Category: home-made

Hungarian National Holiday- March 15

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One of the biggest national holidays in Hungary is the commemoration of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. As it is filled with national feelings and politics I won’t go into details about history and other stuff but I’d like to show how we prepare for it in our home (this year together with St. Patrick’s Day)

The activities we have done are in mainly Hungarian.

How do we prepare for a Hungarian and an Irish celebration at the same time? We are sharing time between English and Hungarian. Let’s say in the morning we do tasks in English concerning St. Patrick’s Day. In the afternoon we spend time in Hungarian doing some fun activities around the Hungarian Revolution. Or the other way round.

We display the art E. makes on our double doors in the living-room.

One wing is dedicated to the Hungarian Revolution, the other one to St. Patrick’s Day.
St. Patrick’s Day door wing on the left, Hungarian Revolution door wing on the right

 

In this way she is not confused at all.

I’d like to list some ideas I found online or we made up ourselves concerning our national holiday. This blog wouldn’t be complete without Hungary/the Hungarian language related happenings.

Luckily, last year I made our own button cockade. There’s nothing to do with it this year. We’ll just pin them on our coat on 15 March. (I hope I’ll find them)

E.’s coat and cockade from 2014

It is made out of 3 buttons: a big red, a smaller white and a little green button. I sewed them together with a pin like these:

60-150Pcs-Brooch-Back-Safety-Catch-Bar-Pins-Jewelry-Findings-Accessories-basis-for-brooches-Assorted-Sizes.jpg

Colouring the flag is the most traditional way children prepare for this holiday. We put some fun into it. Thank Goodness for dot markers!

When she saw the sheet E. asked me who wrote there “MAGYAR ZÁSZLÓ” (=Hungarian flag)

 

 

With dot markers all kinds of colouring is more fun. E. did some more of it (colouring a KOKÁRDA=cockade, for example)

Daddy and E. were colouring in full fling so I printed them a map of Ireland and they coloured it too. You can see it in the top picture on the St Patrick’s side. (They didn’t really care about Northern Ireland. We’ll put things to rights next year, when she’ll be more capable of understanding it.)

Red, white and green are used in almost all of our activities. I bought some decor stones in a One Euro Shop (I had to separate the red, white and green stones from many other colours)
We printed the map of Hungary and made up a kind of patterning activity.

The stones had to be placed along the borderline as on the Hungarian flag (red, white, green) making a pattern ABCABC. This pattern is difficult for my daughter to follow so it was quite a strenuous exercise for her.

I’m concentrating like there’s no tomorrow

 

It was a long activity and towards the end it was difficult for her to concentrate. This is quite understandable, she’s not even 3. But Daddy was there for her.

Pinterest offers a lot of wonderful ideas for the occasion. For instance, this pom-pom garland with the national colours. (Through the link you can read about the detailed explanation how to make a pom pom with the help of a fork). If it is too much for your little one just buy some pompoms and

What you need:

  • red, white, green (and orange) yarn
  • a fork
  • scissors

E. tried to make a pom-pom, but she couldn’t. Maybe half a year later she’ll understand how to do it and will be able to make it. We’ll give it a try again.

So I made the pom-poms myself….

 

At first, she was just playing with the yarn.

then she was cutting the yarn like a maniac 🙂

She cut the yarn for 25-30 minutes and I could finish the garland with the Hungarian colours only.

The next day I made the pom-poms for the Irish garland and she was …. *surprise, surprise* cutting the yarn. She can’t get bored of it. E. kept asking: – What I’m doing? which I rephrased:- What am I doing? And then she answered her own question after having repeated it correctly. – I’m cutting yarn. 
This short conversation was repeated for 8-10 times without any alternation.

We’ve hung our pom-pom garlands (with the Irish and the Hungarian national colours) on the double doors.

Tricolour Pizza

Your toddler ALWAYS wants to help you with cooking, not to mention the great excitement if you make pizza. Why not in tricolour? Everybody loves pizza and it’s easy to make it with a toddler.

Ha még nem tudod mit ebédeljetek holnap, akkor íme egy ötlet. A pizzát mindenki szereti, nem? A nemzeti ünnep tiszteletére egy kis átalakuláson ment keresztül, és zászló lett belőle!
It’s not our pizza, but it’s coming soon

Red= tomato sauce with some basil and oregano (minced meat if you wish)
White= loads of grated cheese
Green= broccoli, spinach or any other green vegetables in our case it’ll be ruccola

The lollipop stick is optional, too… but don’t they look cool? Like real flags 🙂

We are making our own on the 15th so I can upload photos of the process later.

I still have some activities up my sleeve, however, I’m not sure we’ll have time for them. Anyways, I’ll have to share some ideas next year too.

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.

Dem bones – the skeleton craze

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Let me start with THE song, the small pebble that started the avalanche
Dem bones

(Around Halloween it is quite relevant)

E. got crazy about bones and skeletons. So it’s time for us, parents, to learn a little too.
I didn’t have the faintest idea about the names of the bones. I used to have problems with them in my native language, not to mention English. However, I did everything to satisfy my little one’s hunger for knowledge.

Flashcards
I made skeleton cards for her. I found a blog (montessoriworkjobs) where there are black and white skeletons with the major bones highlighted in red. So I printed them and made flashcards.

Cotton bud skeleton – craft
Cotton bud skeleton craft can be reached in another post in more details.

fascinated by the skulls

 

gluing

 

sticking and pushing

 

final touch
finished

Child size skeleton puzzle
I found a child-size printable skeleton on a colouring site. You need to print about eight A/4 pages. You do not need much colouring 😉 I laminated the bones as I want to use them next year too.

the skeleton puzzle
after mixing the puzzle E. put the bones in place

 

“I’m a skeleton”

The book – The skeleton inside you

It’s a funny book with a lot of information on bones. When it says “your skeleton helps you run, jump and stand”, I added some more actions (squat, walk slowly, sit, roll, make a bridge, kick, clap etc.) and E. needed to do what I said. She enjoyed it a lot.

You have 32 bones in your arm

 

the rib cage and the skull protect important organs

 

Halloween costume skeleton

 

“Look Daddy, this is the femur”

Skeleton as food
E. was absolutely amazed when she saw this snack on her plate. Since then I need to cut skeletons out of everything.

Last but not least: Skeleton costume for Halloween

These are H&M skeleton pyjamas and gloves



I do not need to comment this. Or if you wish you can read about our MEC Halloween party we had.

I hope you found some ideas useful if your little one is also obsessed with bones and skeletons.

Not so scary crafts for Halloween

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Halloween is here in less than two weeks and E. is so excited about it. She has already chosen what to dress up as (a skeleton – what else a 2 and half year old girl wants to be?)

I’m trying to do some Halloween projects with her.

The first one was a skeleton out of cotton buds. I found this easy cutton bud skeleton craft idea on a fellow blogger mommy’s site. (Q-tip is the equivalent of cotton buds in the US)

What you need:

  • cotton buds
  • black coloured or construction paper
  • glue
  • printed or drawn skull

 

She loved the skulls at first sight

Gluing in progress
(I was making it with her to show her how to and where to put the bones. Although she’s got and almost perfect knowledge of bones of the skeleton. I’ll write about our little skeleton craze in a later post)

Final touch
Witch-craft (source: Toddler Approved!)

This craft idea combines Halloween, shapes  and colours. While E. was in the nursery I cut up the shapes  and when we arrived home the sticking could start. (I should have chosen some more colours – she wanted to add red eyes)

  • orange rectangles for the hair
  • black rectangles and big triangles for the hat
  • small black triangles for the nose
  • green circle for the head – could be any other colour
  • pink small and bigger rectangles, semi-circles for eyes eyebrows, lips etc.
At first we identified the colours and the shapes
Then we put together the witch

 

Funny witch… not scary at all – stated E. happily.

I found it really cool with those eyes 🙂

Some more autumn crafts

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As I said before I love autumn. Not only is it beautiful but also gives us a lot to talk about and plenty of opportunities to be creative.

Here come our new projects concerning autumn:

  • Very Hungry Caterpillar out of conkers and dried orange slices (googly eyes, pipe cleaners and glue sticks).
I made holes in the conkers with a screwdriver
threading the conker
then the orange slice
gluing the eyes on
caterpillar heads
caterpillar bodies
Let’s make them friends
  •  Autumn Nature Hunt – one day when we came home from the nursery I’d packed a bucket for E. to be able to collect whatever she found on the way home. (More simple picking and collecting whatever we find; not as directed and focused as the Tray Nature Hunt we did in the spring)
The next day we were sorting, grouping and naming them:
end result
playing with autumn shadows

We covered a great number of autumn vocabulary (leaves, trees, berries, colours – just to list few topics), and also the process of sticking, gluing, sprinkling, threading. I’ve just realised that E. is more and more interested in short craft projects and it means a lot of language input. We won’t stop. I’ll come back with more.