Moving to a new blog

With the arrival of our second child I have decided to move to a new blog. From now onwards you will find us at http://childrenintotheopen.blogspot.com.es/.
It was lovely to have you as readers. Many thanks!!

What's new: sense of humor, going extrovert, and new baby

It's been two weeks since baby A joined our family.
During these two weeks a lot has been going on at many levels. I still too feel weak to write a full post but I did want to share the news as well as the fact that M is undergoing great changes. She has suddenly become a big sister and shows interest in the baby specially in his needs. She has also been showing her peculiar sense of humor as of late, changing rhymes, for instance. It is fun to hear her recite "this piggy went to mercadona (local supermarket), this piggy went to Lidl (another supermarket)". The rest of the piggies cried... We have noticed she seems to have outgrown what I thought was her innate shyness. She is very talkative and even answers when someone she hardly know asks her something.
My best intentions of posting about our Advent's activities will remain just intentions, I am afraid. We had planned an activity for each day but we only got to the 5th. I hope we can go back to them next year...

I'd love to hear about you!! Are you in the midst of Christmas preparations?

What's new: adverbs everywhere

We've been quite busy doing Christmas related activities and baking as of late. Time goes by real fast and I don't know how much time we have until baby's arrival. I feel it closer these days, but who knows, the due date is Dec., 15th.
The figure of the gingerman has been ever present since I introduced it to M. She likes it so much we have it on a t-shirt, we make gingerbread cookies, use the cookie cutter to play with the play dough, and I have even made a gingerman hand puppet. Unfortunately this photo is the only one to share... I will try to make some pictures of the results of our activities but it turns out that M gets distracted by the camera if I want to photograph her while she is working so I have ended up taking very few pictures. Concentration is something we value highly around here.
We have rushed up our Christmas decorations this year and our house is already filled with toddler's art, just in case M's brother arrives and we don't have time for that. We hung up the Advent's calendar I made last year, made salt dough Christmas decoration painted with glitter, and filled the shelves with Christmasy things. The three finger puppets we got last year (Rulphus, the reindeer, Snowman, and Santa) are among M's favorites.
Hearing M talk is amazing these days. She speaks mostly Catalan, although she addresses me in English with very few exceptions. Most of the time she describes what is happening here, there and everywhere, sometimes mixing events from the past but never forgetting to sprinkle her sentences with adverbs. She has started using frequency adverbs, which is quite fun since they are not exactly "properly" used. When she repeats what she is told, you can get the impression she knows what "yesterday" or "tomorrow" means as in "Clara is coming tomorrow", but other times it is clear that she is adding the adverb just to make the sentence sound better, longer, or the like. She places them in the right position, though. Her use of connectors is also something. She can use the "because" to connect two sentences that have nothing to do one with the other. However, the more she uses it, the closer she gets to the correct use of it.
It is amazing how language is acquired through experience and repetition. In my opinion it is highly valuable to engage in one's children's language acquisition, since the more verbal they are, the less probabilities there are for tantrums.This is just my opinion, I repeat. However, I often see children whose inability to express what they want lead them to throw tantrums. These children's caretakers often can't understand what is going on.
Well, I feel I really need 1) to get some sleep, and 2) to devote some time to writing opinion articles... but for both I need time and I don't know where I am going to get it from...
Good night!!

Play dough

M concentrated on decorating the play dough with marbles, pipe cleaners and string

It's been some time now since we first started making our own play dough. At the beginning, about half a year ago, M was not interested at all and the dough would remain in a basket on the shelves until it dried out. However, I decided to give it a go before Halloween and this time it has certainly been a success. We made it for a weekly play date and the other girl enjoyed it very much as well.
Something that has surprised me this time around is that the dough gets better and better the more used it is. M asks to play with it everyday and it has become soft and resilient at the same time that it's kept the cinnamon flavor. We are very happy about the recipe we are using, so I've thought I would share it.

That's the 2 of us making the dough

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 cup of salt
2 tablespoons of oil
2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
1 cup of boiling water
food coloring for color
essence, spices, or essential oils for flavor

We mix all the ingredients in this order and then knead until the dough looks all right.

We could make some balls to give as play-date favors out of this batch

This recipe contained a little bit of orange food coloring for color and cinnamon to give it a scent that would evoke the season. Another batch we've made had a little red coloring to make it pink and strawberry scent. My husband pointed out that it really looks like chewing gum and it is true.
With a little bit of black construction paper and a short piece of green pipe cleaner, we turned one of the balls into a small Halloween pumpkin for decoration. But this is of course an activity for older children...

Rainbow activities

Colors were the first topic we worked on when we started this school year. After some activities that reinforced the notions of basic colors M already had, I decided to widen the scope to secondary colors and what better than the rainbow to work on seven colors?

The first activity I left next to the window just as a suggestion was a foam rainbow together with a bowl of water. M knew well that those foam pieces stick to the glass if soaked in water and the moment she saw the invitation, she set to work. Once she had been working for a while, I took the opportunity to review the colors with her and sing the rainbow song a couple of times. 

Foam rainbow and a bowl full of water

It took M less than a week to learn these seven colors, after all only four of them were more or less new but it made 14 words, since she learned them both in English and Catalan. 

Among the rainbow activities featured also our home-made crayons, which were quite used for a while.

Something else we made was a painted rainbow to use for matching activities and these have engaged her several times since we made them around the second week of September for the first time. Had I been thinking of posting this, I would have used tempera or acrylic paint but since I thought it would be an activity for a while I used crayons. It would have looked neater...

M matching painted clothes pegs to the rainbow

Matching colored feathers to the rainbow

Home-made watercolors

M really likes painting, coloring, and experimenting with paint, so the other day I set up an activity that cost me close to nothing and that turned out really successful. 

We made home-made watercolors. We had never tried it before and it was really simple. First, I gave M a dropper full of water and a plastic egg box. She experimented with the dropper a little bit, then accepted my help. We would otherwise have had way too much water in each hole.

We then added a little bit of cinnamon, orange and green food coloring, turmeric, and curry, and we had nice watercolors to paint with!

Do you have any favorite home-made paint recipes or painting ideas? I would really like to hear!!

Button snake

I had never shared a video before and I don't think I will do it often, but this time I've considered it the clearest way of showing our latest creation.
I was inspired by Counting coconuts to make this button snake, and well, it was actually my mother who helped me with the sewing. Well, she has more time than I do and is much better and faster with the needle. It was not our first button activity but it was more age appropriate than the one I made before. I had not planned to introduce the button snake to M yet but the other day, while moving some boxes, the snake fell to the floor and I thought "why not" present it on a tray, just as an invitation to play.
The button snake is a nice invitation to learn buttoning and it turned out to be a real hit. Not only did M get the button through the buttonhole but she spent considerable time in a state of concentration that I love to observe. She enjoyed the activity so much that we took it to the car, where it is always a bit difficult to find interesting things that she can do while seating.
The snake is really easy to make. You only need a string of cloth that you can cut out from remnants, a button -I chose a big one, like the ones winter coats usually have-, several squares with a button hole in the middle -I used felt for those- and you have the toy. Simple, cheap, and nice. And a nice way to learn how to button up.