Poundland!! :)

Today I had the chance to go out sans children, while they went for their usual long afternoon walk/run/climb at the park with Neil. I could have stayed home and planned next week's school (need to do that tomorrow!). I could have slept! Oh how I could have slept! ;) But I was desperate to go to the high street and check out Poundland (Dollar Store equivalent in the UK, for anyone wondering)! I hadn't been there before, and just wondered if there might be anything I could grab up to use for Montessori-type activities that I'm increasingly getting interested in for my littler ones. Lately I just have a TON of ideas, mainly thanks to Pinterest, but also some that I suddenly think of late at night or something, and then get too excited to fall asleep, haha! I love the DIY aspect, and crafting or making things that my children can learn from and find appealing is so exciting to me! I love a good project, and these are good LITTLE projects, which is perfect for me right now. I am not getting much chance to make things, but I have ideas, and am gradually gathering supplies here and there, as cheaply as I can.

So I went to Poundland, and spent £10! That's all! I bought:

Two plastic mirrors which have deep plastic frames around them, and serve perfectly as mirror-based trays therefore! I like the idea of trays with a mirrored base, for observation and stuff.

A set of plastic coloured Easter eggs. I already have coloured fluffy chicks in the same colours and had a colour-matching activity in mind.

Blue glass decorative beads.

An extra-large 4 inch deep foil baking tray. We need a BIG one for next week's history project (or is it the week after?) - making a model of the Nile with water, potting soil and grass seeds, and irrigating the soil by flooding the Nile, how they used to irrigate their crops. Did I mention I love our history curriculum so far?! :)

A pack of sandpaper. Partly to use a bit for our current history project (a diorama of nomadic mud huts by the Nile), and partly because I want to make sandpaper numbers (and maybe letters if the numbers work), Montessori style, at some point.

Set of 3 little white ramekin pots.

Three less relevant items (two types of packing tape and a double pack of Crunch Cream biscuits, yum!).

I also went to various charity shops in the high street and didn't see anything I wanted, except in the last shop, where I got a little wooden trinket box with a lid for 50p! :)

With the addition of the little fluffy chicks I already had, look what I put together for some little people's school activities this week!



Turquoise mirror tray with two of the three little ramekin dishes, and the blue glass beads (mixed with a few of the shiny clear ones I already had). This is a transferring activity. I put out a spoon and a rubber-grip clothes peg, for the little ones to practise fine motor skills with spooning and squeezing the peg to transfer the beads.



Purple mirror tray (I actually want some wooden trays, but I didn't see any, and I like these as trays too!), with the 50p wooden trinket box full of little fluffy chicks, and the plastic eggs. This activity lets them put a little chick into the matching-coloured egg - there are two eggs and two chicks of each colour.

So excited about my finds so far - and these were "no make"! I still want to find some time to make things too, but that will come in bits and pieces I think! :)