Faye and Chris have been married for five years and they live in sunny England! They have four children; 5-year-old son Baylee, a 3-year-old son Freddie and in January this year Mya and Max came into the family!! You can see they are a creative family with these amazing pictures. Let’s see how they done it…
Describe activity:
I’m eager to stress that the washing line, the claw and the space baby adventures I’d seen before on a popular page on Facebook done by another mum, we just put our own spin on them. The others you see here myself and my husband have come up with, although that’s not to say it hasn’t been done before.
For each baby adventure, we used only things we had in the house, boxes, toys, clothes, baby clothes, bedding. I haven’t brought anything, we have used boxes (from delivery’s) to make some props you see. We like craft time in this house, so I’ve always got supplies in, nothing fancy, just paints, glue, glitter and colours card, that sort of stuff that can be easily sourced and cheap.
The rest is an interpretation of how you would like to make your background really. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the things I’ve used you can use whatever you have to make it work for you, and it’s a great family activity.
The space adventure was my favourite to make, like I say I had seen this one, but I took mine a little further and chose to make all the planets. I did this with my 5 and 3-year-old sons. Admittedly my 3-year-old didn’t last long as his attention span is about the same as a fly! But he enjoyed painting the planets. And for my 5-year-old I used it as a teaching session, that my friends is a mummy win right there! 🤣 So I used a big box we had from a delivery, we looked up the planets on the internet and I used cookie cutters for the different sizes. The boys painted them using paint sticks, (mums and dads if you don’t have these they are a must! They are cheap and less messy than traditional paint and brush) don’t worry if you don’t have these use any paint or medium you have. We coloured the planets in the correct sequence because it was a teaching exercise but as I’ve said it’s up to you how you do it. You don’t even have to do all the planets and they can be any colour, that the fun with baby adventures!
For the stars I have some star cookie cutters, so I used those as templates and covered them in tin foil. Again, you could freehand them and colour them however you like or use coloured card.
Again for the rocket and flames I used the cardboard and paint sticks.
For the background we have a couple of big throws, use anything you have to hand i.e. a blanket, big towels, bedding etc. It’s best to use something plain.
The twins’ clothes I was just lucky enough to have a buzz baby grow already (same with the superhero baby grows) and I used a plain white one for my daughter. We used Muslins for the space helmets and I wrapped them around a plate (obviously be careful with you babies/children, I cushioned them and made sure I turned them upside down so nothing was poking in their necks) and for the piping for their spacesuits. I did the same for the sun but with a yellow T-shirt.
Now it’s just down to how you want to position your baby/child.
Afterwards, my son stuck the planets into his school workbook and found an interesting fact about each planet using the children’s area of the NASA website.
Top tips! (I do like a top tip)…
Admittedly these do work better with much younger babies because they are mostly asleep, and you can position them pretty much how you want. My twins are 18 weeks and can roll, it’s not impossible you just have to be quick and be prepared to make funny faces for a nice smile. I have got some with the twins crying and to be honest they are cute too. Again, it’s what you want to achieve with photos really.
You won’t get much time to take photos, they get bored/cross quick, so we do ours in the afternoon after they have napped for a couple of hours and had a bottle. Aim to do it when you baby/child is at their best and the house is at its calmest (if a calm house exists 😁). Because of this, it’s best to pre-prepare the scene as it can take longer than you think, if it’s ready all you have to do is pop baby in and start snapping!
What’s your next project idea?
Myself and my husband aim to complete a new baby adventure weekly and if we get enough interest on our Instagram page we will start competitions for People to choose which baby adventure we do next! #teamranger2000
How are you finding being housebound with kids so far?
Well on day 6 million of lockdown 😬we are still quite chirpy. It’s incredibly hard pretty much every day to split my time equally between all 4 children and ensure I’m teaching the older 2 and not feel like I’m failing the children, but I have to remind myself that they are all alive and happy (providing them have a snack every 23 seconds).
Any tips to help people when they are housebound with kids?
Don’t stress yourself out trying to teach children all the time, particularly young children. They only learn in short bursts at school and remember everyday activities like cooking and cleaning, imaginative play are all a part of learning.
Tell us how the Housebound with Kids Facebook community has helped you…
Housebound with kids is a great website with oodles of ideas! Perfect for those days when you’re wondering what to do!
