Bottle top Christmas tree

A quick, before-Christmas activity I put together was a hit with the girls. The best thing about it is that you can make the activity, so it suits all ages.

20191223_090036

What you need:

  •  12 or more green bottle tops
  • hot glue gun/ or some type of glue
  • a board (I used cardboard of a box)
  • pom-poms of different colours
  • white circles cut out of paper
  • snowflakes of different colours (optional)
  • tweezers

How to make it:

  • arrange the bottle tops in a Christmas tree shape
  • glue them on the board
  • mark the colours in the bottle tops (I used punched-out snowflakes)

I presented the game to the girls on the 23rd December. They had been very excited about the coming Christmas and they had been asking about when the Christmas tree was coming. So here it comes.

It can be a simple colour matching activity…

20191223_090152

But I wanted to bring in some more challenge. For Little L I drew dots on paper circles (3 and 4). She put a red pompom if there were 3 dots and a green one if it there were 4.

As in school E learnt addition and take-away up to number 8, I wrote additions on paper circles. The additions equalled either 5 or 8. She needed to put a green pompom if the sum was 5 and a red pompom if it was 8.

20191223_090917

When she was done, she made me an activity… khm… a little bit more complex than mine.

This task can be done with numbers, addition and takeaway, division and multiplication, letters (lower and uppercase), sight words and so much more.

With this post I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Flags of the world

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.

 

Felt hand-tree

Autumn’s all about colours. This colour-matching activity has stuck into my mind and I’ve been planning to make it for years. Very easy even if you can’t really sew like me.

What you need:

  • coloured felt (brown, red, orange, yellow, green
  • buttons (of the same colours)
  • thread and needle
  • scissors
  • marker

How you can create it:

  1. First draw your hand around on the brown felt sheet and cut it out. This will be the tree
  2. Sew the button on the finger tips and thumb
  3. Draw a simple leaf on different coloured felt and cut them out. You can decorate them with the marker (draw the veins)
  4. Fold the leaves half vertically and cut a hole in the middle.

How to play:

Give your child the leaves and the tree-hand. Their task is to button the leaves up on the tree branches. They need to match the right leaf to the right button.

DSC04759

This activity is great for kindergarteners who need practice doing up their buttons a lot.


In the meantime you can identify colours, talk about movements how to push the button through the hole.

Little L had a harder time at the beginning and needed some help with the first 2 leaves. But after that she did it all by herself.

They can take off the leaves and sing Autumn leaves are falling down.

Have a colourful autumn!

DSC04775

Fruit, veggies and colours

L. is always gets interested in whatever her big sister is crazy about. This time fruit and veggies.

Little L.’s attention span is still quite short so the long planting procedure was too much for her. Therefore I decided to make her busy with fruit and veggies in another way.

DSC01512.JPG

I found this lovely free printable on food at Life over C’s which is a huge pack of several activites. I chose the one in which the child needs to decide the colour of the fruit and veggies on the card. The original activity recommends using clothes pegs to mark the right answer but L. has difficulties in using it all by herself so I decided to give her decor stones of the same colours as she needed to identify.

DSC01502.JPG

She did this activity with me and with our native nanny too. She enjoyed it so much for quite a long time (8-10 minutes per occasion).

DSC01521DSC01526

After shopping at the market I gave her the real vegetables. She was fascinated to see, touch and even smell them.

DSC01509

The pack contains a memory game set. I used it a little differently. I cut up only the half of the cards and L. needed to recognise and match the fruit and vegetables on the bigger sheet. This activity was a hit too, although she is not like her sister, who could do educational tasks forever.

If your kid is bigger you can select plenty of fun activities (number recognition, puzzles, memory game) within the topic, food on the link above.

Enjoy you fruit and veggies.

Shape witch reloaded

As I was going through the old Halloween blog posts I found the shape witch activity which was so much fun even when E. was only 2 and a half years old. I told her all about it and she got really excited. She wanted to make the shape witch again.

So be it. I though we could involve little L. as well since she’s almost 2 and she loves shapes.

With 2 kids craft projects are challenging indeed hence I prepared the activity by the time our new nanny, N. came to us for a session with E.

20171024_165751

I pre-cut the shapes and presented them on a tray. I left some for E. to cut if she wished and she did, of course. She loves cutting.

20171024_170141

Both kids enjoyed the witch building from shapes.

20171024_170357 (2)

L. was fascinated by the glue so after having finished with the witch we stayed a little longer to glue on some shapes randomly. We were practising both shapes and colours, not to mention how well this pushing motion helps to strengthen hand muscles.

20171024_171159

And here are the final results:

20171024_191346
Little L.’s creation
20171024_191342
E.’s witch is on the left, N.’s witch is on the right