Summer days

Iona is loving these warm, summery days, when she can go and play outside. One of her favourite phrases now is "Play in gardy", and she gets really upset if she can't. Yesterday and today were unusual, at least this week, in that we didn't have any groups or events to go to, so she was able to spend some time in the garden with Mummy. I slathered her in sun cream and gave her a chance to wear her new Disney Princess pants with no nappy (although she still won't do anything on the toilet or potty and that part of both days wasn't very successful).

We started off yesterday with painting, as she still prefers to paint herself and her surroundings rather than the paper so it's a lot less destructive in the garden! She did a little painting with the brush, then figured out a way round the lids on her new paint pots that stop her dipping her fingers in - she painted her fingers and hands with the brush then made partial finger- and hand-prints that way. She then moved on to painting her legs, and on noticing later that the dog had obviously been sniffing the picture and got a yellow nose, she painted her nose blue, too! Luckily, it all came off in the wash!

Next, Iona decided to investigate the local fauna. She loves ladybirds, and I managed to find 2 yellow ones on our raspberry bush. Unfortunately, they were on top of each other at the time, so I told her they were playing piggy back and we ought to leave them alone. Undaunted, she insisted on picking them up, which I don't think amused them too much. She also had a good look at a couple of snails I found and gave her. They were both very brave and didn't pull into their shells very much, so she was able to really see their heads well, as well as the large foot. She enjoyed touching their feelers, and I also offered to put them on her hand. Although she agreed to this, when the slime started touching her she did pull back.

The other main thing we did in the garden was gardening. Several months ago Iona helped me plant some Brussels sprouts seeds as part of a study on Brussels (sprouts and the place), and she's been really proud of them ever since, despite trying to pull them up a lot at the start. They now needed more space again, so David prepared a bed for them earlier and I planted 4 of them out yesterday, as well as planting out some other veg. Iona is fascinated by gardening and was quite keen to "help" by pulling more seedlings out for me, but I managed to rein in her enthusiasm and protect our plants. She also kept grabbing the watering can and trying to water the potatoes, but her favourite "gardening" activity is playing with the "Slug Stop" pellets, which aren't poisonous but just provide a physical barrier to slugs. She loves playing with pebbles generally, but these little white pebbles fascinate her and she will insist on taking them one at a time from around the plants and putting them elsewhere.

Going back to our seaside lapbook, we're getting on with it slowly but surely. I have added a booklet of my own design, with photos from our seaside trip labelled in the present continuous tense, to reinforce her mastery of that. I also found some Disney Princess colouring pages online and printed several out for her, including a couple of Ariel, who is one she's very keen on. She coloured the one of Ariel with a couple of fishy friends in blue and green, so well (for her!) that I trimmed it and added it to the back of the lapbook.