Musical gate & mobile clothes horse

What do you do to survive the hot days? I don't mean pleasantly warm and energisingly hot - I mean - a stinking, sweltering, extreme heat, dry and windy, total fire ban type of hot. Like yesterday: 41'C - which feels like you are roasting yourself in a fan forced oven every time you step outdoors. It's hard work for adults to keep cool - and it's hard work keeping little ones cool and entertained!

Yesterday, we took a very easy option, by doing a movie rotation at the shopping centre, where we took it in turns to hang out with Master B. while the other took some time out in the cinema. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We had some hot days pre-Christmas too, when I'd planned for us to make a musical tree outdoors (actually - a musical outdoors clothes line), but we needed to retreat indoors to the air conditioner.

We turned our childproof kitchen gate into a 'harp', attaching a little pouch (which came with a torch but we've never used it), and sticking some different spoons in it (plastic, stainless steel, wooden). Master B. played the gate like a harp, or drummed along the top - and gets a different sound depending on which spoon he uses. 

Then we attached to the mobile clothes horse with string: a random collection of stuff from the recycling tub - bottles, tins, containers,  (all filled with different bits - beer bottle tops, pasta, rice, ...) and lids. Master B. enjoyed bashing them about with a wooden spoon like a crazy rocker, as well as exploring the different sounds of each piece individually. He liked running underneath it too!

 

 

Well, that took care of a half hour or so!! ... at least I can still hang the washing up around the hanging 'musical bits', which get a little attention here and there from the little munchkin, so I haven't had to dismantle it all just yet!!