Author: nonnativemommy

Our Advent – 2014

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Daddy’s birthday always goes together with the start of our advent. This year there’s a little extra. The Book advent Calendar.

First of all, here is our traditional, bought in a shop (Tchibo) advent calendar:

horrible photo, but I don’t have any other

I always put it on the door frame. Each shape has a pocket and I put in some surprises:

  • some treats (dried fruit, nuts, crackers, marzipan – E.’s favourite, etc.)
  • advent activities from Időtetrisz  (you can download the cards for free – Christmassy crafts, acts of kindness, gift giving, funny. If you want something similar in English you can download Jen’s advent calendar activity cards from this link. Időtetrisz offers some blank cards, so I wrote some of my own in English. E. can’t read yet anyways, so I can read the Hungarian cards in English if she is in an English mood)
  • a small animal (I bought these last year in a secondhand toy shop – they were really inexpensive)
The animals are for putting together the stable where baby Jesus was born. We’ve just stated it, but I’ll add a photo of it when you can see what it looks like.
Extra advent book calendar – a book a day

I saw plenty of great advent present ideas on Pinterest, however, the best is the 24 books wrapped up. Your child can open one a day up to Christmas. It’s great if you can collect 24 Christmas stories. I couldn’t. I had about 12-15 book I’d bought earlier but there was no occasion to give them to E. So I bought some more discounted books, and some more new ones from Book Depository (if you order from them there’s no delivery fee). This is how I collected 24 books. (The cost of the books altogether was between 6-10 thousand HUF = 19-33 EUR)

Here is about half of the books:
I didn’t take a photo of the other half but I will after we have opened all of them. I’ll also put together a list of the titles, authors and E.’s reaction to them. This post will come after Christmas.
My Mum helped me wrap all the 24 books. I made the stickers out of cheap, circle-shaped post-its and a white gel pen. (It took a while until the white gel dried on the post-its)

We’ve already read two of the books:

  • Me and My Dad 
  • Dora’s chilly day
Both of them were bullseye. 

Let’s not leave out our unconventional advent candles. I can’t call it an advent wreath because they are made up of 4 porcelain cups, Christmassy washi  tape, fake grass, 4 Christmas tree decorations stuck on the cups, 4 sparkly, red balls and 4 long, claret candles. No wreath whatsoever.

But it’s easy and fun to make it even with a smaller child.

Last year E. helped me make it
So our advent has begun and we are very excited about opening little pocket on our advent calendar and reading a new book every day. Only Christmas Eve can be more exciting than this.

Goodbye, A. – our nanny is leaving

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It’s been 23 months with her. It’s more than I’ve ever dreamt of. A special bond has been formed among us. But now our native nanny is leaving. It is difficult for all of us.

I’d like to pay tribute to our time together with this post.

We met A. in January 24, 2013 for the first time. E. was only 8 months old. The last 23 months have been full of great moments. Here is a collection of our memories:

Flashcards – E. is 11 months old

We had some lovely trips like to the zoo:

Look, a butterfly

 

Flamingos – E. is 15 months old
Our nature hunt with a muffin tray in the park:
on the way to the park
The usual question: “What’s this?”
We’ve done it!

A great birthday party:

 

Story time – reading together:
Story box – Vet Vicky
Fun presents from A.:

 

Easter present: Bunny soap, bubble mixture, “headless” marzipan figurine 😉

 

watermill
Mini 3D animal kit
Solar system poster
A. could make a dog out of a balloon
and a flower
Fishing in a tub – Nőtincs Adventure Park

Our outings in Gödöllő and Nőtincs-Seholsziget:

A walk in the woods

Some educational activities with A.: (Video about the bottle cap calculator)

//www.youtube.com/get_player
Making big numbers and basic additions

 

letter recognition with magnetic letters
Silhouettes and object matching game
And some crafts:

 

These are just a few of all the fun E. and, I can say, we all have had since A. was around. As for our language journey she was the best person we could meet. I hope we can stay in touch in the future too, as E. and A. has had a strong bond between them and I have to admit that she wasn’t just a nanny, but has become a friend.

I wish her all the best wherever life will take her.

Good-bye cake

 

You will greatly be missed.

Happy Thanksgiving! – Crafts: Chapter 2.

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Thanksgiving is a holiday that has nothing to do with us, Hungarian people. However, giving thanks to what we can cherish in our life does not depend on what nation you belong to.

Tree of Thanks – a great idea for Thanksgiving came from Jen, a blogger mum whose posts I’ve been reading on a daily basis nowadays.

The main idea is building an autumn tree with brown, yellow, and orange leaves on which we write (or draw) with the kids what we are grateful for.

We didn’t have much time to do this activity (I needed to prepare for Daddy’s birthday too), so it is not as elaborate as in the original idea.

What you need:

  • colour paper (red, brown, orange, green – or you can paint as Jen suggests)
  • scissors
  • a bigger sheet of sticky paper (contact paper or sticky book jacket)
  • markers

I quickly cut red, brown, yellow and green leaves out of colour paper and drew a tree on the sticky paper (on the non-sticky side). The latter I sellotaped (sticky side out) on the balcony window. (Unfortunately you can’t see much on the photos as it got dark, but tomorrow I’ll add some more pictures taken in daylight)

naming the different colours and counting how many leaves she has

When we arrived home, E. sat down and I told her that we should collect people and things we love and we feel thankful for. (Much to my surprise she understood and immediately said : – Daddy!) I came next: – I love Mommy so much. 😀

First, we tried to write the words together, but when she added snowman and chicken thigh I wrote them on the leaves myself.

When we’d finish with our collection (cheese, Grandmas, Santa, doggy, antibody hat, i.e. her thermo-hat against ear problems) we moved to the balcony door and E. stuck up the leaves on the tree.
She was really proud of herself and also, gave a kiss to Santa 🙂 (then to me)

collecting

 

sticking

——– Update: 03/12/2014———

Here is a photo taken of our Tree of Thanks in daylight… well, you can see a little (!!!) more.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time for the Turkey of Thanks wreath. Well, we need something for next year, too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you want some cute and funny Thanksgiving songs, here is a small collection:

Thanksgiving playlist by nonnativemommy

 

Story box – Vet Vicky with props

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A green box with stuffed animals, a stethoscope, some gauze, a medicine box, a rope, cheese and a flower. Story box – reading fun.

I can’t remember where I found the idea but Pinterest’s story box ideas are endless.

I picked a book from the Ladybird series (Little Workmates) – Vet Vicky, which later became one of E.’s favourite.

The story is about Vet Vicky’s day in her surgery treating a dog, a cat and a mouse. Then she goes to Farmer Fred’s to have a look at Daisy, the cow, who is not eating well, but the cow has gone. Vicky finds her near the school munching on some flowers. Vicky takes Daisy back to Farmer Fred and suggests feeding Daisy with some flowers every now and then.

It was a hit at once. E. likes playing doctor, and loves animals, so even without the story box she would have loved the story. However, with it she was thrilled and did everything like Vicky in the book.

 

checking the dog over

 

giving him a pill
checking the cat over

She enjoyed following the activities in the book – five times in a row. At least I could take some photos…

Finally, she matched all the characters with their images in the book.

We’d spent nearly an hour reading the book, playing the story, when our nanny arrived.

E. wanted to do it with her too.

Ssssh! – showed Vicky to the school children when she went behind Daisy with a rope

Some body parts, like the udder, the hooves and the horns, were identified on the cow.

What’s this? – This is the cow’s udder.
E. is very interested in the other booklets of the series.

We have some of them, like Farmer Fred, Builder Bill, Hairdresser Hanna. Unfortunately, the stories are not the best for the story book idea as there can’t be so many easily available and varied props.

Crafts for Thanksgiving – Chapter 1.

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I’m not sure if E. understands the concept of being thankful, though one night when we talked to the Angels I wanted to say good night and she said:

– Wait, Mommy!
– Yes?
– I want to say thank you.
– What for?
– For the skeleton costume.

So I might be wrong. She can also say thank you whenever I give her some food or a toy. Sometimes she reminds Daddy to say thank you.

I told her the Thanksgiving story very basically though we focused more on being creative this time.

Colour your turkey – letter recognition

I mentioned to E. that American people celebrate Thanksgiving with turkeys, like we celebrate Martin-day with geese.

So we coloured a turkey. I printed an image of a turkey from the net, but before we started I added some letters to different parts of the turkey. With some of the dot markers I signed orange, yellow, red and purple next to the turkey. She immediately understood how to colour it. We have no brown dot markers so I used a crayon.

identifying the letters
staring with yellow
our colourful turkey



Bubble wrap paint turkey

I found this idea on craftymorning.com . I’m not going into details as you find easy-to-follow instructions on the site.

It looked great, so we tried it. It’s a little too complicated with a 2 and a half year old. You need to wait a lot for the paint to dry. E. had no patience. But she enjoyed the painting. I had no dark brown coloured paper so we painted the body too. (The thermo-hat is due to an ear infection)

painting the body
adding the eyes on the stool – where else?
finished with the beak too, though there’s no snood
I cut the feathers – she did the sticking
Turkey without legs and snood





























Autumn tree variations

The first tree idea came when E. enjoyed me punching leaf shapes with this.

So while she was asleep in the afternoon I punched some more leaves (yellow, red, orange, brown and creamy colours) and I put them together with some real dry leaves next to a drawn tree. With the help of some glue we put the leaves onto the tree’s branches. She wasn’t interested in the real ones.

Broken leaves had to go on the ground, under the tree

Our nanny arrived and they went on together

Have you noticed that some leaves are falling down 😉 ?

“Nice tree. Can I pee on it?”

The second tree is based on the same idea as the dot marker turkey. I drew a tree and on the branches I wrote the first letters of some colours. Dotting fun.

I’m planning to make some more Thanksgiving activities. So come back for the autumn tree and turkey of gratitude.