Seasonal bunting #2

Call me weird, but nothing says 'summer' to me like washing on a line. And yes, I know I'm still a season behind, but I am working to catch up!

Daughter is getting ever more prolific when it comes to pictures. My brother was kind enough to give her a set of animal stamps for her birthday and these are currently one of her favourite toys. So, needless to say we have a lot of masterpieces around the house which she doesn't want to put in the recycling and which, frankly, I don't want to keep. You have to draw the line somewhere, after all.

So one day, we put some washing on. I got her to put the clothes in the drum, add the soap and press the buttons. While the machine was whirring, I got her to tell me all the types of clothes she could think of, and  I drew them over the top of her stamped pictures. We cut the shapes out together, and I asked her to pass me the largest, followed by the next largest etc. until all off our clothes were on the line.

To add an extra dimension to this, you could number the pegs and add coloured dot stickers to correspond on each item of clothing, then get an older child to match the image to the number. If you had more wall-space and less of a monochrome colour palette, you could even turn it into a colour-matching game.

We'll keep you informed as to how we're getting on with our autumn bunting.

Meanwhile, a great seasonal book for summer is Rita and Whatsit at the Beach... SO much fun!