Baby Sis – language development

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L. turned 1 in December and her babbling and cooing is more and more like talking. Of course, we comprehend little, but she understands everything we say to her in both languages.

 

At the moment, baby L. is almost 14 months old. For a month now she’s been using sign language as a way of communication with us. She shows the sign of more, hello/bye, me, flashcards, where, eating, bird, duck, yes, milk, sleep just to mention a few.

On the other hand she’s started to say words, mainly English ones as they are much easier to pronounce than the Hungarian words. She loves words starting with b:

  • boob (well, she’s breastfed )
  • bra (her favourite word at the moment)
  • bray (for bracelet)
  • bú (Hungarian version of what the cow says – moo)
  • bee (for bib)

Also likes words starting with D:

  • dut (duck)
  • Daddy (more like daaaaa-dy)
  • dog

Whenever she sees a dog she says “vau” (sometimes more like “bau”), which is the Hungarian word for woof. (She looooves dogs)
She used to say “tej” (milk) but nowadays she’s rather been showing the sign or saying boob.
So far so good. Keep going my little girl.

 

Carnival fan decor

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Apart from the garlands we made for decorating our flat for the carnival season, E. and I made this really large and spectacular window fan decor.

E. is in the phase of folding. She isn’t interested in folding her clothes (what a pity!) but paper. I thought we should do something with this folding. Well, our window fan decor turned out pretty well.

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E. chose 7-8 different coloured paper (A4) and we folded them starting at the short side. When we were finished with all 8 sheets, we started to staple them at the bottom to make a fan. Then we stapled them together on their sides.   Actually, E. stapled them very carefully (under my close supervision).

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After stapling the sides together, we realised 7 was enough. I put a string on the top of it and hang it in the window.

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To be honest after a day I found a middle too scruffy (the staples were visible and there were holes between the sheets so I cut out a circle and glued it in the middle.

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Pretty and easy, eh?

How do you decorate your home during the carnival season?

Carnival decorations – garlands

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February has come and we are preparing for the carnival (“Farsang” in Hungarian). Although E. keeps telling me it’s not carnival but one of her water friends’ birthday party decorations, I guess we can call these simple paper decor carnival decorations as well.

What you need is

  • coloured paper
  • scissors
  • glue (stick)

Ring garland:

Cut strips of paper. Make a ring (glue the two ends together) and make the next ring so it goes through the first. 20170201_1346401

Continue until you’ll get a long garland:

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Square garland:

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Again cut strips of coloured paper (I used A/4 sized paper but the longer the better). Glue two different colour strips together so they form an L shape. Then all you need to do is fold the strips on top of each other. If you run out of paper strips you can glue on some more.

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We made both creations in 2 languages as we were working on them for several days. In English we revised the shapes, like rectangle, square and circle and colours. We also used vocabulary like glue, fold, cut, join, hang and decorate just to mention a few.

I’ll come back with a fan kind of decor. The stapler was in great use when we made it. Stay tuned.

Peekaboo board

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Touching, licking, putting her finger in or on something are L.’s favourite sensory activities at the moment. With E. we created this touchy-feely sensory board from materials we found around the house.

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I started to collect the Zewa moist toilet paper tops quite a while ago. Altogether I managed to collect 8.

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I used a cardboard piece that came as a parcel. We looked around and E. picked 8 different textures:

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  • a strip of white IKEA kitchen drawer mat (bumpy)
  • a yellow sponge wipe (squashy)
  • the blue side of a kitchen scrub sponge (rough)
  • a metallic scrub sponge (silver and shiny)
  • a torn orange plush onsie (velvety)
  • blue jeans
  • bubble wrap (bumpy)
  • shiny green and gold satin (soft)

But you can use whatever you find at home like mop head, sand paper, silk, etc.

We drew the lids around inside/outside on the cardboard…

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… then we marked and cut out the materials

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Finally I glued the materials on the cardboard then glued the white lids on.

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I let it dry for a few days just to make sure the glue won’t let go. (And I put some dictionaries on top of it for pressure.) As for the implementation, I could have been more precise and a little more careful with the glue.

At first sight Baby Sis enjoyed lifting up the lids and touching the different surfaces. But her interest didn’t last long.

Since the first try we’ve been looking at the touchy-feely board but after a glance she moves away. Anyways, E. loved helping make it and she sometimes plays away with it for a while.Baby Sis might be interested in the board a little more in a few months time.

Baby Sis turned 1

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I can’t believe a year has gone! L. has turned 1.
We celebrated it in the circle of our extended family. I made a cake that she could eat (chestnut and cherry cake without an egg), but also ordered a raspberry mouse cake for the other family members. Both of them were appreciated, however, the chestnut cake was all gone by the next day , the mouse cake wasn’t.KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

A few words about our one year old:

She is still tiny. Size 74 is still a little too big. (she’s about 72 cms and 7.8 kg)

She is cute, cute and cute. She still smiles a lot, but when she’s bored, had enough or doesn’t like something she screams. She’s got a complaining tone of voice, which is very funny, occasionally annoying (mainly at dinner time).

She babbles a lot in a most varied way. She uses her hands to gesture and give emphasise to what she talks about.

No words, though. Sometimes we make fun of her when we can make some real words out of her babbling. But she’s trying. Words starting with ‘b’ are her favourite: book, boob, ball, bye. She calls them boooooo

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She says something similar to duck, dog, ball . But I can’t say these are clear words. I couldn’t make out Hungarian words yet.

Her intonation is fantastic. She can copy us perfectly.

She understands everything in both languages. (She waves when we say hello, or bye-bye, she shows certain signs like ‘finished’, ‘milk’ or ‘more’)

She loves music. Sometime she cruises to her old baby swing and turns the music on and starts shaking her little bum. She also loves it and calms down whenever we sing to her. She enjoys pushing the buttons on noisy books or hitting her tiny xylophone.

She and E. take a bath together and L. imitates blowing whenever she wants bubbles. She does the same when she sees a candle, though she can’t blow it away.

Flashcards are very popular with her. After having enough of eating she points at the cards. Her favourite categories are animals and baby objects.

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I’m really looking forward to this new year which, I hope, will have a lot of language development in store for us.