We’ve been making the most of the sunshine and spending most of our days out in the garden this week. My home office at the moment is sitting at our garden table with my laptop, watching Sophie and Thomas playing together in the tuff tray. It seems to be working well on the whole!
The tuff tray has really come into its own over the past few months. It’s set up in the garden most days now, mostly with small world toys, but it’s also great for water play or for filling with sand. One morning, I filled it with Duplo bricks and we had a mini brick pit. It’s been a good way of rotating the toys that the children play with and they’ve had great fun playing out in the garden together.
Things that have made me smile this week
- Watching Thomas and Sophie play with Thomas’s new AquaPlay LockBox.
- Sitting in the paddling pool with Thomas and Sophie.
- Watching lots of members of the Girls’ and Boys’ Brigade showcasing their talents in our big virtual BB/GB get-together.
- Picking plums and blackberries in Grandma and Grandad’s garden and then making blackberry tarts with Sophie.
- Sophie telling Jessica all about the things she’s been doing and what class she is going to be in next year when we visited Jessica’s forever bed.
- Having a “nic-nic” (as Thomas calls it) at Chiltern Open Air Museum.
- Being able to harvest leeks and beans from the garden for our dinner.
It sounds like you’ve had a lovely week and you’ve done most in the garden, who says you have to travel. I’m really hoping to get mine outside today for at least a little while, it gets harder as they get older. I had the pool out the other day and it was just the two boys in it…well, I say boys, my eldest is 32, but he spent two hours in the paddling pool with his brother mucking about, talking and just chilling in the heat of the day. I love the photo of Sophie talking to Jessica, and that water play block looks pretty amazing!
Thanks for linking up to #wotw
Thanks Anne, I’ve been so thankful for our garden over the last few months. I love that your eldest enjoyed time in the pool with his brother – I was in ours with the kids today and it was fun 🙂
The tuff tray is such a good idea Louise! Did you just find it online? I’ll need to search for it and bookmark it for next year. Anything that makes cleaning up easier, without inhibiting creativity, makes me happy! I’m glad you’ve been able to enjoy so much time in the garden this week 🙂 #Wotw
Yes, I bought ours on Amazon a few years ago. It’s brilliant for messy play and for keeping small world toys reasonably contained outside.
They look like they are having so much fun in the tuff tray. Brilliant idea to rotate the toys each day. Thomas’s new Aqua Play looks amazing. I bet it keeps him occupied for ages. Lovely that you can be out there with them and work at the same time. So heart warming to see Sophie bringing Jessica up to speed with her news. I do love the way Thomas says picnic. Perfect. Hope you have a great weekend. #wotw
The tuff tray has been great for helping to rotate toys – we used to do it a lot when the girls were smaller but the toys have become more mixed up over the years. Taking a selection outside helps make it easier to rotate them. The Aqua Play is brilliant – they had lots of fun with that. I’m loving being able to sit in the garden and work while watching the children have fun. Hope you have a lovely weekend too 🙂
Ahh! It sounds lovely working out in the garden while the kids play.
Those tuff trays really are fantastic. They weren’t a thing when my girls were little. They’d have loved one.
I really must go blackberry picking. They are bound to be ripe at my dad’s now. x
It is so lovely being able to sit outside with the laptop and watch the children play. The tuff tray is brilliant – I can imagine your girls would have got plenty of use out of one if they’d been a thing when they were little.