Aliens Love Underpants {via Rainy Day Mum}

We're kicking off our Summer guest blogger series! We are excited to be sharing posts from several awesome kid's bloggers this summer. We hope you'll love their posts and head over and check out all the other great ideas they have to share on their Facebook pages and blogs. Today's guest blogger is Cerys from Rainy Day Mum. She is sharing about a funny book that her kids love!

Bringing books to life through crafts and activities is so important to us. Two of our favourite authors are Claire Freedman and Ben Cort. The books that they write about talk about underpants (yes that's right, I did say underpants). J potty trained in January and underpants have featured highly in our days since just before and ever since so the books are great for some fun potty training literacy and activities.

Aliens Love Underpants was the first book that we read. It is all about some fun aliens that LOVE underpants. There are none in space so they come to Earth to find underpants. In the end, they save the planet.

The book is full of fun rhymes and language. It's great for toddlers and preschoolers to read and even more fun to craft with! So with this in mind, we set about creating some underpants for aliens at our weekly Mommy and Me Book Club with one of our close friends.

I like activities that show my creative side to J and T as well so I started off sitting with J and his friend and looking through the book at the styles of underpants. Then I drew them onto card stock very quickly. Then they went and read the book with my friend whilst I set up a creation station for them to use.

To decorate the underpants we used tissue paper that I had torn into square-like shapes in a variety of colours.

The two friends tackle activities so differently - J is very much a throw everything at it kind of boy whereas his friend tends towards a minimalist approach to decorating. We use white (PVA) glue to stick things together. We recently introduced glue spreaders to them instead of paint brushes since that is what they will use in preschool and when they start school the following year.

In true aliens love underpants style - we hung them up to dry on our sock dryer and left them for a day.

The following day J and T were playing happily so I was able to cut out the underpants. I strung up a washing line under our breakfast bar for them to peg the underpants onto just like in the story.

Using clothes pegs is great for fine motor skills and developing the muscles needed for writing - I prefer wooden clothes pegs and have them in my own peg bag so I borrowed some for their play. I've also kept the washing line up (we don't tend to use the breakfast bar as it was pre children and only space for 2 people) and it has been used for Dolls clothes since.

Cerys is from the United Kingdom and writes at Rainy Day Mum, she is a former teacher and marine biologist, now a stay at home mom to J and T.

Sharing indoor and outdoor activities for babies, toddlers and preschoolers ranging from art to zoo field trips she aims to make every day fun what ever the weather outside.

You can find Cerys on Rainy Day Mum, and can join her on facebook, follow on Twitter or see what ideas she's pinning on Pinterest.