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

Bug counting - with free printable counting mats

It took me more than a month to prepare this activity. In a normal case it would have been 2 days. However, since Baby Sis was born there hasn't been such a thing as "normal case" in our house any more. But now it's finished.

You need bottle tops, minimum 11, for dots from 0 to 10. I made 2 sets as it is more comfortable to make additions later on. (The caps are from Nestea and Cappy bottles)

The truth is I had a little helper who picked and tested all the bottle tops. This is optional, of course.

I used a black permanent marker to make the body of the bugs plus the dots. On the black tops I used white paint to make the dots visible. If you don't use black bottle tops you can skip this step. 

To make them more bug-like and more fun-looking I glued googly eyes on them:

The first time I presented it to E. she wasn't very interested. She opened the envelope quite reluctantly. (This should have been the time to put it away and come back to it at another time. But we gave it a try.)

She was looking at the bugs and started to put them in order but when she reached the six-dotted bug she began to imitate a fight with the bugs.

Then she knuckled them from the table claiming the ladybirds wanted to fly away. I asked her if she wanted to have a look at the mats. She didn't so I packed a month of work away and tried to swallow my frustration.

Then we gave it another try. I didn't even mention ordering the bugs, I rather showed her the mats. She showed more interest than before. As she is perfectly familiar with the numbers, counting the dots made her uneasy a little bit.

But we managed to do 4 of the mats, ...

...then she made a task for me:

The second addition was really tricky as we don't have a bug with 14 don't on them. I asked E. what we should do. And she helped me out in a really smart way:

I thought this activity would be much more fun, and E. would be fascinated by the bugs and counting... well... I was a little wrong. Nevertheless, we did have some fun and I'm sure someone might enjoy it even more than we did.

Download your FREE counting mats from here:


If you try it with your children let me know how it went.

"Take a photo" scavenger hunt (with free printable)

In the middle of July we went up to the mountains. We were mainly in Hungarian up there but I wanted to have some English fun with E. As she's into taking photos a lot nowadays I made her an ad hoc "take a photo" scavenger hunt activity.

This sheet I made is hand-made but I created a free printable which you can download at the end of this post.

E. can take better pictures than this

We went for an excursion to a lake. E. at first wasn't very impressed with this activity, which surprised me to a great extent. But as we went along she got more and more excited.

All the photos were taken by her. Some are blurry some are absolutely gorgeous:

a bush with flowers

lake

Ms. Photographer

Invisible spider web

log

roots

she can't use the zoom but the ducks are in the top right corner

 She told me to add green plants on her scavenger hunt activity sheet:

green plants

blurry dragonfly as a bug

 I also needed to add "stones and rocks" as it was E.'s wish

Rock with moss

stones

the look out tower

oak leaves

Unfortunately, she couldn't take a photo of a butterfly as they never seemed to land. Anyways, this project was more them rewarding if you have a look at the pictures. I think we'll cover some other topics in the near future, like babies, playground, market, just to mention a few.

Now click on the link to print your own "Take a photo" scavenger hunt activity sheet.

Goodbye, Ms R. - a farewell note

Another heart-rending event has entered our lives. E.'s English speaking nursery teacher is leaving the nursery this May.

Ms R. was great with the kids. She's taught them tons of English rhymes and songs. With her help the kids have made a great number of art and craft projects in English, too. She's been always full of life and had a smile both for the children and the parents. (It was rather strange that Mini Klub nursery did not organise any farewell party for her... actually we were not officially informed about Ms. R.'s leaving. She herself told the parents. But this is another matter.)

We are really sorry that she's leaving (for Ireland - good for her). This is the way we said good-bye to Ms R.

I printed a Farewell note (click on the link to download it) and E. coloured the animals. While colouring we were talking about these funny phrases that can be said instead of good-bye. She herself signed her name at the bottom and added some heart.

When I was in Ireland bought a really good guidebook and I thought Ms. R. would make a good use of it so together with E.'s good-bye note we put it in a gift back.

On her last day E. said good-bye to her in a sweet and shy way:

Bye, bye Ms R. Good luck in Ireland! We'll miss you!

Sorting rubbish - free printable

Much to my surprise E. remembered last year's home-made selective rubbish collection activity and asked for it again. I didn't plan to do this sort of activity this year, but I was kinda gently forced. However, I prepared a follow up activity for her. (You can find the free printable at the end of the post)

So just like last year I collected some recyclable rubbish like plastic bottles, old newspapers and leaflets, egg carton, dog food cans and beer cans, bottles and containers made of glass etc. It wasn't too difficult as we hadn't emptied our own selective bins. I printed selective bin signs (plastic, paper, glass, metal) and stuck them on 4 shoe boxes. I prepared the recyclable rubbish in a plastic container (originally used for storing toys in it)

E. wasn't as fascinated about it as last year but she did the selection (I might have given her too many items to sort.) This year we added a little twist.

I asked her how she can decide what is made of which material. She didn't know.
I asked her while she was checking the objects:

- Can you rip it?
- Can you crumple it?
- Is it hard or can you squash it?

The bold words were new to her so when I asked these questions I showed her the actions.

So she tested every piece and then threw them in the right box. (Cartons were hard to rip but she tried anyway :)  )

While she was doing the sorting I told her how we use these materials to make other things, like new paper out of old cardboard and newspapers or shoes and backpacks out of plastic. She wasn't talking much but I hope she listened.

To reinforce selective rubbish collection with another activity that is different from the one last year I made a worksheet for her.

She needed to place recyclable rubbish in one group and non-recyclable in the other one. Y

We needed to discuss that dirty napkins cannot go to the recycle bin but should be thrown into the households rubbish bin.

Done!

Download free printable for the sorting rubbish task. Just click on the link.