Easter 2014 - a very belated post

I was going through my blog and I was shocked to see I'd forgotten to write a summary of our Easter last year. I posted a lot of ideas and activities on my facebook page, but no summary here whatsoever. I need to make up for this shortcoming.

A quick post in pictures...

Inexpensive Easter gift tags. After having taken them out of their basic sheet I photocopied them and stick a picture in each place. E. had to match them.

Washi tape/Decor tape eggs - I covered some egg-shape cutouts with colourful washi tapes and decor tapes. Then I laminated them and halved them in different ways. Also, I wrote numbers on them from 1-10. She loved this activity and I'm sure we'll do it this year too.

Easter basket - details in the pic

We painted some foam eggs. Additional fun with some beads and feathers. 

Concentration on full blast

Easter gift hunt in the playground nearby

Five minutes before my husband and daughter, I went to the playground and spread some gifts in the grass (as we have no garden this seemed to be the best solution for making an egg hunt happen)

Then they came and E. hunted

Ready for the hunt with the home-made basket

A magnetic drawing board

Spot's First Easter

Stickers

Opening an Easter (surprise) egg

Let's not forget about the Hungarian tradition: Easter sprinkling

All the presents E. hunted and got from the grandparents last Easter

I hope this little retrospection will give you some ideas for this Easter. For me it was great pleaseure to look back on what happened a year ago. I'll be back with more activities we're doing for this Easter.

Ice experiment with tricolor beads

During winter time we had some ice fun I didn't write about as it wasn't really planned. But now, inspired by Yuliya, the writer of Welcome to Mummyhood, I decided to go for it again.

We've altered the task she introduce on her blog to suit our Hungarian National holiday and I used red, white and green IKEA beads instead of sequins.

E. filled up the ice cube tray with the beads.

Then she poured the water (the beads are so light that they were floating on the top.)

After that we put the tray into the freezer. We checked it on the same day whether it was frozen or not, but we had no luck.

We did this preparation in Hungarian and talked about the colours of the Hungarian flag and how water turns into ice under 0 Celsius degree. She listened closely and asked questions about what liquid is and what frozen means. I gave her a basic explanation.

The next day we took it out of the freezer and I set up this tray for E. We were in English this time.

She was amazed as soon as she saw the tray.

First, she was a little hesitant what to do. But then she got the hang of it.

She used all the tool (tongs, fork, spoon and ladle) I prepared for her. Picking, spooning, ladling. First, she was touching the ice cubes with her hands. Abruptly, she said: - It's cold and wet. I don't want to be wet. 

And she picked up her favourite tool, the tongs.

And she was bewildered by the chemical reaction.

She was playing with it for 40-45 minutes. Mostly alone or with very little assistance.

Once she tasted the baking soda. Nothing happened, of course, and when I asked her if it tasted nice, her answer was positive. Luckily, she didn't try it again.

Before her nap time, she was asking about the ice experiment (vinegar and experiment are words that gave her a hard time to pronounce. Once she said ligament instead of vinegar... haha. So cute!)

All in all, it was a wonderful experiment, loads of fun and a lot of new vocabulary learnt in both languages. We'll definitely do something similar again. I was thinking of volcanoes...

Here are some vocabulary/phrases connected to our experiment:


Ice experiment.pptx

Hungarian National Holiday- March 15

One of the biggest national holidays in Hungary is the commemoration of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. As it is filled with national feelings and politics I won't go into details about history and other stuff but I'd like to show how we prepare for it in our home (this year together with St. Patrick's Day)

The activities we have done are in mainly Hungarian.

How do we prepare for a Hungarian and an Irish celebration at the same time? We are sharing time between English and Hungarian. Let's say in the morning we do tasks in English concerning St. Patrick's Day. In the afternoon we spend time in Hungarian doing some fun activities around the Hungarian Revolution. Or the other way round.

We display the art E. makes on our double doors in the living-room.

One wing is dedicated to the Hungarian Revolution, the other one to St. Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick's Day door wing on the left, Hungarian Revolution door wing on the right

In this way she is not confused at all.

I'd like to list some ideas I found online or we made up ourselves concerning our national holiday. This blog wouldn't be complete without our Hungary/the Hungarian language related happenings.

Luckily, last year I made our own button cockade. There's nothing to do with it this year. We'll just pin them on our coat on 15 March. (I hope I'll find them)

E.'s coat and cockade from 2014

It is made out of 3 buttons: a big red, a smaller white and a little green button. I sewed them together with a pin like these:

Colouring the flag is the most traditional way children prepare for this holiday. We put some fun into it. Thank Goodness for dot markers!

When she saw the sheet E. asked me who wrote there "MAGYAR ZÁSZLÓ" (=Hungarian flag)

With dot markers all kinds of colouring is more fun. E. did some more of it (colouring a KOKÁRDA=cockade, for example)

Daddy and E. were colouring in full fling so I printed them a map of Ireland and they coloured it too. You can see it in the top picture on the St Patrick's side. (They didn't really care about Northern Ireland. We'll put things to rights next year, when she'll be more capable of understanding it.)

Red, white and green are used in almost all of our activities. I bought some decor stones in a One Euro Shop (I had to separate the red, white and green stones from many other colours)
We printed the map of Hungary and made up a kind of patterning activity.

The stones had to be placed along the borderline as on the Hungarian flag (red, white, green) making a pattern ABCABC. This pattern is difficult for my daughter to follow so it was quite a strenuous exercise for her.

I'm concentrating like there's no tomorrow

It was a long activity and towards the end it was difficult for her to concentrate. This is quite understandable, she's not even 3. But Daddy was there for her.

Pinterest offers a lot of wonderful ideas for the occasion. For instance, this pom-pom garland with the national colours. (Through the link you can read about the detailed explanation how to make a pom pom with the help of a fork)

What you need:

• red, white, green (and orange) yarn
• a fork
• scissors

E. tried to make a pom-pom, but she couldn't. Maybe half a year later she'll understand how to do it and will be able to make it. We'll give it a try again.

So I made the pompoms myself....

At first, she was just playing with the yarn.

then she was cutting the yarn like a maniac :)

She cut the yarn for 25-30 minutes and I could finish the garland with the Hungarian colours only.

The next day I made the pom-poms for the Irish garland and she was .... *surprise, surprise* cutting the yarn. She can't get bored of it. E. kept asking: - What I'm doing? which I rephrased:- What am I doing? And then she answerd her own question after having repeated it correctly. - I'm cutting yarn. 
This short conversation was repeated for 8-10 times without any alternation.

We've hung our pom-pom garlands (with the Irish and the Hungarian national colours) on the double doors.


Tricolour Pizza

Your toddler ALWAYS wants to help you with cooking, not to mention the great excitement if you make pizza. Why not in tricolour? Everybody loves pizza and it's easy to make it with a toddler.

It's not our pizza, but it's coming soon

Red= tomato sauce with some basil and oregano (minced meat if you wish)
White= loads of grated cheese
Green= broccoli, spinach or any other green vegetables in our case it'll be ruccola

The lollipop stick is optional, too... but don't they look cool? Like real flags :)

We are making our own on the 15th so I can upload photos of the process later.

I still have some activities up my sleeve, however, I'm not sure we'll have time for them. Anyways, I'll have to share some ideas next year too.

Rainbow, Pom-poms and shamrocks for St Patrick

More and more St. Patrick's Day stuff. If you haven't done anything in your home that is colourful, shamrock-shaped or fluffy, then have a look at our collection.

Rainbow Name Puzzle (via Still Playing School)

What you need:

• 7 coloured craft foam sheets (red, orange, yellow, pink, green, blue, purple)
• printed rainbow template
• 2 clips
• 1 pin
• scissors
• marker

Still Playing School didn't go into details how to cut the foam so they fit together nicely so I came up with my own idea.

I placed the printed rainbow template on the foam sheet and fixed it with 2 clips

 Then I used the pin to pierce through the paper (and the foam sheet) along the line

You can see here that it is much easier to cut out the strips along the holes

It takes time but it's worth it

Our foam rainbow with Patrick and rainbow on one side and my daughter's full name on the other side.

When I first show her the strips she was puzzled and a little frightened as they were wriggling in my hand. But as soon as I put the colourful strips down on the table she loved them.

 She needed to concentrate hard on putting them in the right order according to their size

 In the end she spelled the letters then I read them out.

We'll play more with it. Rainbow in the bathtub is on our list.

Pom-Pom Colour Selection with tongs

To extend our colour activity I gave E. some pom-poms of 3 colours (of the Irish flag): green, white and orange. With the tongs she separated them in 3 groups.
Easy to prepare and a popular activity with my daughter.

Number practice

I also wanted to do some tasks with numbers involved as my little one loves numbers. I was hesitating between these great number cards by Welcome to Mummyhood

and a number activity from Pinay Homeschooler's St. Patrick's Day Unit.

As I couldn't find nice and St. Patrick related (shamrock shaped or horseshoe) counters and I didn't want to cut out numbers, I picked the latter.

From the unit above I printed the number cards and laminated them. From Christmas time I had some green counters.

E. did this activity with Daddy as we've been having a bad cold. Although she's better now I haven't had time to relax a little and get my strength back. So I decided to take a little rest in the afternoon. I prepared everything for them in advance.

They named the object/things on the card. E. counted them and placed the counters on the right number. It took her 3 minutes to finish. She knows  her numbers. They left the cards on the table for me to have a look at the great work they'd done. How cute!

Heart-shaped Shamrock Leaves

I cut out a lot of heart shapes and some triangles. I used green construction paper and presented them like this with an example she can follow.

Daddy supervised this activity, too and they had lots of fun. And did a little drawing as well.

As they put the shamrocks under one another I placed them in our St Patrick's Day corner as a banner.

We've been doing loads of activities lately. Not only these ones but other fun tasks concerning our National Holiday coming on 15 March. I'll come back with some Hungarian Revolution related activities for the Hungarian Moms. Stay tuned!