed to be learned at an early age and a trauma that stays with you for life! )... the role play area has been set up as a shop for the past few weeks, and it amazes me how much play has come from it. The ride-on has been 'the ocado man's van' so we have had internet shopping, a newsagents and of course it has been named asda.

Today C bought up the entire shop, including the till, and then we went into another room, unloaded it all from our shopping bags (material ones, great for environmental awareness!!) and we had a picnic and a party. The keyboard got moved in as well, as we used it for the music for imaginary pass the parcel with smarties between each layer, and the main prize - a remote control aeroplane. All made up, all imaginary and even Lauren joined in, eating the nothing tasting smarties with some good Mmmmm Mmmmm noises....

Communicating

The post office is a central part of communication in society. It provides more than just stamps, so we set our own up to explore. Role play extended into ride alongs being used as post vans, and masses of old birthday cards frequently got put into the toy oven as a post storage box, or a cardboard box with a slit in as a letter box.

Behind the post office were phones, a keyboard, a mock computer monitor as a communication centre. This was often intergrated into the role play as part of the post office, and Ollie called the whole set up his Mail Centre.

It was lots of fun and they got loads from it. Definitly one to save and bring out again!