We tried a vertical garden once…

… But I just can’t keep plants alive. So it’s hanging on our balcony wall filled with dried out soil. I let the boys pull out the dead herb plants a few months after they withered away from neglect or lack of sunshine and water. I left them in there to visually chastise me everytime I looked out the window. A handmade macrame planter swings beside the verticle garden, sporting a dried out chilli plant doubling as a Halloween decoration (spiderwebs, so many spiderwebs.) . It’s bleak guys. Bleak.

So imagine my surprise when this happened!

We grew green stuff! Seeds! Germinated!!

Was such a huge hit with my boys we decided to make it an activity at Tt’s birthday party. The kids were very excited and it didn’t take long so attention spans were held and zero mess to clean up, bonus.

All we used was recycled plastic bottles cut into shape, cotton wool balls and cress seeds. Cress is super fast growing so the little ones see results before they’ve forgotten about the activity entirely.

I did originally plan on getting the kids to paint their planters first but it was too hard to round them up once the party started. That’s an option to explore on another day I suppose!

And a star is born… then moves onto something new 2 minutes later

My boys love to paint and I love to let them grow and discover and explore and learn through art. But small children often have a very small attention span and sometimes it feels like the set up and consequent clean up and pack away of an art experience is three times as long as the activity itself. Insert exasperated emoticon here!

So when we need a quick hit of art we turn to our trusty water colour palate. This time we added white crayon to the mix. Drawing with it first on the paper, then finding our drawing with the application of water colour on top.

Learning colours, shapes, fine motor skills and pretty well zero clean up for old mumsie – win win!