Category: 2.5 years

Santa visited the Helen Doron School

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In Hungary we have a special day called St. Nicholas Day on the 6th December. St. Nicholas (=Mikulás) is depicted like Santa Claus and more or less they are very similar legendary characters.

As Mikulás is a big day for Hungarian kids, our local Helen Doron school also organised an event: meeting Santa on Saturday (6 Dec). Alas, I left the camera and my phone at home as we were in a hurry to leave for the school, so all the photos were taken with the HD school’s camera.

10-12 kids signed up every half an hour on the big day. (FYI: Financial contribution of the event was 500HUF/family). When we arrived the previous group was in with Santa so we had time for some snacks, cocoa and some crafts. It was very simple but a lot of fun activity with a cardboard ring, some black circles, white hearts and some orange scraps. Our teacher, Zs. was preparing the materials and helping the kids with the crafts. And what did we make out of them? This door wreath of penguins:

Then our time came to go in Santa’s room, where Santa was sitting on the sofa with a thick book. In the corner there were some props for a Christmas story. The starry sky, a stable with a new-born baby in the manger.

Santa read out the story of a tiny, sad star, called Starlet, who grew big and hot when she needed to give light and warmth to Baby Jesus. The story was read in English, one of the HD teachers’ (Z.) partner played the role of Santa. Although his English wasn’t perfect, but good enough for the occasion.

After the heart-warming story, the kids needed to sing (together) a Christmassy song for Santa (luckily with the help of the HD teacher – Z.). We sang “We wish you a merry Christmas”. E. was really quiet, so I whispered into her ear that she needs to sing louder, as Santa can’t hear it. Then she started to sing REALLY loudly. She took it seriously and she was so cute.

Next, Santa pulled out tiny presents for the children (szaloncukor – the Hungarian traditional Christmas candy and a tangerine) from his bag. We could take some photos with Santa and also the director lady (O.) took some (Thank Goodness!) so this is the only reason why I can include some in this post.

After meeting Santa, we went back to the crafts room to Zs., where we could eat some more or do some more crafts. A Christmas card this time. The reindeer inside are E.’s finger prints.

After having finished two Christmas cards, we thanked O. and Zs. for the nice and well-organised Mikulás party and left for home to tell Daddy all the exciting details about meeting Santa.

Getting familiar with the ABC

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I do not want to brag, but yes… a little I do. E. is so  interested in the letters and the ABC that, I do not exaggerate if I say, within a year or two she’ll be reading. In this blog post I would like to collect some fun activities we’ve been doing with the ABC.

-Videos/Songs

The very first favourite. E. was watching this video her mouth agape in amazement when she was 8-10 months old.

Phonics Song 2

The traditional one is always the best (Upper- and lowercase)

A song about how to pronounce the letters – Phonic Song:
Since the age of 2 we have been watching a lot of Mother Goose Club songs:

She could watch it all the time. Sometimes she wants to watch them all day (if I let her).

– Magnetic alphabet

I bought the first set of magnetic alphabet when E. was about 18 months old. She loved them at once.
First it was just one pack of upper case letters. We used it on the fridge, but the letters always fell under it. So I had a magnetic word game at home (for adults, the letters are too tiny for little children) and I started to use one of its steel boards (You can also use a steel tray or a magnetic whiteboard)

Then I bought another pack of both upper- and lower case letters later when we started making up words at about the age of 20-22 months. (Frankly, we don’t really use the lower case letter yet – age 2,5 years)

At the very beginning we just put together the alphabet from A to Z. We sang the ABC song and/or the phonic song while arranging the letters.

Adding the missing letters to the alphabet with Daddy

I told her words starting with certain letters, like  E. for her name or D for daddy, M for mummy, A. is for our nanny’s name etc. As time passed I added some more words, such as E. is for elephant, egg, or A is for apple, ant and so on, not just names. I always tried to include things that she knew or she was really interested at that time. Within a few days she was the one who said the words: – B is for ball and bubble.

Next, we made up short words she was already familiar with.
Daddy, Mummy, M. (our dog), dog, cat, yes, no, hat, rat, egg, bat and so on. I have no intention to teach her how to read. She is the one who, from time to time, comes to me with the letters to play with. She’ll work it out by herself.

– Matching game with the magnetic letters

What you need:

  • letters (magnetic, felt, play dough, cut out from cardboard, drawn on bottle tops)
  • plastic surface (e.g.: whiteboard, but I used an A/4 sheet that I spoiled while laminating. 
  • markers (not permanent!!!)
  • sponge or tissues to wipe the surface if you want to reuse it
I put the letters of these words mixed in a little container 

E. came and emptied the container.

And matched the letter. The interesting thing was that I didn’t need to tell her toe start from left to right.

She wanted to do it with our nanny, too.
When she got bored with it I wiped the surface off and at another time I made a new one with: yes, no, love, sun, hot, rat as you can see it in the photo.
She had to start with her letter, E.

 It was summer time we last did this activity, and now sometimes she “reads” letters on her clothes or, some book’s title.

– Search for the letters – sensory bin (autumn)

What you need:

  • a container
  • bark (you can buy it in a packet at animal stores)
  • small object connected to autumn in some ways (berries, grapes, apples, pears, twigs, conkers, pumpkins, leaves etc. What I did was I chose 1 bunch of grapes made of plastic, 2 apples made of felt, 3 golden leaves, 4 pumpkins made of felt, 5 real conkers.)
  • letters (wooden, foam, felt, magnetic, whatever) of A-U-T-U-M-N
  • a sheet of the object and the letters of autumn shown
Throw the bark into the container and hide all your chosen objects in the bark. Put the sheet in front of your child and whenever they find something among the bark, place them in the right group, or if it’s a letter, then on the right letter.

And the search can begin.

This activity gives you and your child plenty of opportunity to talk about not only the letters, but also colours, autumn fruit, trees, leaves and berries, and in this case numbers too.

I still have several activities, but I’ll need to come back with them in another post. Try them, enjoy them and let me know how they worked out.

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)

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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