Category: native nanny

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.

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)

//www.youtube.com/get_player
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.

Story box – Vet Vicky with props

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A green box with stuffed animals, a stethoscope, some gauze, a medicine box, a rope, cheese and a flower. Story box – reading fun.

I can’t remember where I found the idea but Pinterest’s story box ideas are endless.

I picked a book from the Ladybird series (Little Workmates) – Vet Vicky, which later became one of E.’s favourite.

The story is about Vet Vicky’s day in her surgery treating a dog, a cat and a mouse. Then she goes to Farmer Fred’s to have a look at Daisy, the cow, who is not eating well, but the cow has gone. Vicky finds her near the school munching on some flowers. Vicky takes Daisy back to Farmer Fred and suggests feeding Daisy with some flowers every now and then.

It was a hit at once. E. likes playing doctor, and loves animals, so even without the story box she would have loved the story. However, with it she was thrilled and did everything like Vicky in the book.

 

checking the dog over

 

giving him a pill
checking the cat over

She enjoyed following the activities in the book – five times in a row. At least I could take some photos…

Finally, she matched all the characters with their images in the book.

We’d spent nearly an hour reading the book, playing the story, when our nanny arrived.

E. wanted to do it with her too.

Ssssh! – showed Vicky to the school children when she went behind Daisy with a rope

Some body parts, like the udder, the hooves and the horns, were identified on the cow.

What’s this? – This is the cow’s udder.
E. is very interested in the other booklets of the series.

We have some of them, like Farmer Fred, Builder Bill, Hairdresser Hanna. Unfortunately, the stories are not the best for the story book idea as there can’t be so many easily available and varied props.

We love numbers – Numbers II.

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Every time before E. goes to sleep we have this conversation (either in English or in Hungarian):

E.: – Mommy, numbers.
M.: – Which numbers?
E.: – The little numbers.
M.: – 1, 2, 3, …
E.: – No, Mommy. Zero….
M.: – Oh, yes, sorry. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
E.: – Now the big numbers.
M.: – 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
E.: – Hundreeeed (giggles)

She is so fascinated by numbers that at the age of 18 months she could read the numbers on her baby bottle from 10 to 280.

Let’s see some number games we play.

First of all, our favourite number songs:

Zero, zero, super hero

Ten in the bed

The new favourite: Ten Little Dinosaurs

The bottle top calculator is just as much fun as pushing the buttons on a real calculator.

What’s missing?

I found a quite difficult number task on www.firstgradebrain.com. (I just checked the link recently and it’s not there anymore. Sorry. I’ve put it on my to-do-list to make an activity like this) What comes between? This task is more for 4-5 year old kids, but we gave it a try. I printed the sheets laminated them and at first I just put one task in front of her with 3 possible options that can come between the two numbers.

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy

Much to my surprise it wasn’t very difficult for her. We did two more of this task then she started to order the numbers. All by herself.

There is nothing more to add 🙂

Ordering the numbers – Making big numbers

I printed the numbers from 1 to 10 in two copies. I coloured and laminated them and the fun could begin.

First, I put them in order, then she matched the other set.

We played a memory game with them. (There are ladybird stickers on one side of the cards so that you can’t see what is on the back)
I’ve found a match

With these numbers, A., our British nanny, played another game. She and E. made big numbers putting the numbers next to each other.

110

And some basic additions.

Watermelon seeds counting game

I used the watermelon seeds counting idea on Toddler Approved! which I really like following as they have great and easy-to-make ideas.

So I just made the watermelon slices out of a green foam sheet, a white and a red sheet. I glued the different coloured paper on top of each other.

Turning the slices right side up

On the back of the slices there are the numbers written. (the slices deliberately grow in size from 1 to 10 so there is more room for the seeds and in this way we can put the slices in growing order.)

counting

I picked raisins instead of the chocolate chips recommended in the Toddler Approved blog post. Healthier and they do not leave a mark. I put them in a box and the counting started.

One raisin rolled down

We can do many other things with the watermelon slices:

  • put them in order according to the numbers (or backwards)
This is four, Mommy
  • order them according to their sizes
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 …
  • throw a lot of raisins on a slice and eat up all the “seeds” that are not necessary in order to have the number of seeds on the slice as written on the back
    yummie
  • explain how to eat up all the raisins to someone who does not know this game

Number stickers – Helping Little Mole build a house

I drew a brick wall and Little Mole’s head on a sheet of paper. Some bricks had the numbers on them from 0-10. On rectangle shaped empty stickers I wrote the numbers from 0-10. E. had to build the wall putting the stickers in the right places, on the matching number. She filled the empty bricks with empty stickers. (Sorry about these photos, they were taken by my mobile.)

(You can buy these stickers at a “one euro shop” – well, in Hungary at the Chinese markets or shops)

This idea has endless varieties: with the ABC, with big numbers, matching animals, clothes, everyday objects, playing with the colours, copying patterns etc. If you have any idea how to expand this game share it with me in the comments.

Books – some fun books to finish with

Dora the Explorer – A Birthday for Boots (By Scholastic)

In this Dora book, she and her friends buy some goody bags for Boots’ birthday party, but Swiper always takes away one every page.

I bought this book when E was just 1 year old and she loved looking at the pictures. You can talk about a lot of things in the pictures. There can be a lot of counting (goody bags, candle sticks, balloons etc.) but also naming objects connected to a birthday party.

My very first book of numbers by Eric Carl

This book is divided in two parts horizontally and your child needs to find and match the fruits in the bottom part with the numbers (written in numerals and also represented with black squares). As E. has passed two years old, she doesn’t need help, but around last Christmas when she got this book she needed help with the page turning and matching.

Flip me! Counting 1-10 (By Buster Books) You can read the full review of it here. I’m quoting just the essential part of it:

“Counting 1-10 has pages divided into two panels, which kids can rearrange to match. One side has photographs of objects to count <dolls, dinosaurs, sand toys, cars etc.>, along with words identifying the number and name of the object; the other side shows the numerals from 1-10.”

Once we took this flip book on a longer car journey. While she was looking at it, E. threw up. Use it some other places. It’s quite nice.

As numbers and counting are in E’s focus, I’ll come back with some more number games in the near future.

Spring nature hunt with a muffin tray

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Spring has arrived, together with some rain but luckily today it’s been sunny so we went out for a spring nature hunt.

I got the idea on mamapapabubba.com. This blog is written by a Canadian mum, Jen and she’s got great ideas I love stealing. The spring nature hunt is one of them.

So I was in a rush to prepare everything, because in the park where I was planning to do the nature hunt the grass is growing very high and it is likely to be mowed in the near future. Then we would lose all the wild flowers, high grass and our fun activity.

I’ve got and old muffin tray. It was in a very poor condition, so I sprayed it gold. This served as the receptacle (= a new word for me meaning: a container for storing or putting objects in) Then I asked Daddy to print the pictures of some nature items that I’d put together the previous night.

Our native nanny, A. arrived at 10.30 today and we were ready to set off.

E. is identifying what to look for

At firs E. was carrying the tray around, then we put it in the push chair.

E. is not a great fan of walking (she prefers to be carried), but this time she was running around looking for the items on the list, filling up the tray.

I thought it wouldn’t be easy to find seeds, so I took some wheat seeds with me from home, but A. was very attentive and found some. I didn’t need to fake anything 🙂

wheat heads

I knew exactly where we could find some moss. (E.’s favourite word from the list)

We also bumped into some bees and beetles we needed to observe closely.

 

One of E.’s favourite flowers is the dandelion and its clock. Now she didn’t blow the seeds away, but collected them in the tray.

 

E. succeeded in tucking a big horse chestnut tree leaf in the hole. Well done, girl!

We found a shamrock with four leaves. We’ll be lucky 🙂

Finding soil fascinated E. the most.

It was hard to find buds, but we managed in the end.

At home A. and E. went on to read E.’s nature book she got for Easter.

 

I’d like to thank Jen for the great idea. We spent a lovely hour with searching, enjoying the sunshine and learning a lot about nature.