Treetop painting with corks

After playing outside and observing the autumn leaves I've prepared an easy, colourful painting activity for E.

While doing it with our Canadian nanny, V., we were revising the autumn colours and talked about why leaves change colours in the autumn.

So after snack time when our nanny, V. arrived they sat down together to start painting.
(I didn't prepare much for this activity. I just put out the paint - orange, yellow, red, and brown -. a palette and two sheets of paper with a bare tree drawn on them. I forgot to take a "before" photo. 😒)

The painting could start. E. squirted the paints on the palette, which is a great activity to strengthen the muscles in her hands).

Each colour had its own cork.

They made dots on the branches.

Autumn leaves are falling down.

Using both sides of the cork is rather messy...

End results...

Can you guess which one is E.'s  painting? Just after having finished, E. said something about the wind and tons of leaves and was smudging brown paint all over her tree top. Well... no comment 😜

Treetop painting with corks

After playing outside and observing the autumn leaves I've prepared an easy, colourful painting activity for E.

While doing it with our Canadian nanny, V., we were revising the autumn colours and talked about why leaves change colours in the autumn.

So after snack time when our nanny, V. arrived they sat down together to start painting.
(I didn't prepare much for this activity. I just put out the paint - orange, yellow, red, and brown -. a palette and two sheets of paper with a bare tree drawn on them. I forgot to take a "before" photo. 😒)

The painting could start. E. squirted the paints on the palette, which is a great activity to strengthen the muscles in her hands).

Each colour had its own cork.

They made dots on the branches.

Autumn leaves are falling down.

Using both sides of the cork is rather messy...

End results...

Can you guess which one is E.'s  painting? Just after having finished, E. said something about the wind and tons of leaves and was smudging brown paint all over her tree top. Well... no comment 😜

Popsicle tree

Since autumn arrived we have been collecting leaves, talking about why leaves change colours and why they fall down. We've been hugging trees, examining their bark, trying to climb up on them, just to mention a few tree related activities. Outside.

When the weather got really rainy I thought I would bring the tree activities inside. That was when I introduced the popsicle tree activity to E.

What you need:

• 20-30-40 popsicle sticks (wooden spatulas can be bought at the chemists for 500 HUF - less than 2 euros - but in hobby stores they can be found too)
• collected leaves (or felt leaves)
• conkers, acorns or any other nuts
• felt animals like hedgehog, any kind of bird, squirrel etc.

How we played:

I gave E. the bag which I collected all the goodies in and I showed her how to build a tree. I just started and she took the lead.

While doing it we were talking about the different parts of the tree (tree top, branches, leaves, trunk, bark, roots). Also we mentioned what we can see in the tree top in different seasons. (green leaves in the spring, fruits in the summer, bare branches and yellow leaves in the autumn, nothing in the winter).

She placed the leaves very accurately.

Then some conkers and a squirrel...

After a while I couldn't hold Baby Sis back and she came to "destroy" E.'s tree. There was some screaming and "don't touch it" but not much playing together. E. gave L. a conker to play with but I had take it away from L. as it was too small (and I wanted to avoid ER at all cost) E. tried to give Baby Sis a laminated leaf but she wasn't interested. Baby Sis wanted the popsicle sticks, which meant the end of the tree.

"Noooooooo"

After a while E. gave up  (got a little offended) and turned away from us to build a house instead out of the popsicle sticks.

 E. was so uninterested at the end that only Baby Sis helped me pack away. At least we practised "put it in" with her.

As you can see life and activities with 2 kids are quite a challenge. I keep trying but success is still far away... 

Anyways, I'm thinking of adding some brown yarn or thin ribbons to create the roots. We'll try again next year when Baby Sis might not want to "destroy" but rather want to bulid.

Paw patrol - the new craze (with free printable)

Since the beginning of this year (around February) E.'s been crazy about a Canadian cartoon series, Paw Patrol. In this blog post I'd like to collect all the activities, games and fun Paw Patrol has brought to our lives:

1. Our old nanny, L., who has unfortunately returned to America, showed E. a page online where she can watch all the seasons. (www.kisscartoon.com). I'm not sure how legal it is but she is so crazy about the pups I can't stop her. This series is on Nick Jr. but we don't have a subscription (we do NOT watch TV due to the millions of commercials) but there is only one episode per day filled with loads of commercials I don't want E. to see. So she watches it online.
   
2. We celebrated her 4th birthday with her friends too, in a playhouse. Her birthday cake was a Paw Patrol bone:
   
   
   
   
   
3. E. was so excited and indulged in this cartoon she wanted the pup figurines for her birthday. Not only did she get them (it was Baby Sis's present for her) , but she also received a home-made  Paw Patrol board game. (The original idea came from Daddy, who, on the basis of chess, came up with the board game idea. On the link - I'll add it later, sorry - you can find a more detailed description of the board game)
   
   
   
4. Apart from the board game I also prepared a Paw Patrol Activity Pack for her birthday. This pack includes puzzle, writing practice, counting cards and many more. You can download your free copy at the end of this post.
   
   E. was so excited about this activity pack that she started examining it at her birthday party. She stopped opening her other presents.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   But of course, we devoted another, more quiet time to do the activities:

Matching characters and their names

Matching vehicles and their names

If your little one can't read at all, they can match the characters and their vehicles

Number cards

You can use different manipulatives (beans, gem stones, clips or clothes pegs) or (if you laminate the cards like I did) your child can cicle the right number with a whiteboard marker, which can be easily wiped off after finishing

Pre-writing practice

Badge puzzles with numbers

And many more fun activities....

Here you can download your FREE copy of the Paw Patrol Activity Pack

Baby Sis started a Helen Doron course

Baby Sis is a big girl now and it was time to start her very first course of her life, where she can hear English in an organised way from other people that me or her sister.

First, there was a free session for those who wanted to see what goes on at a "lesson" on the second week of September. Then I totally forgot to take photos as L. was really tired and whiny. We had to start the day early to have time to take E. to the nursery and to get to the school by 9. It was almost impossible but we made it. Luckily, the other sessions start at 9.15 which makes a huge difference.

Next time was much better as E. was taken by my mother-in-law and Baby Sis could get a wink before we got to the school. She was more relaxed and curious. She made new friends and got familiar some teaching material.

There are 6 kids and their moms in the group: 3 boys and 3 girls. The youngest is about 5 months old and the oldest is about 18 months old.

In an other post I have already written about the Baby's Best Start programme when we started it with E.

Everything goes well as for the course, though I'm a bit sad that it is not E.'s old teacher (Zs.) who holds the sessions.

Still, we'll have lots and lots of fun, like bubble blowing, swinging, shaking noisy instruments, banging and so on.

Stomp on the grapes

Harvest season is here and E. was very disappointed that she couldn't take part in the grapes pressing/wine making fun at the kindergarten. Challenge accepted. We'll press grapes juice here at home in the traditional way.

In the morning we went to the market and bought, among other foodstuff, 2 kilos of grapes (Szaszla).

We washed them together and put them in a big plastic basin.

I also prepared for her a smaller bowl of water for rinsing her feet and a towel too and waited for V., our new nanny, to arrive.

At first, she was hesitant and  didn't want to step in. Then she did and started to cry a little. She had ambivalent feelings concerning the experience, the feeling on her feet. She got out of the basin.

So Baby Sis gave it a try too.

After some pressure and reassurance, she tried it again and this was the time when she started to enjoy it. And she stomped and stomped and stomped like a dinosaur. She clawed some of the grapes from the sides and stomped some more.

She got the hang of it and she was even willing to sing the grapes song she'd learnt in the kindergarten.

E. tried the freshly pressed grape juice but it won't be her favourite refreshment.


We need to do this again with more preparation from my side and some more harvest activities to follow. Maybe next year when Baby Sis can join in more actively.