Author: nonnativemommy

What do we have to do with Australia? – Part 2.

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Our Australian friends (who we’d met on our honeymoon in Istanbul) came to Europe for a cruise on the Danube. Their ship left from Budapest and they could visit us as well. They killed two birds with one stone and it was again a great opportunity for E. to “test” her English. (You can read about E.’s 1st real life test here when she met her English speaking cousin)

As soon as M. and B. arrived at our place, M. and E. hit it off. E. wanted to show her room and her kitchen and what she cooked. I was astonished to see it as she is never so open and welcoming to anyone, not to mention a stranger. There was no language barrier as such. It was absolutely natural for her to use English with M.

E. got some sweet presents (soft toys and books) from M. and B, which were all Australia related.

Presents for E. – Books

At first, she was a bit afraid of Jacko and the beanstalk (I guess because of the scary crocodile), but by now she’s okay with it.

She really loves to identify the Australian animals in the little booklet in the top right corner. As this book also includes the national anthem, we spent one evening after dinner to listen to it on youtube

(together with several other national anthems, like the British, the US, Irish, Spanish, Colombian and the German)

Toys E. received from M. and B.
Her favourite is the platypus (E. named her Platy). And we agreed they can talk in English only. She accepted it without any problem.

So our friends, M. and B., came to our place. I showed them around our area and invited them for a traditional Hungarian lunch (goulash soup, fried chicken breast in bread crumbs, mash potato plus green salad).

E. took a nap and as soon as she woke up we left for Szentendre, a town near to Budapest on the bank of the Danube.

Szentendre in pictures
Just arrived
Main Square

On the bank of the River Danube

We had a wonderful time together. E. proved her great level of English again. We’ve been enriched with some books on Australia, some stuffed animals from the country and the time spent with this lovely couple.

Thank you, M. and B.! We hope to see you again!

What do we have to do with AUSTRALIA??? Part 1

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In short: Nothing. In more details: last month (April) we met a lovely elderly couple from Australia who we’d encountered on our honeymoon in Istanbul in 2011. Quite unusual.

I’ve taken  the opportunity of their visit to Hungary to introduce Australia to E. She loves planet Earth anyway. She already knows about continents (her favourite is Antarctica) so Australia will be fascinating for her. I hoped…

Map of Australia

As E. enjoys looking at maps and our big picture atlas I made a map colouring activity for her. I just printed a blank Australia map with the states drawn on it and after naming each states we coloured them one by one.

E. is practising her A
I also wrote AUSTRALIA below the map and E. traced my letters.

This Australian map puzzle was quite time-consuming to make but the result was beautiful and E. loved it. The link gives you a detailed description how to prepare it. In my version I laminated the pieces. As Queensland and Western Australia consist of 2 parts I sellotaped them together. Then I added sticky back velcro (bought them on sale in Auchan).

The background is a big blue cardboard

 

sticking

 

FINISHED!

I couldn’t buy a big enough cardboard to fit Tasmania in the right place. What a pity!

We can also use this puzzle map in the long run (I also plan to introduce her some cities as well as animals and famous sights. We’ll use this map to pin cities, animals and sights up on it and put it on the wall to display)

She has done the Australian puzzle map several occasions. Sometimes she even said the names of its states.

Painting the flag

As the puzzle map gave me a hard time we did not twist the flag project. I printed a blank Australian flag and painted it while we were talking about what is what on the flag
  1. The British Union Jack flag is in the upper left corner – noting Australia’s ties to Great Britain
  2. The Southern Cross constellation (5 stars) is on the right side of the flag. The constellation can be seen from everywhere in Australia
  3. The large, white, seven-pointed Commonwealth Star

Of course, we displayed our pieces  on our living-room door. You need to imaging the composition as I’ve forgotten to take a photo of it.

Work in progress
Let’s start!

Animals of Australia

First, I created flashcards of the most commonly known Australian animals. (See a printable at the end of the post)

Kangaroo                                         Duck-billed Platypus
Koala                                                Cassowary
Emu                                                  Brown snake
Wombat                                           Salt Water Crocodile
Dingo                                                Echidna
Tasmanian Devil                           Frilled Necked Lizard

E. has already heard about and seen a kangaroo in the zoo, and also seen pictures of koalas. She knows the (white) wombat from the video titled Red Rabbit, Green Gorilla. She is also familiar with the look of a crocodile or a snake as well as an ostrich, which can remind you of an emu. So first, I showed her 7 flashcards out of the 12.

As most of the animals had a familiar look I decided to add some information to the flashcards on their backs.

We had a look at Australia in our Picture Atlas Of The World.

As on this map flora and fauna is depicted, I showed E. an animal, I said its name and  she needed to find it on the map. When she found it we placed the flashcard on the map and I told her some interesting information (1 or 2 pieces) about the animal (eating habit, place of living, offspring etc.)
She was laughing at the platypus and found the Tasmanian Devil cute.

When we finished with this she wanted to see them in real life so we sat down in front of youtube and watched a few interesting videos. (I had prepared for this request so we didn’t need to waste time with searching for them)

The Cow Goes Moo – Kangaroo for Kids

Koala-la-la-la

Bindi and Robert Irwin feature huge salt-water crocodile

Platypus: Animals for Children

Bindi and Robert Irwin feature: Wombat

E. was fascinated by the platypus, mainly its webbed feet. So we needed to draw a Mommy and Baby platypus webbed “feet”

We’ll have a look at the other animals later.

In the next part:

E.’s 2nd test of her English; the lovely time in Szentendre we spent together with our Australian friends (M. and B.). – You can read about E.’s 1st real life test here
E. got some sweet presents (soft toys and books) from M. and B.

 

 

 

Colour changing flower experiment

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As a part of our flower project in spring we also dealt with a little science. More precisely, how flowers absorb water through their stems reaching the petals. This colour changing carnation experiment gave me the idea, but there were some glitch in the matrix and we needed to do it twice. Let’s see how.

The flower experiment idea is great, however, we did something wrong or were just unlucky this time.

First of all, what you need to the project:

  • 4-5 white flowers of any kind (chrysanthemum didn’t work very well, carnations were better)
  • food colouring (4-5 colours, or you can mix them)
  • transparent glasses or viols
  • water
  • measuring cup
  • spoon
  • towel for spills
  • scissors
How to do it:
  • prepare everything on a tray for you child and she/he can do all the activities
  • add water to the glasses/viols
  • add the food colouring and mix them with a spoon
  • cut the stem of the flowers (10-15 cms long)
  • make the flowers stand in the glasses/vases

  • wait… minimum 1 or 2 days
In case of the carnations the colouring of the petals could have be seen the next day,
but in the first trial the chrysanthemum took 3 and a half days to show any signs of pigmentation.

While E was preparing (pouring water, cutting stems, mixing colours) the experiment I asked her what she thinks will happen. She didn’t have a clue.

– I don’t know Mommy, You say.

Then I explained what the coloured water will do:
– The stem will suck up the water, like you suck it up through a straw. (Then she imitated sucking 🙂 )
– The coloured water will be absorbed. (she was digesting the new word)
– The water will reach the petals and they will turn red (I pointed at the flower standing in red water), green (I pointed at the flower standing in green water), blue (I pointed at the flower standing in blue water) and yellow (I pointed at the flower standing in yellow water).

In the first round after a week the chrysanthemums started to wilt so we could not observe any more colours on the petals.

In the second round of the experiment, while I was cleaning, I put the carnations on the floor light-mindedly. Then E. accidentally kicked them over. So after 5 days our second flower experiment was over.  Anyways, we could see the pigmentation of the petals somehow.

She enjoyed preparing the experiment more than the result. Who could blame her after all…?

Let me know if you try this experiment and have better results, let’s say, after 10-12 days.

Earth Day 3.0 – sticky Earth

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Today we have made another fun Earth related activity:

It was a sudden idea so I didn’t do the preparation myself. It was a real whole-family task.

What you need:

– contact or sticky paper (here in Hungary you can buy it as the sticky cover for school books)
– green and blue crepe paper
– scissors
– permanent marker (preferably blue)

Optional for the letter:

– green cardboard strips

While I was drawing the Globe on the transparent side of the sticky paper my dear family were cutting the crepe paper into tiny pieces. Excellent cutting practice for little hands. If you don’t want to give scissors into your little one’s hands they can also tear the crepe paper. Then we fixed it on the wall and pulled the paper off. (Note: you need to draw the mirror image of the Earth and after peeling the cover of the sticky paper you need to fix it on the reverse side – sticky side-out – on the wall)

 

Sticking could start. Green went on the land and blue, on the seas and oceans.

It took a while and we needed to help E. She wouldn’t have had patience and persistence to do it all alone.

When we finished, E. stuck the letters up. We directed her how to put the letters. Although we did this activity in Hungarian I chose to put on the English word for our planet as it would have been awfully difficult to cut out the accents in ‘FÖLD’ in Hungarian.

HAPPY

DAY!!!

Earth Day – Painting Crafts

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Before the recycling activity we had done some Earth related crafts like this mess-free zip-lock bag painting. Even very small kids can enjoy pressing the paint into all directions.

 

What you need:

– a plastic bag that can be sealed (I used Ikea bags)
– a paper plate
– green and blue paint

 

Process:

– put the paint on the paper plate (I put a little more blue than green as there is more water than land)
– place the paper plate (very carefully) into the plastic bag and seal it
– seal the bag

You’re child will know what to do right away, I’m sure. If not, tell him or her to press and see how the paint will move everywhere.

E. realised how much more she can spread the paint with the edge of her hand.

The first plate had too much paint on so we pressed it against another paper plate. Although it is called a MESS-FREE painting method, with this change everything became grubby.

 

I used leftover baby paint so it was easy to clean up.

E. enjoyed it so much we needed to paint one more Earth.

 

 

Here is the final result:

Another activity was dot-marker painting of Planet Earth. (If you have no dot-markers you can use cotton buds and blue and green paint or simply colour the dots with markers)

I searched for a picture of Earth and I made white dots on land and sea as well.

I wasn’t surprised at all that she started to count the dots while she was painting them the right colour.

We ended up writing the numbers and Earth next the Globe. E. traced my numbers and letters. This is her new “hobby”. As you can see she stamped some hearts all around Earth, because:
– I love you Mommy, and the Earth, too.

You can find more ideas of Earth day fun and crafts on my Pinterest board.

Here is the downloadable dot marker Earth .