Inspired by Autumn

Maria 3y. 4 m.

Autumn seems to be the most inspiring season, it stimulates creativity and motivates for arts and crafts. We enjoy lots of world famous masterpieces  created by the well-known artists, we read lots of poems devoted to the autumn time. The changes in nature happening in autumn such as leaves changing their colour and animals preparing for the winter are so diverse and so colourful that one can't miss it.

We could not neglect autumn time inspiration either and indulged ourselves with the autumn crafts:

1.     Autumn in the forest  - of course none can compare with the Autumn-Artist but still we tried to reflect our autumn mood on the paper. Maria painted colourful background, glued pieces of journal paper, which were supposed to depict birch-trees, and, then, finger-painted leaves on the trees.

 

 2.     Maria was dancing all around with the rowan beads and a bracelet we made together. This was a good exercise for the little fingers when she was putting rowan on the string with the help of the needle.

 

 

3.     Making a geometry ship recalled Maria about the basic geometric forms, which she was painting with the excitement for the ship to have beautiful sails. Later we enjoyed our ship floating in the nearest pond.

Overall the ship-building process was pretty easy and fast: a) put the paper sails on the chopsticks; b) made three holes in the plastic bottle for the chopsticks with sails and a nail in the back; c) tied a ribbon for our construction not to collapse after few minutes of sailing; d) the ship is ready for grand sailing! (not to forget to tie up some string to be able to steer the vessel)

4.      Acorn man, acorn dog and some strange creature J Maria was rather a passive observer this time, but an active acorn hunter.

 

Black’n’White

Andrew 2 m.

It’s well-known that the newborn babies cannot see the objects clearly and can’t distinguish the colours until up to three months old. The best distance for the baby to study smth is around 20 cm, which corresponds to the distance from the breast to mom’s face meaning that the ideal time for studying mom’s face is breast-feeding.

What babies are fascinated by (of course, after parent’s facial expressions) are the contrasts of the dark and light and specifically, black and white. Other colours, which are the first for the newborn to recognize are red and orange.

Based on this knowledge, together with Maria we prepared a training for Andrew – coloured in black some paintings  as well as made a rattle (made out of Pringles chips box, which we filled up with macaroni and taped the top of the box with black’n’white Mary’s drawing). Andrew’s reaction exceeded all expectations! =) he was amazed by these contrast papers and could stare at them for quite a long time. It was an excellent help to keep Andrew happy on his belly (which is usually the most disliked activity of the newborns).

Big City Life

Mary 3y. 4m.

Once we went to the airport to see off our dad, who was going to the business trip. Maria was soo excited by the view from the window, by the infrastructure of the airport, by the planes taking off and landing, that I could hardly persuade her to go back home finally.. had to pay the whole fortune for the parking .. oops..

 

When came back, we studied the planes and other means of transport we could find in our kid’s encyclopedia as well as watched some youtube films on the topic. The buildings and other city’s infrastructure, however, we studied in a more interactive way. We build the whole city on the piece of paperboard: organized the traffic with traffic signs and lights, planted and painted the trees, built houses with glued windows, parked some cars (everything was done by Maria except me cutting off the trees and traffic lights, and drawing the roads). She enjoyed building the city, though less playing with it. The city, however, was valued more by other kids coming to us.

Another thing we made was an outside activity, when we were drawing with the chalks. To make it more interesting there were some tasks for Maria and her friend to fulfill:

1.       Maria and our small neighbour Nick were given some paper stuff (e.g. doctor, airplane, animals etc.). They had to find the right place where to stick them to:

·         Doctor – hospital (hint: red cross);

·         Animals – zoo (hint: cages);

·         Plane  - airport (hint: runways);

·         Vegetables – shop;

·         Train – railway.

2.       Had to find and draw waves in the swimming pool.

3.       Finish drawing the railway.

4.       Draw some traffic lights

Maria added the sun placing it near the airport and other colourful dots saying these are the planets. So, we decided it is no longer an airport but the planetarium and a spaceport.J

Touch and Feel – Baby's Whole World

80% of information about the surrounding environment a newborn receives mainly from touching and feeling something as the eyesight is underdeveloped yet. Hearing is another sense, which helps to get the information about the world, and which is quite developed compared to the sight. Thus, for an infant the favourite music is mom’s and dad’s voices and the favourite feeling is parents’ touch when massaging or  lulling the newborn into the sleep.

Development of senses is closely connected to the intellectual development, therefore, during the first year it is essential to pay major attention to the sensoric as well as to the physical development. With every touch baby is learning about the life. Besides, it provides the feeling of safety, which stimulates self-confidence and makes baby calm and happy.

 

To make our newborn feel safe and comfort, we are trying our best to stimulate the development of senses: massaging, lulling, singing nursery rhymes, speaking and commenting his funny emotions.

Besides, with Maria we prepared a magic bag with pieces of fabric of different texture. Mornings and evenings we put these pieces one by one into Andrew’s small palms for him to have various feelings.

This magic bag can be also used by Maria in the form of the game proposed by M. Montessori: to find another piece of fabric of the same texture when eyes shut.

Professions, occupation, jobs…

Mary 2y. 3m.

.. the Thesaurus shows that the antonyms of these words are Entertainment, Fun and Hobby. For Maria the mentioned antonyms are perfectly correct definitions of the time when we were diving deep into the adults’ world to study some professions and jobs. As many kids, she is keen on learning more of what grown-ups are actually doing.

·         Watching presentations and flashcards;

·         Playing lotto about professions;

·        Trying ourselves what the guys of different professions do: seamstress (were sewing a rabbit), scientist-physicist (made different experiment with liquid solubility in the water - we tried gouache, Fairy washing liquid, oil), pilot (made and painted a pilot cap, were flying all around);

·         Cutting out and gluing different attributes of each occupation.

This is what we’ve been doing with Maria about a year ago. Now, of course, when she can concentrate her attention for longer time, I’d offer her more sophisticated games to gain knowledge further.  Indeed, the topic is endless and it can be studied at any age…

"Seasonal" Musical Mobile

Andrew being almost a month old loves when his sister turns on music for him, which often lulls him into the sweet dreams. When the musical mobile is turned on, Andrew is also interested in what is going on above him and is carefully watching the characters moving.

To make his view more diverse, we decided to make another four characters for Andrew to get him acquainted with some of the attributes of the four seasons we have. For Maria it was also a good exercise when she was gluing felt details together. We did the job in less than 15 min, so Andrew was soon able to enjoy the new stuff moving and sounding above him.

Sand Art

Sand art therapy helps to express children the “inexpressible”. Playing with sand helps to express feelings and aspects of the personal life experiences. There are no borders for expression except the bottle itself (in case of bottle sand art, which we tried with Maria). One can experiment with colours, forms, combinations…

Bottle sand art turned out to be easy, fun and exciting! Maria could not help playing with the sand, despite being late for her gymnastics class. She really enjoyed the process and the result, which can easily become a nice present.

Before filling up the bottles, we prepared some sand additionally as we lacked several colours – yellow, red, brown. The preparation process enthralled Maria as well:

1.       Pour some vodka in the bowl;
2.       Add gouache;
3.       Add semolina to get homogeneous mass, which should become dry and as crumbly as the sand.

Then, you are ready to proceed with filling up the bottles, which, by the way, to a great extent resembles Montessori type exercise.

We had some sand left over, so we decided to make a dolphin sand painting as well.