Category: arts and crafts

Our First St. Patrick’s Day – the Irish flag and symbols

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Last year we didn’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day as a Hungarian national holiday (March 15) is very close  to it. This year I decided to celebrate both with some fun activities as E. can take more.

Irish Flag

First, we talked a little about Ireland. We took a look at the Picture Atlas E. likes so much. She pointed at the flag and the capital. We also talked about what animals she could see there on the island. (I also mentioned to her that I lived there for a while but she was totally unimpressed)


Then we went on to the flag. She got excited as soon as she saw the colourful stickers. I made the flag and I found some price tag stickers in a One Euro shop.

She immediately started to do the sticking saying: – G is for green and the Os are for orange.
At first she didn’t understand what she would stick on the white part of the flag. She was a little disappointed when I told her to leave it white and there would be no sticking in the middle.

Some white parts are left among the stickers so it gave us a great chance to colour that E. doesn’t like that much. I made sure that she needed to practise a little sharpening too.

She was really happy when she finished colouring. I must admit I had to help her a bit.


However, she proudly stuck it on our living-room door.


St. Patrick’s Day Cutting Practice via Welcome to Mummyhood

Using scissors is a new skill we’ve been trying to practise lately.

I had a very easy task with this: print and cut. I just needed to sit back and watch my daughter focus really hard on cutting along the lines.

Of course, we discussed what the things are in the pictures (pot of gold, rainbow, shamrock). I really hope that the book about the leprechaun (that I’d ordered via bookdepository.com with free delivery) will arrive before or on St. Patrick’s Day.


Mosaic paper shamrock (via Happiness Is Homemade)

I myself drew and cut out a shamrock of cardboard that I found at home. I would have been better off with green construction paper or cardstock and a template, but the result was okay.

I also prepared cut-up pieces of all kinds of green paper (old wrapping paper, leftover construction and scrapbook paper etc). If you have an older child you can do the cutting together. Mine turns 3 in May so I decided on cutting the squares myself.

When she saw the layout she was delighted. She could stick all day.

 

You can also use glue stick that dries clear but I like the idea of E. using her hand muscles when squeezing the liquid glue bottle.

Final results: the left one is mine the right one is E.’s

As in the morning we were drying Rabbit’s hair (pretend play) the hairdryer came handy to dry excess glue.

Before sticking them on our living-room door I turned the shamrocks upside down and trimmed off the overhanging edges.

 

Was it fun? 😉

 

More to come in the next post:

  • Rainbow name puzzle
  • St. Patrick’s Day Patterning
  • More shamrock sticking out of heart and triangle shapes
  • Book review on St. Patrick and the Leprechaun
  • surprise 🙂

 

Christmas tree fail – or success?

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When E. asked for the Christmas tree set (construction paper cut-out Christmas trees and decorations, like tinsel, buttons, stars, cotton wool balls etc.) I was more than happy. It took me a while to prepare this Christmas tree activity but at first it seemed to be a failure.

nicely prepared set
E.’s choice instead

But at the second time it was a hit. E. was chatting away (in Hungarian this time), sticking and encouraged me to decorate my tree too. I did as she told me and didn’t take many photos. We just enjoyed being creative, being together, being full of Christmas spirit.

busy with decorating

Our final results (done in Hungarian)

Our first try (done in English)

In both cases E. made the light green trees.

If you give it a try you can widen your little one’s vocabulary in the field of

  • Christmas: tinsel, bauble, star, snowflake, beads
  • colours: light green, dark green, silver, gold, shiny
  • shapes and sizes: round, star-shaped, snowflake-shaped, long, tiny
  • texture: prickly=stingy, soft, fluffy, hard, velvety, silky, rough, sticky

Christmas tree – fail

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I had another Christmas tree craft on mind through which we could have practised some English and had fun. Well, E. wasn’t in the mood. At first…

Earlier I read about a Jen’s Christmas tree decorating creative table and I thought it would have been great fun with E, too. I was wrong…

I found a Christmas tree template online and I cut 4 pine trees out of green construction paper. I also prepared different kinds of decorations: cotton wool balls, beads, mosaics, stars, buttons, pipe cleaners, tinsel etc.

This scene welcomed E.:

I thought she’ll be over the moon if she can use the glue and stick like millions of shiny decorations onto the Christmas tree.

At the beginning she enjoyed it, but wasn’t so much interested. I was trying to talk about the cotton wool balls and the shiny starts of two kinds; silver and gold. But, very unlike her, she was speechless.

She did a little gluing…

The dark green tree is what I made

but she ended up like this:
Well, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I should have come up with a snowmen or a snowflake art project. She might have had enough of Christmassy crafts. But I loved the idea about talking about how the angels decorate the Christmas tree, what the texture of different decorations feels like, what shapes they have (round, square, star-shaped), counting bead and button baubles and sticking on tinsel…
I still love this activity… she doesn’t. At first I was disappointed, then I just needed to accept this is not so much fun for her. So I packed everything away and I’ve already started to think about some snowy projects.

Then much to my surprise, the next day she was looking for the blank Christmas trees: – Where are the Christmas trees we made? Where are the empty ones?
I was more than happy to serve her with the set… but you need to wait for the next blog post to find out about its outcome.

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.

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