Doodle and Boo

09/09/2021

I’m trying to decide whether I should paint the toadstool stalks white or leave them 🤔 I think I’m leaning towards white. What do you think? Little doors and windows yet to be added. 🍄

08/09/2021

Wow, it’s a long time since we have posted! The schools are back and so are the parties! Can you guess what we are making? And no, this isn’t the result of our Covid-enforced Doodle and Boo closure!

05/08/2021

18/02/2021

We like to imagine that one our Space Party guests will be filling out this application in a few years!

14/02/2021

“If I could give my child three things, it would be the confidence to always know their self-worth, the strength to follow their dreams, and the ability to know how truly, deeply loved they are.” Author Unknown

Happy Valentine’s Day from Doodle and Boo! 🥰 The children were excited to make these lovely watercolour wax resist cards to celebrate. Simply draw with a wax candle or white crayon and wash some colour over the top with a paintbrush and watch the picture magically appear 💕

04/02/2021

A bit late to the party... but as temperatures look to dip over the weekend here’s some inspiration to create your own ice baubles or ice lanterns! The ice lantern is so pretty with a candle inside - a lovely mindful activity to coincide with children’s mental health awareness week too.

28/01/2021

We haven’t posted for a while now! With Lockdown #3 well under way we have been concentrating on our children and getting through these difficult days, just like everyone else.
I have been setting aside some time each day for us to do an activity together as it this Lockdown had otherwise started to feel a bit like Groundhog Day. Sometimes it’s just playing a game or doing a puzzle but other times it’s a craft or sensory play. I’ll try and share a few of them here over the next few weeks to spark a few ideas as there’s been a bit of interest on my own page. It would be nice to see your creative ideas too! Hope you are all doing ok. Keep safe x

18/12/2020

We loved turning a standard box of dinosaurs into an engaging prehistoric landscape, complete with watering hole and a working volcano! Fingers crossed it lives up to this dinosaur enthusiasts imagination!

09/11/2020

Warmth and light was most welcome this weekend and I think these Autumn fairies quite agree 🔥 🎆

31/10/2020

“One upon a pumpkin vine,
There grew a flower fair and fine.
One day, a sprite danced by and brushed
Her petals with a golden dust.
And magically that flower fine
Became a pumpkin on that vine.”
(Unknown)

01/10/2020

“Golden, you are, October.” We are loving this beautiful Elsa Bestow book taking us through the months of the year. October is upon us; time to crunch, crunch, crunch.

24/09/2020

And just like that, Autumn arrived and brought the season of change in all its beauty. Already this week we have felt the warmth of the sun, the crunch of fallen leaves beneath our feet, the wind swirling around us and the pitter patter of rain drops on our cheeks. 🍂 Our fairies have been taking shelter under their toadstool and are coming out to enjoy the sunshine 🌞

24/07/2020

Beep Beep! Our vehicles went on a journey! Round the roundabout, over the bridge, via the hospital, through the tunnel, stopping for deer in the road along the way! Anyone for ice cream?

23/07/2020

The Doodle and Boo kids have been making their own vehicles to drive around in! They painted their cardboard boxes and added details such as headlights, number plates and paper plate wheels. We added “seatbelts” so they could get into their vehicles and drive off. Lots of fun to make and great play value too!

21/07/2020

Now it’s the school holidays I am hoping we will have more time for craft and imaginative play, although often what I have in mind and the kids want to do are two different things so I prefer to let them lead the way.

My youngest loves vehicles and all things that go at the moment. He also likes to make a mess so we put together a messy journey for his cars and buses to travel through. To me it was sand, food, glue and water but to him it was a desert, rocks, a sticky swamp and a river!

12/07/2020

Piñata was a fun thing to make together this week. It’s the perfect party game which can be done while maintaining social distancing. They are so easy to make - just strips of newspaper or any other absorbent paper and a mixture of PVA glue and water.

12/07/2020

It’s a birthday weekend in the Boo household, which means our beloved celebration ring is out. Many of you will have seen it at our parties; we always like to add that special touch to make birthdays magical 🥳

03/07/2020

This was a wonderful cave painting craft to do, suggested by daughter’s teacher, which really brought Neolithic cave painting alive. It took a couple of days to do but was well worth it.

I cut some cardboard from boxes (but you could use any card) and scored downwards in three places to enable the finished painting to stand up. We then painted the background with a mixture of cream and various shades of brown acrylic paint (poster paint will do) with a sponge to get the cave wall look. Once dry we dabbed some PVA glue all over and shook play sand over the glue and left to dry overnight.

The next day the kids used oil pastels (you could use chalks, charcoal, crayons or even a mud paste!) to draw their Stone Age pictures of the landscape and animals. The oil pastels showed up really well over the sand.

02/07/2020

This “Stone Age” stencil craft was lots fun. We tried two methods using a sponge and a spray with slightly watered down paint, which we mixed to look more mud-like. The spray turned out much better than the sponge; the kids thought they looked like real cave stencils!

01/07/2020

We’ve got a bit of a Stone Age theme going on in our house right now. It’s my eldest’s English topic but we’ve all been drawn towards the cave paintings and the stories they tell since reading Julia Donaldson’s ‘Cave Baby’.

Here are some of the children’s stories that they drew on large stones using chalks. It kept them occupied for a good part of the afternoon! Such an easy activity and one that can be done over and over.

25/06/2020

So many different things make up a relationship. Sometimes it can be a bit messy, just like this collage my daughter and I did this afternoon, but when it comes together; oh how beautiful! 💖

24/06/2020

“Fairies dance in the moonlight
With hearts that shimmer bright
And wings that flutter softly
Making music in the night.”

Fairies are one of our favourite themes at Doodle and Boo. I think they bring us as much joy as they do the children; from fairy gardens and potions to wands and enchanted forests!

24/06/2020

It worked much better this time. With tips from Myriad Natural Toys & Crafts we covered the sunography card in glass from a frame to flatten the leaves and weighted it down around the edges to prevent it from moving. Woodland Adventure Harrow what do you think? Not as good as yours but getting there!

24/06/2020

We’re trying out the sunography again but with a different method this time. Let’s see if this works!

24/06/2020

“Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance” or even have a picnic, as they are in our garden this morning!

What a lovely day to celebrate International Fairy Day and National Picnic Week! Will your toys enjoy a picnic today? Or maybe you will spot a fairy! We would love to see your photos!

22/06/2020

“Imagine a man without lungs. Imagine Earth without the Amazon rainforest.”

Today is World Rainforest Day, which not only celebrates the rainforest but also highlights all the different ways we can help preserve the lungs of the Earth.

Here at Doodle and Boo we are proud of our efforts to run our business more sustainably and take care of the environment, from using recycled materials in our artwork, to avoiding the use of single use plastic.

20/06/2020

“Oh, the summer night,
Has a smile of light,
And she sits on a sapphire throne.”

23/05/2020

We all need a bit of down time; time to process our thoughts and feelings and to just be. My daughter generally knows when she has had enough and needs some space so we pinched this idea from one of the BBC Bitesize well-being lessons a couple of weeks ago. She decorated a box and in it put a variety of things that give her a sense of calm. There is normally a cuddly toy in there (but he has gone to bed now!), a puzzle book and pen, a lavender scented lip balm, her calm jar and a few other sensory and handmade items. Apparently she would have put me in there too but I don’t fit!

21/05/2020

Music really helps to process our emotions. We made our own instruments a few weeks ago and they have had quite a lot of use (see our videos in the comments). We had a music session where each one of us came up with our own rhythm with instruments of choice. It was nice for all of us to express ourselves and it certainly felt good to bang a drum! We also used the shakers and snappy castanets to clap for all the critical workers we are so grateful to 👏