EASY PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

250 g self raising flour
7 g dried yeast
125 ml water
25 g olive oil
5 g salt
6 spoons of tomato sauce
1 mozzarella sliced

Dissolve the yeast in warm water (125 ml). Sift the flower with the salt on a the kitchen work top and add slowly the yeast and the oil. Knead until you obtain a smooth and elastic dough. Make a ball with the dough and let it rest on a bowl, covered and in a warm place, for 2 1/2-3 hours.
Put some flour on the work top and flatten the dough with your hands and then with a rolling pin. Spread the dough to 1 cm. Prepare an oven dish with baking paper and put the pizza base on it. Spread the tomato sauce on the pizza with the back of a spoon and then arrange the mozzarella slices. You can add other toppings of your choice.
Baked for 15-20 minutes at 200 C

reward chart

This morning at the course they taught us how to make a reward chart and how to mange it. I though M. was too young for this type of things, but they showed us that you can use a chart as soon as the child is able to understand about rewards, the important thing with a young child is to keep the chart simple and straight forward. Then they gave us some time to create a chart for our children, and me and my team member came up with a very good idea. We drew a big Yo-jojo (a Waybaloon character,our children's favourite) on a poster, and the idea is that every time our child does the behaviour we want, Yo-jojo gets a sticker, which they can put on it themselves.
For me the behaviour I want to see more of is doing as she is told straight away, without me repeating myself 10 times, losing my patience and then starting threatening her by counting to 3.
I thought that the chart would help, but probably wouldn't work straight away. Surprise-surprise, as soon as I introduce her to Yo-jojo and the stickers she was so entusiast and started doing what she was told immediately or almost immediately. I didn't have to count to 3 for every single thing, it probably happended once or twice, whereas before this counting was dominating my day!!!
I hope M. will continue to be entusiast about the chart. Yo-jojo collected 6 stickers today, and for being such a good girl M. collected a piece of chocolate.





ANIMAL PROJECT

On our way back home from the course we stopped at the library. M. sat down and read some book to the library stuffed giant panda. I went to the PC and printed off the lizzard I missed yesterday.
At home M. coloured in the lizzard and the hedgehog. Later in the afternoon I showed her some videos on the internet about hedgehogs.


WEATHER PROJECT

This morning M. had another fun walk through the puddles and this made me think about another project we can do. I though we could do something about the weather that teaches her the various weather conditions, what they are, why, and what they do to us and the environment. Starting of course with the rain.
At the library I got a couple of books about rainy days. "Rainy day" by Manning, "Kipper: Weather" by Inkpen and a very good one "A stormy day" by Petty (this last one has the oldest borrower dated 1989 and this is on the one and only stamped page! My God this library needs a proper lift)
"A stormy day" tells how the plants and animals needs the water from the rain, how the rain fills up rivers, about lightning and floods. Really simple but very interesting.
When she was having her nap, and after I finished tiding up the flat, I planned how I could teach her about the rain. I thought I would associate to the rain elements that she already knows: wellington boots, puddles and of course drops of rain; in addition I would introduce her to the rainy clouds and tell her how these are full of water that fall on the ground and this is the rain.
I drew for her a picture on a paper of all these elements for her to work on. I set the cotton wool to make the cloud, some blue gliter for the rain drops, blue tissue paper for the paddle, and small pieces of red paper for the boots (M. got red wellies)




When M. woke up from her nap, we began to complete the picture with all these materials.







When we finished we read the books about the rain.

Now I will wait for the sun, or wind or anything else to teach her about another weather condition.

ART AND CRAFT

Today I baked home made pizza for dinner. M. also made some pizzas and cakes with the play dough we made a few days ago. It was really good for her imagination-skills, and I must say she surprised me when I told her "oh you made a nice pizza" and she replyed "no, this is a cake!". I didn't know she could play with her imagination this much.
She knead, flatted, and cut the dough, then put pieces of "cake" and "pizza" on plates and pretended to eat them.
She loved it!






And when the real pizza was ready she eat that too! Well done mum, a really nice pizza.

SPLASH!

Today we went on foot to the local library. It is a good walk, especially for little legs, but M. is a good walker! I took the occasion to put her wellington boots on and let her have fun with the paddles on our way. The weather is terrible, not really an ideal day for a stroll, but ehi oh we can't always stay indoor!It is good to see how the world is when is wet!





M. had so much fun splashing with her red willies. It took us so long to arrive at the library because M. kept on stopping every two steps to look at something and asking "what's this?"; of course all things that she saw hundreds times and she knows what they are. I am wondering if instead of what she wants to say why but she doesn't know how.



At the library we sat down cosy with a few books, we read some and decided to borrow a few more to read at home. M. likes "Pippo" by Oxenbury, it is a series that tell the adventures of a toddler, Tom, and his monkey puppet "Pippo". All the books in the series are really nice to read and very realistic.
Later I went to print off some animals prints for M. to colour in.
I am thinking to make tuesday the "library day".


ANIMAL PROJECT


On sunday we watched Life on iplayer, the episode we missed on saturday. M. was impressed with a African animal which looks like a mouse and ran like a mouse. This animal was chased by a giant lizzad that wanted to eat it, but luckly the mouse managed to outrun it.
So I print out for her a mouse, a panda and a hedgehog which she had some interest in a few days ago. So bad that I forgot to print out a lizard, because when we came back home and started to colour in the mouse, she asked me to watch the mouse and the lizzard on the iplayer again. After that she started pretending to be a lizzard and she didn't finish to colour the mouse.

This is how our poster for the animals project looks like now.




THE WORLD AROUND US

Saturday we went to feed the ducks.





M. had another encounter with the squirell, but this time no accident happened, so this may help her get rid of her fears.
Later we went to the play ground. We were there just 10 minutes when the ice-cream van arrived singing its ideous tune! The children disappeared to return with a ice-cream cone each. M. wanted one as well. There was no way I could make her change her mind. I rushed to the van before it left (I dind't want a possible tantrum) and found I was 9p short...oh please just put a little less ice-cream for us. The man agreed and gave us a full ice-cream but without the chocolate flake. M. still doesn't know much about ice-cream to realize, and it made my day!

terrible 2 here I am!

The prophecy has become tue! What awful behaviour M. has having these last few days....it seems they are waiting for their second birthday to completely transformed themselves from little angels to terrible toddlers! Not a baby anymore but not quite a child...stuck in between and just becoming frustrated. Oh dear oh dear and I am the one who has to deal with this! It is getting quite tiring: all day moaning, crying for any stupid little thing, not wanting to play with her usual friends and refusing anyone. On top of this she is not sleeping enough during the night, going to sleep late and waking up early, and every mother knows how difficult a tired child can be!

Nonetheless I managed to keep her amused with some activities.

5 SENSES

I have finished the "smell" section. To the mixed dried herbs, pepper and coffee beans, I added chocolate powder, mixed spices and fennel seeds.

She tried the different smells and I hope she will go back to the box from time to time.

The "touch" section is under construction.

ANIMAL PROJECT

M. got interested in snails and their behaviour. She wanted to understand how they go inside their shells. We have a couple of books that feature snails in their tales, so I read them for her and explain to her that the shell is the snail's house and that it retreats inside when it is scared and as a defence from other animals that may want to eat it.

I drew a snail for her and she coloured that in for our wall poster.

ART AND CRAFT

We did some painting using the wheels of a toy car. Just going with the car on top of a big drop of paint and then make it run on top of a paper. This will result in lines across the whole paper.

M. liked this simple activity and played with the car and the paint for a long time.

We also made play dough from a recipe I got from the childen centres. It is really easy and M. could help me made the dough without much mess. The dough is actually much better than the one you buy because is softer and little hands can model it easier; you can also add some drops of food coloring to give it the colour you want or add essence to give it a nice smell. We had some chocolate powder to give it a yummy smell.

M. liked adding the ingredients to the bowl and mixing with a spoon. Later she had fun cutting with a plastic knife the sausage dough shapes I made for her.

Recipe

1 cup of flour

3/4 cup salt

1/2 cup water or more if needed

1 table spoon vegetable oil

Mix all the ingredients and knead until smooth. It can be covered and kept in the fridge for 2 weeks.

my one year old is gone

And here we are on the last day of my one year old. Tomorrow M. is 2.

How time flies. of course I miss my baby, I miss her when she was so tiny and just started crawling, and then walking and then the first few words. My baby is a little girl now. I am sad...a bit of course...for now she is still my little girl.

ANIMAL PROJECT

We coloured in a bee and its elements of connection: a hive and a man that collects honey. She learnt how the man wears protective clothing so the bees don't sting him, and how the bees make honey inside the hive.

Now she has an interest for pandas, so I guess this will be the next animal we will look at.

VARIOUS

These days she has been wanting to helping me with the cooking, pouring water in the pot, adding salt and other ingredients.

Here she is adding mushrooms and olives to a pizza.

She also wanted to take some pictures...I was a bit reluctant to let her use the camera, of course she wanted a bit of revange for all the pictures I take of her!

This is the picture she manged to take of mummy.

Mostly though she wanted to draw. She is drawing lots of circles and lines saying they are children, mums, dads, babies, snakes, frogs, crabs, trees.

She is drawing every where: on the train, trolley, car, buggy. I always take with me a pen and a paper and this keeps her busy for ages! Really great!

CERAMIC PAINTING

Oh what a busy week, I feel exhausted! We didn't have much time to do many activities this week because, beside appointments and other things I had to do, we are helping out a person very dear to our heart. It has been a quite hectic week and today I will take a break from every thing, just try and relax.



Just to give the final blow to my energy level, yesterday I planned a trip to Greenwich to visit the maritime museum, and just by chance I found on the internet this interesting place which is a ceramic cafe' just few steps from the museum. The name is Biscuit and it is a very special coffee shop where all cakes are home made by local ladies, and it is also a ceramic shop, meaning that you can choose from a large range of white ceramic objects to paint as you like and take home. In the web site there was no mention of prices, which I found a bit tricky; I decided to give it a go, and if it was too expensive I would just direct myself to the museum as back up plan.



It would have been a completely fine trip, and a really enjoyable day, if the public transports would have been decently working! But unfortunately it seems an habitual fact that on week -ends nothing is working properly! Underground lines closed or partially closed and replacement buses running overcrowded! A terrible journey, that really sucked up my last resources.



Biscuit (http://www.biscuit-biscuit.com/) made the journey worthwhile (but of course next time I will make sure every line is working before even thinking of going). The cafe' itself has a lovely atmosphere, clean and simple; the cakes look delicious and there is a wide variety of biscuits and snack for the children too. Their ceramics come in every shape and size: from tiny bears to big jugs and plates, and depending on the size they are divided into 4 category-prices. Even the lowest category can be expensive as it start at 10 pounds. Nonetheless, thinking that the paint, brushes, glazing, the fun, and taking home something painted by your child that you can actually use are all included in the price, you may conclude that it is not that bad after all.



I chose a mug at 10 pounds for M. to paint. I made her chose the colours she wanted and we set ourselves on a table. M. was really confident, she just sank her brush in the paint and started waving it onto the mug. Colours got mixed and there was too much paint in places which I tryed to spread onto other parts of the mug. When she finished with the background I put paint on her little hand and made an impression of it on a side of the mug, then I drew a flower and a butterfly in black with a thin brush.

It wasn't a bad art after all. In one week it will be glazed and ready for collection. Looking forward to drinking tea in my little artist's mug!

After biscuit we went to the maritime museum, where M. had a fun time looking at the various boats and touching and playing with all the bits and pieces in the "hand on" section.

Both places provided us with a fascinating experience, but not too soon it was time to prepare for the very long and tiring journey home! M. slept in her buggy and woke up when I was getting off from the last bus. Finally home!

Cold and snow again...this winter doesn't seem over yet. Never mind, we got plenty of things to do indoors this week.

SCIENCE

We slowly started the animals project. M. chose to colour in (and out) the ostrich and the cheetah; while she was colouring I was describing the animal major physical characteristics, e.g. long legs, feathers, beak, also reminding her of how the animal behaved in the clip we saw on "Life". She was very interested and participative to the conversation.

The day after I drew a baby ostrich hatching from an egg and made her colour this in. The egg will be the connection element to the ostrich, like the honey will be for the bee and the butterfly for the caterpillar. Then I taped the animals onto a wrapping paper and made a poster. During the following weeks and months we will use it to put other animals which M. will find interesting.

5 SENSES

Today I started to make our 5 senses laboratory. I started from the sense of smell.

I used chocolates treat gift boxes, something that I had in my cupboard (no, I didn't eat all the chocolates!); they are small boxes with a lid where I made lots of tiny holes using a needle. Then I filled one with espresso beans, one with pepper corns and one with mix herbs. I put the lid back one and sealed it tightly with tape.

I will add more smells, one of which will be a dangerous one: chocolate powder! For the rest I still need some ideas.

A BIT OF PLANNING

VALUES

Yesterday we finished off M. photo album. I printed some more pictures of other friends and family members to complete the album...still someone missing but we will sort this out next time we fly back home!


As last time she added some stickers and she tried to remember episodes to connect to each person...funny what she remembers!

SCIENCE

Today, during my 30 minutes workout on the stepper (!), I was thinking about a project I could do with M. about animals. Yesterday evening we caught the last part of "Life" on BBC FOUR. She was enjoying it very much and she stayed focus till the end. She was particularly impressed by the scene where an ostrich is put down by three cheetahs, she was especially curious about the ostrich. This morning she brought me her animals book where she had found a picture of an ostrich. She didn't really care about that animal before, but now she was quite keen on showing it to me and tell me all about what happened on TV.

I took the laptop and started searching for some videos on ostrich and I found a couple which she enjoyed watching.

So I thought that it would be nice to make her colour in a print out for each animal she is curious about, and also find something else to colour in about the animal, for example a huge egg for the ostrich and a butterfly for the caterpillar. I searched a bit on the Internet and I found this very helpful site http://www.first-school.ws/ where there are lots of educational resources for toddlers, and many colour in sheets of basically anything.
Tomorrow will be the first day of our animal project, which will be dictated by M.'s interests of the moment. I will anyway start from her previous curiosities which her bees,caterpillars, dinosaurs and now ostriches and chitahas.

Something that she definitely fancies is playing with her tea set and water. She is drink so much of her "tea" that I have to change her nappy so much often and sometimes I have to change her trousers and top too....
To give it an additional educational edge, today I introduced a real tea bag to her water, and then we observed how the water changes colour. This made me think that it would be a good idea to show her how water changes colour when we add some food colouring to it, I may even try to put a sugar cube in the water and show her how this also take up the colour.


COLOURS

I have also thought that I must re-enforce her colours knowledge a bit more. For now all the colours are named "blue"!

This afternoon I set out an activity in which she should have painted some pasta of the colours we have experimented before, so that, once dry, she could play with her pots and pans and her colourful pasta, this will help her see the colours during her playtime and hopefully learn the names. In reality she didn't find the business of paint the pasta something that she fancied. She just painted 2 or 3 shapes and left the table. I then finished the job to ensure the good outcome of my experiment. Will keep updating on the progress.

5 SENSES

I also elaborated something that it was in my mind for a long time but that I didn't have the time to think it through. I would like to make a kind of "5 senses laboratory", something I remember from my montessori nursery days. For the time being I will work on the sense of touch and smell. I thought to find something smooth, rough, spiny and soft and try to encase it or frame it. Then I need herbs and spices to work with for the sense of smell; probably put them in separated boxes and make holes in their lids. All of this will then be put in a big storage container that she can access whenever she likes.

I will to start the laboratory next week.

Maroccan style lamb cous-cous

This is a very special dish because today M. helped me preparing it by adding the spices, the water, the raisins and the chick peas.

INGREDIENTS:

Lamb dieced
vegetable oil
1 tin of cooked chick peas
1/2 a tea spoon of tumeric
1/2 a tea spoon of cinamon
1/4 tea spoon of ceyen papper
a pinch of saffron
20-30 gr of raisins
2 onions quartered
1 tea spoon of salt
2 eggs
cous-cous


Diece the lamb and I prefer discarging any fat. Heat up a spoon of oil in a large pot and add the lamb, cook it untill brown. Put the quartered onions and all the spices, mix for 1 minute. Add 3 glasses of water and salt. Bring to the boil. Cook for 1 hour or untill the lamb is soft (the smaller you cut it the quicker to cook). Open the chick peas tin and rinse them with cold water. Add to the pot together with the raisins and with another 2 glasses of water. At the same time you can cook the eggs in another pot or cook them in the same pot as the lamb.
Let it simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
Meanwhile cook the cous-cous as for manufacturer instructions.

Pile the cous-cous on a plate, then put the lamb mixture on it and moisten with some broth.
Peel the eggs and cut them in quarters and add to the plate.

SO FAST A PROGRESS

M. is getting more and more confident with her manual abilities. Today she amazed me when all by her self she cut some paper and then sticked it on a sheet of paper!

Fantastic: in a week she learnt how to glue and stick paper, then she learnt how to use the scissors, and today she done it all!

I know many mothers would be really scared to leave scissors in the hands of a two years old. I believe that we must risk the fact that our child may get a bit hurt to give them the confidence to try things and learn. I reduce the risks by giving M. rounded point scissors and staying really-really close to her so to give her a prompt response should she have a chance to hurt herself; also I never take my eyes off her.

She was definitely very proud of her work of art and I was there to bust her confidence even more. What a shining star!

Later M. helped me with cooking the dinner. I posted the receipt and it is delicious!

PRAISING OUR CHILDREN

This morning at the incredible years course (how to manage difficult behaviour) it was all about praise. How good consistent praise does to a child, when we should praise a child and in the different types of praise. I think that what really makes a huge difference in praising a child is labeled a praise: not just say to the child "well done" or "good boy", but tell him exactly why we are praising the child "well do for listening to mummy", "good boy you finished your colouring". Yeah, I believe that this way of praising makes much more sense for the child, so that he knows exactly what he has done good.

M. had a not so good morning in the creche. Having recognised the building she was already starting crying, asking me to take her home, but at the same time she was also walking to the entrance... When I was about to leave the skies opened and millions of tears were running down her checks! I couldn't do much, I hoped she would settle. Eventually she did. At break time I went to peep through the glass door and saw she was playing with the other kids.

When I went to pick her up I put immediately into practise what I learnt from the lesson, and I told her how good she had been waiting for mummy and playing with the other children (things that I always say but now I knew I to chose my words better).

I then went shopping and she behaved so nicely by staying in her pram without complaining, so that I decided to reward her even more by buying her a new toy for her kitchen: a kettle and a toaster. The kettle makes some sort of noise by manually activating it and the toaster makes the toast jump. They both don't require batteries and they come quite cheap at 6 pounds for the two at Argos.

ROLE PLAYING

At home we played with the new toys. I allowed her to have some water so she could pretend to boil it and pour it to make tea. She passed a good half an hour making teas!

CUTTING AND STICKING

At the creche they had set out this cutting and sticking activity and M. went immediately for the scissors and started to cut (yes she did manage to cut) some paper. That was the point when I thought right to leave which she didn't agree. So I don't think she made the most of that activity, that's why I re-created it for her at home. I bought some wrapping paper and some tissue paper and let her cut parts of them. Then I drew a girl on a sheet whose clothes would have been covered in paper cuttings later on.

M. enjoyed to much the cutting part that didn't want to do any sticking. Only cutting and cutting and cutting. I let her cut as much as she liked, and I was really impressed on how good she is for her age. Seeing that it didn't seem that she would stop cutting soon, and getting a bit bored, I did the collage with the paper pieces she was cutting. When she got tired of this activity more than one hour had passed....

IMAGINATIVE PLAY

When on monday we went to the library M. chose to take home a book we had already borrowed from the library some time ago. It is a Walker Big Books a very big book with big text and huge pictures entitled "Walking through the jungle". It is the nursery rhyme told through a book.

M. loves it because I sing the rhyme to her flipping the pages at the right time in the rhyme and we both do the actions. "walking through the jungle, walking through the jungle" (and I walk around the room) "what can you see, I can hear a noise" (I put my hand next to my hear and say ssssss) "roar roar" (I turn the page) "it's a lion, looking for his tea". And then we do running, crawling, leaping and more through the jungle copying the various animals.
I saw that the same editor has published "ten in the bed", which I want to get hold of and have fun with M.

salmon noodles

INGREDIENTS

1 or 2 salmon fillets
rich soy sauce
sesame seeds
honey
egg noodles

Marinate the Salmon in a mixture of soy sauce and 2 spoons of honey for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile toast the sesame seeds in saucer on a low fire until golden, then put a part. Lift the salmon from the marinade and put it on the same saucer to cook (you can start flaking it when it's half cooked to speed the process).
Cook the noodles as for manufacturer instructions.
Once the salmon is cooked, add the sesame seeds and mix well; add the cooked noodles and some more soy sauce. Serve

dinosaurs do SNAP

On sunday morning I rang up a couple of friends with children and organize a day out at the National History Museum. I was so excited to show M. the dinosaurs; recently she keeps on reading the same book about a funny witch and her cat having an adventure with dinosaurs ("Meg's egg" by Pienkowski). In the book a dinosaur wants to eat Meg (the witch) and her friends so she makes a spell and all the dinosaurs become really tiny. The ferocious dinosaur opens its jaws and "snap". She likes the book so much that she wanted to go to sleep with it on saturday evening, so in the morning I didn't have choice but to take her to see the real dinosaurs!

I must warn you not to go to museums on week-ends, especially with small children, it will stress you out! The museum was packed, we even had to queue to enter, it was quick though, but then we had to queue to hung the coats and later to have a coffee. There was a 20 minutes queue even to see the dinosaurs section, so we had to skip that attraction but luckily we could see those dinosaurs exposed in the central hall which were in a sufficient number to please our little ones. M. enjoyed looking at all these dinosaurs and their different shapes, from the very tall one to the one that looks like a giant turtle. We also visited the apes, the bugs and the birds areas which were all very fascinating for the children.

Of course M. kept on running off to take a better look to something we had already seen, or just to see something else. That part wasn't enjoyable at all because with all those people I could have lost sign of M. very easy, that's why next time we will come back on a week-day and we will certainly go back because M. enjoyed this experience very much.

A part from "Meg's egg" I've noticed that M. got a bit bored of all the other books in her home library. When I read she keeps on turning the pages very quickly, then she turns them back, she starts again from the beginning to then skip through the pages and get to the end. I thought that it would be better to make a trip to the local library, a dingy, old, not very exciting place, it would do with a bit of paint and so furnishing...anyway it got a good selection of books for children. We went this morning after the toddler group in a children's centre and we brought home 15 books of any sort. On our way we also stopped in a charity shop where I could by 3 books in good condition for the price of what would be a brand new one (3.70 for 3 books is excellent I think). These charity shops are a real hidden treasure for children books and toys: good for your wallet and good to do some good too!

M. was so curious to read all the books she forgot about her lunch. She especially liked the story of "little red ridding hood " and the two books I got from the library in the series "Pippo" by Oxenbury.

When she woke up from her nap we kept on reading and reading again all the books.