A pirate's life for me

It's hard for me to believe, but my baby girl is going to be six on Sunday. To celebrate her birthday this year she became Dangerous Daisy for the day, and had an Adventure at Sea party. There was a fair bit of preparation required, as you can see in the pictures below.

With Daisy in charge of proceedings we:

• made and filled a treasure chest full of shells, toy sea creatures, necklaces, jewel-wrapped chocolates and sparkly gems.
• made a sea monster costume for Daddy (who had a starring role at the party).
• decorated the windows with sea creature cut-outs and a made a blue cellophane sea.
• tested our telescope 'make and take' activity.
• created our pirate ship 'The Sailing Beauty' on the garden decking.
• tea-stained and made paper treasure bags.
• prayed for a fair wind and no rain on the day of the voyage.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather - the party took place on the only bright day of the week - allowing us to make full use of our outside space, and to have the most glorious swashbuckling, treasure-seeking, sea monster-encountering, deep-sea-diving, mystery-solving and hearty pirate party. Ever.

• Three mermaids, six pirates, five princesses and a deep-sea diver arrived in the most fabulous costumes, and each signed their treasure bag with a quill and black squid-ink (actually ordinary poster paint).
• We had a training session for the new recruits where we tested their seafaring skills - such as climbing the rigging and scrubbing the deck - with games, and warmed up their voices with some lively sea shanties.
• They each made a telescope and then the ship set sail, the adventurers in search of sunken treasure.
• On deck there were games aplenty to pass the time as they sailed the seven seas - from beanbag tin can alley and Twister, to drawing sea creatures with chalks in the 'sea', or marking the ship's hull with piratical graffiti. 
• The scary sea monster soon surfaced, refusing to lead them to the sunken treasure until they proved themselves worthy. There followed games of Sea Monster Says and Sea Monster's Footsteps - and some parachute-style swimming games under a large piece of turquoise sea-like fabric.
• The monster eventually let them have the treasure, and they took the seaweed covered chest back to England, where they had to a find the key.
• Pizza and juice were served on deck on the return journey.
• Dangerous Daisy led a hunt around the house for clues to the location of the key.
• And at last the treasure chest was opened and everyone's treasure bags were filled with its bounty.

• Then the happy and loot-laden crew danced and ate birthday cake until it was home time.

What an adventure!

A tour of inspection

While we were in Brighton at the weekend, we spent most time on the beach; enjoying the fresh and salty air, and making the most of the cold and sunny weather.

We were also reading the book Finn Family Moomintroll the night before and, rather neatly, had just finished the chapter in which the Moomins find themselves on a beach, and Moominpappa has an idea:

After coffee we'll make a tour of inspection along the beach and see what the sea has washed up.

It was remembering this most exciting occupation of the Moomin family that inspired our walk along the seafront on Saturday morning. You can see my children, mid-inspection, in the picture above. They are trying to find strange and interesting washed-up items to show everyone - just like in the story.

Where the character Sniff found a boot without a heel and a raffia mat, my son found a pristinely white fish bone...

... and my daughter discovered a twinkly baby starfish.

Where Moominpappa found some driftwood and Moomintroll a broken buoy, we found a stone broken heart...

... and an extremely long piece of rope. This led to a lengthy game involving much mountain climbing.

Oh how they admired each other's finds there on the beach! The Moomin family had suddenly become rich. 

Although we enjoyed showing each other our finds they didn't make us feel exactly rich, so we left them on the beach for others to discover. And continuing our tour of inspection we went in search of a bit of bling. After all, in the story, the Snork Maiden finds a beautifully painted figure head, the Snork a whole seam of gold, and Moomintroll spots a glass snowstorm. Surely Brighton could offer up something sparkly for us to inspect?

If you know Brighton then you'll know that finding bling is really quite easy. You need only to continue walking along the seafront - until you reach its gaudy and noisy, shiny and flashy pier.

Here we discovered the dazzlingly painted horses and twinkly glass lights of the carousel...

... and the chance to be transformed into a glamorous bride adorned with diamonds, and a smart groom in a shiny vintage car. 

And this glitzy moment, caught on camera, is definitely the kind of treasure that makes me feel very rich indeed.

Now he is Six

Preparations for our son's sixth birthday party began in earnest two days ago, but planning began way back in January with Buddy's Big Idea.

We had a meeting where we put all his party ideas down on paper. We were so impressed by his vision and enthusiasm that we decided to say yes to as many of his suggestions as we could - especially those which might be realised with little or no expenditure.

And so a couple of days ago we decorated our home with colourful paper, cheap sheeting fabric and whatever else we could find around the house to create a world for the guests at...

Buddy's Birthday Explorer Party.

The living room became the jungle with a cave under the table, and in this cave was a sleeping bear and a treasure box with lights (a very important detail, it had to have lights).

The hall was transformed into the savannah, the master bedroom a lions' den and the children's room became a mountain peak. Buddy and Daisy made the signs, including one for the loo.

When everyone arrived for the party (10 children in all) they each received a map and we began exploring.

First we followed a spider's web from the jungle up to the lions' den. Here we found a parcel which we had to pass around and unwrap layer by layer to get the next clue and to recover the lost jewels (actually marbles).

Our next clue led us to the mountain peak where each explorer had to hide one of the jewels in a vehicle they created from Lego. This kept them all busy and calm for at least twenty minutes.

The next clue set them off on safari; pictures of wild animals had been sticky-tacked all over the walls of the house. Nearly all the animals were found and collected - eventually.

Next we were back in the jungle with some loud music. Stickers were given out for explorers who gave us their best dance moves and for those who could keep as still as a statue when the music stopped. This wild game got us really close to the cave and to the treasure.

Then the birthday boy and Arnie (who had collected the most stickers) were chosen to go into the cave and turn on those lights...

Shhh...

Don't wake the bear

Yes, there's a treasure box in there!

Much scrabbling and screaming later the treasure box was brought out of the cave and dramatically opened. Finally everyone got some well deserved loot; toy snakes and tiaras, puzzles and sweets came tumbling out of the box and disappeared in a flash.

Then our very hungry explorers had lunch; bush tucker sandwiches, crocodiles - cucumber, bamboo - celery sticks, snakes - carrot curls, stick insects - Twiglets, grubs - mini bread-sticks, quick-sand - houmous, tropical fruit - pineapple, coconut and melon, beautiful butterflies - cupcakes, and a giant caterpillar - Buddy's birthday cake (thank you, Sainsbury's).

A game of sleeping lions and more wild dancing signalled the end of the party. Everyone left with with animal stickers, more Twiglets, a pouch of marbles and of course, a slice of caterpillar cake.

Phew.

We are really exhausted of course, but think our efforts to give Buddy a great party have been absolutely worth it. He has a post-party glow about him today and I love that he keeps telling everyone,

'Do you know? I'm now officially Six.'

That sounds like one satisfied customer to me.

One year on...

As it was Valentine's Day yesterday we played our game of hunt for hearts and made sweetheart art with our findings. It was very interesting to see how, one year on, my children's treasure hunt tactics and arty endeavours have developed.

Once all the hearts had been collected they counted and sorted them enthusiastically. Buddy casually scattered his hearts on the card (as pictured above) to make sure every single one could be seen and therefore counted. And this year he even applied glue to each one - all 21 of them. Daisy on the other hand, went for a more extreme interpretation of the rules this year; piling the hearts on top of one another (pictured below) so that they could still - according to her - definitely be seen.

I love them both!

They each received some mini baked pretzels and a ribbon as a prize. We used these to make some edible heart necklaces which vanished during the next 20 minutes during an extensive (and crunchy) game of hide-and-seek.

Happy heart art

Here's a lovely Valentine's themed activity for younger children. It starts with a high energy party game - a twist on the classic treasure hunt, and ends with lots of making and sticking to win prizes.

Treasure hunt for hearts

A little bit of preparation is needed before starting the game.

You will need to:

1) Collect scraps of decorative paper to make the hearts for the hunt - I stuck to a theme of gold and red, as pictured above. Include newspaper and wrapping paper if you like.

2) To make lots of different sized hearts quickly, cut the paper into squares of various sizes; you'll need at least 30. Put a few similarly sized squares together and fold in half. Then draw half a heart on one side - the centre of the heart towards the fold. Cut along the drawn heart outline and then separate the satisfyingly symmetrical heart shapes.

3) Now hide - well, put - the hearts all around your home (use sticky tac if you want them on vertical surfaces).

How to play:

1)Provide everyone with a basket or box and send them off to find and collect the hearts.

2) When all the hearts have been found, provide each player with a large piece of card. This could be covered in foil or plain wrapping paper, whatever you have to hand to make an attractive background.

Create heart art:

3) Now to count up those hearts. To do this, get them to stick their collected hearts over their background card. We used a glue stick rather than gloopy PVA to avoid too much mess.

4) They can do this just how they like, but the hearts should be arranged so that every heart can be seen and so counted. If they put a heart on top of another that's OK but it should be a smaller heart so both can be seen.

5) Lots of prizes can be given; for the most hearts collected, for finding a shiny heart, or a patterned heart etc.

We played this last year and my children - three and four at the time - really loved it. I knew they'd like the treasure hunt part, but it was great to see them so enthusiastic about selecting, comparing, counting and arranging their hearts before sticking them to the card.

We'll be playing it again tomorrow of course. Happy Valentine's Day.