every new word

WORDS

Every day M. is saying a new word! It is amazing to hear her pronounce perfectly, sometimes trying to say or say in her own way a word that the previous day she didn't know. She is bla bla speaking with the usual words and suddenly there you have it a brand new word that just fits right in with her sentence and instead of a pointing or a sign there is a very clear well pronounced word!

Also we have already started the phase of "what is this mummy". It happened four days ago, at the tender age of 23 months and it didn't stop, I know it won't for a long time. For now I am very happy with her curiosity, answering to her questions in a polity, calm and motherly way. Of course she is asking me about things that have always been around her and she surely know their use (carpet, umbrella, cream); I think that she just want me to repeat the world for her, so she can learn it.

To improve on her already fab progress we used our flash cards and now she is willing to try and say more words whereas before she wouldn't even attempt to. I noticed that she takes a long time to learn a new world in my mother tongue, but she registers an English word so quickly she can repeat it back the second after it was pronounced! She knows so many English words that I never taught her, she just learnt them because she overheard me talking to someone or from the TV. She would probably speak first in English if i wouldn't put so much effort for her to learn our mother tongue.



EYE-HAND COORDINATION and MANUAL DEXTERITY

M. is having a big fun time with mega blocks recently. She used to build only tall towers made of the single unit blocks, or add to my constructions some single unit blocks here and there. Now her imagination has grown. She is building "aeroplanes" and "houses" and she wants to use all the blocks, adding them on and on until there aren't any left. The way she fits the blocks together as developed a lot in comparisons to few week ago.

Mega blocks are really good to play with in M.'s age because there isn't a real goal to achieve, just put them together and see what will come out, it is an enjoyable toy for all the family, it is probably the activity that will keep a small child interested the longest, and also it helps with eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity.

I love the mega blocks my self!

COLOURS

We done some colour in activities. Sitting with her I let her give me with crayon or felt-tip she wants me to use and then I label the colour (oh M. is giving mummy red), so that she will also learn the names of the colour. Then I ask her which part of the drawing she wants mummy to colour in, and I colour that part that colour until she gives me a new colour. It doesn't matter if a girl's hair will get colour in red rather than in brown or yellow: this is her drawing and she can choose to do it in any colour she likes. This will be more enjoyable for her instead of listening to mummy saying "no, girl's hair aren't red". I believe she likes to say to mummy what to do for a change!

I enjoy seeing how confident she is making choices of colours and what drawing she wants to do the colouring on.

MESSY PLAY

We played with water: I filled up with some water her bath tub and put her dolly, different size containers and her tea set to make a tea for the dolly. Of course she had lots of fun and after 15 minutes I had to stop the activity because she was totally wet!

We also had fun with finger paint where M. splat and splat her hands and then spread the paint all over the paper. It is quite messy but she didn't want to stop splatting.

ROLE PLAY

We usually play with her kitchen and plastic food, but this time I tried to introduce real food like pasta and rice and wasabi nuts (sure enough that she won't eat them). I didn't have anything else suitable but I guess dried lentils, chickpeas and fruit are good too.

I showed her how she should pretend to put water in the pot, add the pasta and then the salt... mix and then put the lid on the pot. When ready the pasta is put on the plates and served...mmmmmm.

She then copied every thing I did, adding the rice and other things to her dish too.

This activity is also good to experience different texture; for this point it may be nice also used cooked pasta for different textures.

MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS

M. likes to look at photos on the laptop or on my mobile. I thought it would be nice to have a photo album all for herself that she can look at whenever she wants without depending on me.

Also in continuation with teaching fundamental values, I selected some pictures to print for her photo album that capture M. with her family and friends, so to stress the importance of family relations and friendship.

During this week I also want to print some pictures of when she was a baby and make a chronology of her growth so that she can see herself through time. This will help her understand that she is changing and that she used to be a baby too.

ART AND CRAFT

I could have bought an album and put our photos in it, but I preferred create our own so that we could personalize it and M. could help making it too.

TO MAKE THE ALBUM YOU NEED:

As many colour paper sheets as the number of photos you want to put in the album

ruler

pencil

a cutter

cutting board

glue (Pritt)

puncher

a string

stickers, glitter, anything to personalize the album

Fold your paper sheet in half.

Measure your picture and draw its shape with a pencil and a ruler on one half of the paper. Then measure 0.5 cm from each side of the photo shape and draw another smaller shape. Put the sheet on a cutting board and cut this smaller shape out with a cutter.

On the other half of the sheet glue your photo making sure that it fits nicely on the shape you have cut out. Glue the rest of the sheet around your photo and carefully fold the cut out sheet on top.

Then I let M. chose which sticker she wanted to put on each photo and I let her stick it whenever she liked it apart from on the faces.

Then I used a puncher to make two holes where I passed through a string.

later I hang the album where she can easily reach.

M. likes the album very much and she is always looking at it, commenting on what she and other people are doing in the photos. It is especially nice for her to always be able to see family members that she can't see very often.

Later in the evening she wanted to do some sticking with the paper that I cut out to make the album. So I let her glue and stick pieces of paper freely on a sheet and she enjoyed this activity very much.

caterpillar, caterpillar

THE WORLD AROUND US

M. has taken a deep interest in caterpillars. She already enjoyed reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Carle, and when one day last week I related it to her every day eating habits, that was when everything became real for her. I told her that if she ate too much chocolate she would become fat like the caterpillar and then she would have a big stomachache like it. She opened her eyes wide and she rubbed her belly to say "stomachache", she didn't ask for chocolate that day.

She started taking her caterpillar pull along toy with her every time we went out (in reality it is a snail, put taking the shell off, it may look like a caterpillar and I won't argue with M. on the fact that it is actually a snail if she is happy with it as a caterpillar)

When yesterday I told her we would go to the park to look for caterpillars she was all excited. We found one caterpillar and many worms, which we classified as caterpillars for the day. She explored her surroundings in search for caterpillars, she liked looking at them, how they looked like and moved, she didn't like to touch them, but eventually she held one in her hand for 2 seconds.

Back at home, I drew a caterpillar on an apple and I glued it on our seasons-tree; then we put on it some cotton wool as snow, so we created our winter season tree.

GARDENING

Our gardening experiment is also continuing. M. is in charge of watering our flowers when I remind her to do so. Very often we go and check on the progress, and we are really pleased to see that the giacints should be blooming soon. The tulips are still a bit sleepy but are growing too.

COLOURS

We are continuing our discovery of colours and their names.

I managed to get her focus for 2 other colours: orange and purple/bourdeux.

For this two colours I showed her how mixing 2 different colours together we can obtain a third colour. First I mixed red and yellow to obtain orange. Then I let her experiment the colour orange on a paper. After that I mixed red and blue to obtain pourple (the proportion of red was a bit too high so I rather obtain a colour closer to bourdeux, but this doesn't matter for the porpuse of our learning the colours). M. painted another paper with the pourple colour and after both papers dried I hung them on the wall next to the rest of the colour we learn to recognise.

A bit by bit I will show her most of the colours. Our journey is just at the beggining.

the seasons

On Thursday we had a very busy and tiring day. On your way back home we stopped in the next door park for some energy realising activity for M., since all morning she was restrained on the buggy. She started picking up small branches from the floor and throwing them in the air as if to copy the natural process of branches following in Autumn.


I got an idea from this, and I picked up some branches and leaves myself to take home. We also found a feather and took it home with us.


At home we drew a tree on a paper and then glued the branches, leaves and feather on it.





Next time we will go to the park we will pick up some other leaves and then stick them on the feet of the tree (Autumn) and then stick on them some cotton wool pretending is snow (winter). Later in the year as spring and then summer will arrive, we will change our tree according to what we will find in and around the tree.

mushrooms risotto

I recently discovered how M. loves mushrooms! I used to cook mushrooms risotto before, but now I started adding a lot more mushrooms for M.

INGREDIENTS:

Risotto rice (Canaroli or Arborio)
mushrooms (any kind) chopped
1 garlic clove
stock cube
water,
salt
pepper
nutmeg
Parmesan cheese grated
butter
2 table spoons sunflower oil


Heat the sunflower oil in a pot on a low heat, add the whole garlic clove and let it fry for 30 sec. Add the chopped mushrooms and stir. Let them cook for 2 minutes then remove and discharge the garlic. Then add salt, pepper and a grating of nutmeg. If the mushrooms start sticking to the pot put the lid on. Let them cook until soft. On a separate container prepare the stock with boiling water and half a stock cube.
When the mushrooms are ready, add the risotto rice to them and stir constantly for 1 minute. Then add enough stock just to cover the rice and stir constantly until all the stock is absorbed. Add some more water just to cover the rice once again and wait until it is absorbed. Continue in this way until the rice is cooked. Add some more salt to taste.
Once the risotto is ready, put a bit of butter and some grated Parmesan cheese in .
Serve immediately.

Risotto is good as soon as it is done, it can't be re-heated.

Our In The Night Garden Stage

ART AND CRAFT


This morning we went to have a tour of another nursery. I must say that I was quite happy with this one, very close to my standards! I am thinking of sending M. to the nursery next year for the government founded 12 hours...it's free so why not, it will be fun for her.









Back from the tour we had our messy art section. We made two masks, a lion face (to scary mummy) and a butterfly.














FOR THE LION MASK


YOU NEED:




paper plate


cotton wool,


yellow paint


brown felt-tip,

scissors,


liquid glue,


yellow glitter,


elastic band,


sticky tape




Draw a lion face on the plate. Take the measurements of your child eyes and cut out the eyes of the face of the lion. Spread the glue all around and sprinkle with glitter. Spread the glue around the edges and arrange the cotton wool like a lion's hair. Pat yellow paint on the cotton wool.


Let the mask dry.


When dry, make to small holes either side of the mask on the same line as the lion's nose. Cut one side of the elastic bend half way. Put the elastic through the holes and tied each side with a nought. Secure the elastic around the nought with sticky tape.


Done!






I cooked lunch and then M. went for her nap.

IMAGINATIVE PLAY

While she was sleeping I made for her a fun In The Night GArden stage, where she can make up her own stories with the Night Garden characters. This will stimulates her imagination.



TO MAKE THE STAGE


YOU NEED:





2 A3 white paper sheet


black felt-tips


crayons or felt-tips


scissors


self adhesive hook and loop press tape


card board


cereals card board or similar






On the white A3 sheets draw a simple background with the black felt-tip. Colour in as you like.

































glue your background on two cardboards and then glue them together at one edge to form a single background.



























For the character you can draw them yourself on the cardboard or print them from the cbeebies web site and glue them onto cardboard. Colour the characters in and cut them out.































Cut the hook and loop strip into small pieces. Stick one part on the back of the
character and the other somewhere on the background. Do this for all the characters and stick some other loops around the background, so that the characters can switch

places and move around the space.

Now your stage is ready, and lots of stories can be created by you and your child.

children centre morning

It seems like I can't work out how to make my blog show on google search... I have just done the last attempt by notifying it to Goole, hopefully they will sort this out.


M. has spent her morning in the children centre, playing with water and the dolls house. When I attended the course about play and communication, the tutor was giving an example on how to play with your child following the 5 rules (describe, describe, describe,describe, ask) showing M. how to play with a doll and a doll house. It was fantastic! At first he asked her many questions, like we parents usually do when we play with our children, like:"where shall we put the doll?" "what does she do?" "shall we put her here?". M. was looking at him like he came from Mars. She wasn't moving, she wasn't answering any of the questions, waiting for him to do everything. And then he played following the rules: "look this dolly wants to have a bath, she turns the tap on...oh dear it's too hot! She turns the cold tap on...now it's better. She is having a bath, and now she is trying up with a towel." M. was observing carefully, and when he finished playing, she took the dolly up and she started copying exactly what he had done early! Amazing.
Of course this was an eye opening experience, and I started communicating with her in the describing way rather than in the questioning way.
She grew so much since then, now she can play with lots of toys alone when before she didn't know what to do with them.

When we came back home from the children centre, she got some animals and characters out and started playing alone, making sounds, moving them around and talking to them.




We had a great time at the children centre; there are lots of different activities troughtout the week and they are all free. They also organize some adult courses, as the one I attended, play and communication, first aid, cook for a fiver and many more. More over you are able to meet other parents with the same age child as yours and they can play together and you can have a chat. You can find information on your local children centres on your council web site.

easy chicken cous-cous recipe

INGREDIENTS:

1onion/half if big finely choped
2-3 pieces of chicken with bones
3-4 carrots cut into big chunks
1 courgette cut into big chucks
1 tin of cooked chick peas
2 spoons of sunflower oil
1 tea spoon of cumin
1 tea spoon of paprika
1/2 tea spoon of cinamon
salt
water

Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the chicken and let it brown on all the sides. When it is half cooked add the choped onion and let it soften. then add the spieces and mix for a minute. Add salt and a glass of water. leave to boil for 5 minutes.Add the carrots and 2 glasses of water. When the carrots are half cooked, add the courgette and the chick peas and another glass of water. Leave to cook for a further 15 minutes.

In a separate pot cook the cous-cous as instructed by the manifacturer.

Spoon the cous-cous onto a plate and on top put some of the vegetables and the chicken, then a little of the stock.

Enjoy

Feeding the ducks=sense of responsability

At last a sunny day!
We were looking forward to going outside this morning, the sun puts me immediately in a good mood!
It has been a good week since last time we went to visit our friends ducks and squirrels. We try to go regularly especially now that not many people are going out to the park and feed them.
For two weeks the pond has been frozen, and all the ducks were squashed in a small area where the water didn't freeze. They were really starving and the food we brought didn't last long. Even the squirrels came rushing, coming really close to us as if they wanted to snatch the bag with the bread. One of them, thinking that M. had something in her hand, scratched her, but actually M. just wanted to touch it. The scratch was tiny but M. got really scared! In fact this morning she said before leaving the house: "no, no food to squirrel".
M. took her baby, buggy and a pull along toy to the park. She pushed the buggy with the baby and pulled the toy for a little while, stopping hundreds times to make sure that the pull along toy was following.
The pond was still partially frozen and all the ducks were still stuck in the same place.
We got out our bag of goodies and they all came rushing. M. enjoyed throwing the bread crumbs and looking at how the ducks were eating; she also fed the pigeons but when a squirrel came close, she stepped back and left mummy feed him.
We also looked at the leaves on the footpath, which she immediately linked to the trees around us.
Later we went to the play area where she had lots of fun climbing up and down the slide ladder. A bit of swing, a bit of seesaw and off we went back home.

This morning has been about her relation with nature: feeding the ducks teaches her respect and sense of responsibility for the environment and how she plays an important part in taking care of the animals that live in close proximity to us.

planting a little seed in a child, planting a bulb in a pot

Hopefully someone in the future will follow my blog, for now it's just me.




I thought I will tell you about my previous fancy activity with my girl. I got this one at the nursery where I volunteer and I thought I had to absolutely do it with M.

In fact, as soon as I got home, I rushed with the buggy down to Wilkinsons and bought some tulip and giacint bulbs for our experiment, it was October and now the giacints are almost ready to come out!




A BIT OF GARDENING



What you need here is:



soil from the supermarket


some flower bulbs (choose the one right for the season!)


flower pots


water


newspaper




Lay the newspaper on your floor or if you can just go outside so you do not have to clean afterwards! Let your little one put some soil on the bottom of the pot, then show him how to make a hole in the soil and let him drop the bulb in (the pointy end upwards). Cover the bulb completely with soil. Reapeat with the rest of the bulbs. Then fill up a small bottle with enough water for one bulb and give the task to pour the water to your child. In this way the child will be supervised and guided step by step, but he will have the feeling that he has done it all by himself.



Write the date on a lable and stick it on the vase.


Remember to water your bulbs regurarly helping your child in this task. Watch together all the progress of your little flowers!





In our case we took pictures of the development of our flowers and I intend to make a poster with all the sequences of the flower growth for M. to look at and learn the life cycle of a flower.

one step in the right direction

Today was a really grey and rainy day...it is the third day in a row that me and M are not going outside for some fresh air. It is also saturday and both of us felt like relaxing.

In the morning M. had lots of fun bathing her plastic dolly, while mummy was giving her a bath.
The we watched some Cbeebies and I explained the cartoons in my mother tongue
I use my mother tongue when I speak to her, I am really keen on her learning our mother language, but of course she is picking up lots of English words too from TV and children centres sections. We also jumped and danced to the Cbeebies songs which she enjoys very much.


After lunch we read some of the books in M's home library. She knows all of them by heart and sometimes she even "reads" them by herself. I started reading to her since she was two months
old, I don't know if it because of this early start or because I also enjoy reading so I injected this passion in her, but M. loves books more than TV: she can keep focus on the cartoons for 5 minutes, but she can read with me for 30-40 minutes and more.


M. had 3 hours nap (really unsual mind you), and I had time to exercise on my new mini stepper machine and cook dinner.

In the afternoon we did some activities.


WORDS


We looked at the flash cards. With this activity I show her a picture and I say out loud the word, slowly and divided into phonic sounds (su-n, ho-me) and she will try to repeat the world.
Aworld must be repeated lots and lots of times
before a child can say it, so this activity must be done a number of times before you can see (or better, hear) the results.

What I use are the "Usborne look and say First Words" which are 30 chunky, actractive flash cards. Under and at the back of each picture there is the written world, so that you can use them also when the child is learning to write and read.

Everytime M. try to say the world I give her lots of praises, clap hands, smile, so that she is encouraged to learn the sound of the world.



After this we learnt the names of the colours RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE.







To do this I made her paint a white paper for each of the colours and kept on repeating the sound red, when she was paint the paper in red, yellow and so on. When they are dry these can also be used as flash cards for the child to say the name of the colour.



After this we had a bit of free drawing with all the colours.



NUMBERS:


M. sorted out a wooden peg puzzle that has numbers on it from 1 to 10. She took off all the pieces and I asked her to find the number 1 showing her how it looks like in the puzzle, when she found the piece and put it in the right place, I asked her to find the number 2 and so on.



SCIENCE:


This was not meant as an activity but M. started it by chance and I explained her what was happening.




M. wanted a mandarin to peel, she loves peeling this fruit. I draw a face on it as I always do to make it more fun.


when she finished she started squeezing the juice and making a mess everywhere. I was almost about to tell her off when I stopped and thought that this was a very good idea actually.



I explained to her that the mandarin was made of water, that's why this liquid was coming out, and that it was juice, like the one she loves drinking (and that she actually only sees coming out from a box). She was really excited and she asked for another mandarin to squeeze.





There you go, as I said every experience is learning for little kids: we, as parents, can't waste an apportunity like this one just because it makes a bit of mess and makes our home a little dirty.



















ART and CRAFT and FAMILY VALUE


We played with playdough. I made a small family made out of playdough: a little girl, mummy, daddy and a cat. While I was doing this she was trying to make shapes and tearing the dough to pieces (this help manual dexterity). each time Imade a piece for the body of our figurines I tell
her the name of the body-part (head, leg, arm, hair, tail etc).

We put all the figurines next to each other and we put their hands together: they all love each other like it should be in a family.




















































For dinner we all had chicken cous cous. I posted the recepit.
Good night

Welcome to our brand new nursery-school

Hello and welcome to our web page.





This is a new journey for me and my daughter who is the most precious and wonderful gift God gave me, and for this reason I want to make her grow and educate her at the best of my capabilities so that as young landy, and later as a woman, she will shine and be recognised for her good manners, her knowledge, her values and her education, and this will make all my efforts and my struggles as a mother worth while.

I have decided to start home schooling for my daughter at an early age because I believe that through play and art and craft all children can learn every sort of thing, even if they can't still talk and their abstract intelligence is not developed enough to learn all the math and science. Another reason is because I am quite disappointed with the nursery education that children receive here in UK: I have been voluteering in a state nursery-school and I kind of understood how the system works, and now that it is time to register my daughter in a nursery I have been visiting many to find the best one in the area just to find out that really they are all the same. I was brought up with the Montessori system and I hoped to find some elements of this system in the state nurseries as well, this is not the case. State nurseries are not allowed to do any structural type of learning, only games, cut and stick and colouring. In my opinion at 3-4-5 years children should be doing something more.



My home schooling will be based on fun activities for my daughter, that will be enjoyble but also have some structure so that she will be able to learn new words, numbers, colours, shapes, values, get to know the world around her. I hope to incorporate some of the Montessori system in my teaching. Of course a young child needs to socialize and interact with his peers, and knowing the importance of this aspect for a child's development, I am taking my girl twice a week to the local children centres, that provide an unvaluble service to the community. There she is able to do lots of messy activities and meet other children, learning how to share and take turns.

Some days I will entertain my little one with lots of activities, other days it will be more about play (role play or just play for playing's sake). Every day holds a new experience for a young child, he just needs lots of explanations and guidance to bloom.



I will also post some of my daughter's favourites food recipes, since in every nursery there is also meal times.



Hope you will enjoy our nursery and that you may find some useful ideas.