Category: almost 3

J. our Australian nanny

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

To be perfectly honest I’ve forgotten to write about our latest native nannies. But better late than never.

J. was from Australia with some Hungarian origin. She came to us in September 2018 for the first time and stayed with us until January 2019, five months altogether.

When she visited us twice a week she played with Little L. after nap time. J. stayed with Little L. at home having some snacks, reading books and playing while I went to the kindergarten to pick E. up.

Little L. spent an hour with J, then it was E.’s turn to play with her for 90 minutes.
She had more playtime with J. as she can be so immersed in a game that it was hard to “stop” her after an hour.

J. was great with the kids; she was talking to them a lot using (I think quite consciously) varied language. She always did some reading at snack time with Little L. I didn’t tell her to do so, she just took a book off the shelf and Little L was listening to the story with her mouth wide open in awe.

20181108_163505

She also followed the kids’ lead. She did whatever they were interested in. E. was in her Lego phase when she found out a character (Fighting Lady) that was originally one of the Lego Friends (Emma) and found out stories about her with J. J. and E. made vehicles, houses, bedrooms, kitchens and other special locations for Fighting Lady. They also drew some stories like comic books, and at these times J. built in some educational material like cold and warm colours just to mention one example.

DSC04832

E. likes making up her own language and with J. she put together a little dictionary with pictures.

Little L. wanted to play with the choo-choo train most of the time. J didn’t mind the repetitive games and was into anything the kids had found out.

She helped us around Halloween when we were carving our Jack-o-lantern.

DSC04835 (2)

In the middle of December, we moved to our new home but for another month she stayed with us.

One day E. found an old vinyl LP record and wanted to make a bowl out of it (she’d seen a video of melting the LP into a candy bowl). J. was around when we made it and gave a helping hand.

DSC05309

In our last month (January) the kids wanted to play together with J. I could see how well she handled sensitive situations, sister fights and disagreements as well as behavioural problems.

20190122_171844

Unfortunately (for us) she found a more reliable job than babysitting. (Who can blame her?) We are so thankful for her to be with us and very sorry that she left.

We’ll miss you J. Good luck!

Advertisement

Flags of the world

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

E. was on pins and needles to get the Flags of the World Book and Jigsaw set as she’d been quite crazy about flags. And it finally arrived thanks to BookFairy.

This was the second time she’d got interested in the flags of the world, and again this interest started with a song or two from youtube:

Countries of the world – Europe (there are the other continents available)

Tour of the world (There aren’t too many flags drawn in this long video but there are a lot of fascinating information about countries of the world)

Back to our puzzle present:

The box contains 300 pieces of puzzles and a colouring book in which you can colour the flags, plus there are interesting facts and other information about the countries, like the meaning of coats of arms and other motifs on flags, the story of the flag, the meaning of colours etc. The puzzle pieces are sturdy and the colours are vivid.

 

20181029_134024

To be perfectly honest I was a little taken aback when I saw the 300 hundred pieces lying on the floor with all the bright colours of the flags (My knowledge of flags are scarce, what’s more, I’m not very good at puzzles either), but I showed no signs of worries to E.

It was Little L.’s nap time so we had about 2 hours to put the puzzles together.

E. got really excited from the beginning. She had a quick look at the book and we jumped into the middle of it.

20181029_134102

She didn’t know how to start so I advised her to find the corner and edge puzzles that would give us the frame. And so we did.

20181029_142521

E. was amazing throughout the whole process. She recognised almost all of the flags and countries. It was very helpful for me to have the country names below the flags. (For her it didn’t really matter, she knew them anyway –  click to listen what she tells you about the flag of Lybia).

Finding a piece gave her great pleasure and excitement. (If you click on the link you can see her find a big section of the puzzle)

20181029_160038

There were times when her attention slackened off but I can’t blame her as it was a task that required great and long-term focus and attention. She still did a great job concerning that.

20181029_162443

Not to mention we were rather under pressure as for time. We couldn’t finish the puzzle within 2 hours. Little L. woke up and joined us (which was a drawback rather but she was so cute and enthusiastic to help). She could actually put in some pieces herself.

20181029_154056

The whole project took about 3-3.5 hours for the 2 (3) of us. When it was done E. was really proud and told me we needed to show it to Daddy when he got home. We slid it under the carpet to protect it from damage and Little L.

20181029_163114

The colouring book got into our hands the next day. E. doesn’t like colouring that much but when I advised her to colour the flags of English-speaking countries she liked the idea a lot. Her favourite flags are the ones with special shapes, or with speacial motifs. So she went on colouring some more flags like Nepal and Santa Lucia.

20190514_172808.jpg

20190514_172847

We also coloured together, she chose Kiribati for me while she was colouring Solomon Islands.

20190514_172917.jpg

She didn’t colour much of the flags in the book, though she was reading it a lot. (Click on the link to listen to E.’s reading out about the Union Jack)

20181030_081052

—————–ooo————-ooo————ooo———–ooo———–ooo————-

Update 02/2019

We moved house and we come across the puzzle and book box while unloading one of our boxes. She was supposed to help me put books on the shelf, but instead she sat down to read the flag book… again.

And here she’s reading about the German flag.

 

Autumn door wreath

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

We’ve been collecting autumn leaves ever since the first on hit the ground. We’ve been carrying them home and pressing them in books. I didn’t know what to do with them until a friend of mine sent me a beautiful autumn wreath she made with her daughter.

Next to the entrance door we keep a tray where the kids can put down whatever they collected outside. There are different fruits of trees and berries from bushes, sticks, leaves, nuts and conkers. Finally we put them into good use.

20181120_171425

What you need:

  • paper plate
  • leaves and other autumn fruit
  • scissors
  • glue
  • ribbon

How we did it:

  1. We cut out the inside of the paper plate. I did it for Little L. although she tried the cutting herself. E. cut her own, I just made the final touches20181120_171724
  2. The girls stuck on a few leaves. In the meantime we were talking about the colours and how dry they got. We even felt the veins on the back of the leaves.

    On one of which we found tiny, dry eggs of a bug. We were guessing what bug it could be. To E.’s delight they were probably shield bug eggs.

    20181120_165748.jpg

  3. After the leaves came the berries and other fruits. At this point I took out my hot glue gun. I applied the glue where they wanted and very carefully they places the berries and nuts on the paper plate.20181120_170955
  4. Last, but not least we added the ribbon to the back so we can hang it on the door. (E was afraid of the hot glue so she used a stick to fix the ribbon)20181120_173542

One wreath is on the inside and the other is on the outside. I change them every other day.

20181120_173722

Are your kids collectors when they’re outside?

Halloween stormed in 2018

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

After the spider costume last year I was really looking forward to what E. comes up with this year. As she’s been into a new topic: weather, she wanted to be something weather-related. And what else can be more frightening than a …..

.

.

.

tornado.

Challenge accepted. Again we just needed a black set (sweater and leggings). I found some old, white tulle curtain leftover. I cut a piece and sewed it on the sweater in a zig-zag and some more tulle down on one leg all around.

20181027_073804

I created little pockets so we could fill it up with pillow filling (I actually opened an Ikea pillow and used the filling of it) and some objects the wind could pick up while swirling around.

The full-dress rehearsal was at the drama class, but we didn’t add the filling as yet, just the objects.

20181027_112043

Later on, we added a little grey to the filling with a marker and tucked it in the tulle together with some plastic toys (spiders, cows, cacti). Some clouds on the face and some more tulle in the hair and it was all done.

20181031_175742

Little L. wanted to be a black cat. I bought her these cute cat ears, we added a sock tail to her one-piece cat costume, drew some whiskers on her chubby face and she was ready to purr.

20181031_162812

I myself dressed up as a were-wolf. I even bought gloves with claws but I left them at home before the party at the Helen Doron school.

Still, we were quite a sight on the bus on the way to the school. Haha!

At the Helen Doron School the usual unbelievable scariness welcomed us. Spooky decorations,

45237207_1836061579775638_7174821461574549504_o.jpg

Halloween treats,

45363187_1836065533108576_6240258632622014464_o.jpg
edible earth with worms

and games,

craft session,

20181031_172519

in one word: FUN!

I’d like to thank the teachers who always put their hearts in these parties, plus their dress-up ideas are magnificent.

45294652_1836067836441679_1167918220439453696_o.jpg

45329700_1836063386442124_6473050150737543168_o

 

45256742_1836068026441660_3441912513849982976_o

Pumpkin decoration

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

This year I wanted an easier pumpkin decoration than carving as my little one (almost 3) would love to work with the knife to crave and cut, however, I wouldn’t want her to.

As the girls love tattoos I though it would be great to apply some tattoos on pumpkins. Finding spooky spider tattoos for pumpkins in the Flying Tiger shop was real lucky.

DSC04782

The girls started the decoration with washing and drying their own pumpkins.

DSC04787.JPG

Then the decoration could start. We applied the tattoos and used a permanent marker to draw it scary face. While doing so we were singing Halloween songs like: Pumpkin pumpkin let’s give you some eyes or Can you make a happy face?

DSC04801DSC04797

In the tattoo set there were some shiny crystal-like stickers and silver/black paint pens. Of course, we needed to try them all.

DSC04831

DSC04830

Finally, E. found her pumpkin a little too over decorated but I loved her drawings and creative patterns. Her pumpkin even said Hello 🙂 it was a great crafty Halloween activity that both my 6- and almost 3-year-old could actively take part in.