A Matter of Choice

When you get a new piece of furniture what do you do with the box?  If you are 7 years old the answer is surely 'Get straight in it' Louka was overjoyed to see this big box on the balcony when he came home from school and he threw off his shoes and got straight in.  He lay around in it for a while and then got out for lunch.  I did suggest he could eat lunch in the box but apparently that would be silly.  The idea to paint the box however was much better received. I realise that I hovered over the boys way too much when they used to paint, worried about them getting paint everywhere (on marble floors which are easy to clean!)   or on themselves or who knows what, so I gave him paints, brushes and refused to have any more to do with it.   He asked me what to paint, I didn't give him any suggestions,    (other than 'the box'  as I'm just so easily amused)   He asked me about the colour...

A while ago I saw this great alternative play dough over on MumCentral .  It looked easy enough to make and even better a nice cheap activity! We collected some sand on our recent beach trip  and we had the other ingredients in the cupboard already. You need: 3 cups of sand 3/4 cup water 2 cups of flour (I found we needed more at the end as it was a bit too sticky) 1/2 tablespoon white glue How to make it - Mix the flour and water to form a sticky dough, Add the sand gradually, ( at this point I gave up trying to mix it and just tipped it all out and kneaded it together.  I then realised it might have been better to make it outside as I covered my kitchen in sand!) Mix in the glue (I made a dip in the dough and just kneaded it through)  and knead until the dough becomes the texture of rough feeling playdough. Leo loved the playdough and spent much longer playing with it than he has with any other playdough before, not only that but he was quite h...

It's not often I come up with a creative idea that's all my own and not inspired by Pinterest or another blog post but yesterday I think Leo and I excelled ourselves! When we started I had no plan whatsoever, only that we were going to make a card or picture for Nana for Mothers Day.  I gave Leo some 'roly paints' and some paper and let him get on with it. He stared painting a butterfly so I showed him how to paint on one side of the paper and then fold it to duplicate the pattern. In typical Leo style he then decided he would do that but only use one colour, therefore kind of missing the point! As pretty as an all purple butterfly was, we agreed that it should have more colours so abandoning the paints we found some shiny coloured paper to improve it. With me holding the paper, Leo cut all the bits himself and stuck them on. He was very impressed with his 'beautiful butterfly' and said it was just like in the 'Hungry Caterpillar' book.  It was...

October is probably my favourite month now I live in Cyprus, it used to be July or August in the UK, working on the principle that there was the most chance of a bit of summer then.  The temperature here slowly starts to cool at this time of year, and after the long hot summer (made much longer and hotter by being big and pregnant!) its a welcome relief! Being quite excited by the change of season I thought it would be good to do something to mark it and teach Leo that there is more than just 'Summer' and 'Winter' Last year we made an 'Autumn Tree'  and this year my 'crafty' friend and I decided to make some Autumn wreaths with the kids after seeing 'The Boy' making one. I'm all for simplicity when it comes to crafts and this certainly fitted the bill! Cardboard circles, crayons, glue, ribbon and different coloured paper leaves was all we needed, along with the patience to explain why we there weren't just green leaves. The...

Although I'm not naturally 'crafty' or imaginative I do like to try and come up with new ideas for fun activities to do with Leo, and ones that are in some way educational at the same time are even better!  I was confused recently when a friend of mine said how impressed she was at all the ideas I had, then I confessed that they are rarely my own and mostly 'borrowed' from other people's blog posts or Pinterest! So I surprised myself the other week when I decided that Leo and I should make an 'Alphabet book'  Unless I saw this online and can't remember I think I might have actually came up with this idea myself! Leo loves to read and knows his letters very well and I'd realised lately that he is starting to recognise words and read them even without a picture next to it. He will also happily spell out words when prompted. So I gathered together a load of cute clip art, one picture for each letter of the alphabet and cut them all up.  Usi...

Leo's never been one for getting dirty, once I would have thought that a good thing (and it has some advantages!) but on the whole it's something I've been trying to change.  Last year I made some cornflour goo and that didn't go down very well!   and he would moan about getting paint on himself. We have done hand print paintings before but usually only getting a few prints out of him before he realised he was covered in paint, his favourite part was washing his hands at the sink! This week however I was very surprised... After some hand prints and painting I tried to show him how blue and yellow mixed together would make green, he was not at all interested until he realised that he could paint his hands with both colours and see those turn green!      All of a sudden it just got interesting! Linking up with The Gallery  - this week's prompt is Colour

One thing we do see a lot of here at this time of year is rainbows, I think I've seen more in Cyprus than I've seen in my whole life, it might not rain that often but when it does the sun is not usually far behind so it's a quite a common occurrence at this time of year. Leo loves seeing the rainbows, and we often see fantastic ones from our balcony. He doesn't understand that they don't always appear and is disappointed when they don't, I explained that you have to have sunshine and rain, and there was no sun that day, so we made our own. We painted a plate, I'd like to say he did but as ever he did a couple of brush strokes and then wanted to watch me!  I did just about manage to get him to allow me to draw round his hand though for the 'sun's rays' - I think it would have been a bit odd with my hands!   When the plate was dry 'we' stuck the hands around the edge, the sun was going to have a smiley face but Leo informed me ...

Cyprus - an island in the sun, with 340 days of sunshine a year, or so they told us!  So that means only 15 days of rain right?   I think that might be a little bit of exaggeration creeping into that sales pitch as it seems we've certainly had more than enough of this.... On Wednesday this was the view that greeted me as I opened the curtains,  I suddenly had the feeling this day was going to need a bit of effort to survive it. Leo has been suffering from a bad cough which had seemed to be on its way out but has now turned into a streaming cold.  I am amazed at the amount of snot that can be produced by one child! Because of this, Leo's not feeling his best and therefore is not he's usual happy self. A plan was needed to cheer him up....Let the activity day commence! First up...... Making biscuits, but not just any biscuits, oh no, a day like this calls for the most exciting biscuits you could imagine if you are 2..... train biscuits! Ther...

Since (hopefully) enrolling Leo to start at pre-primary school later this year I've been thinking of what I can do to help him settle in. Although I'm trying to learn Greek and I know he will pick it up very quickly when he starts I want to do all I can to make it more comfortable for him. Obviously his English is much better than his Greek but we have always tried to teach him things we know as we've gone along. We taught him to count in both languages at the same time, for a long time he didn't separate the two,  counting 'one, ena.. two, dheio'  but now will count in whichever language you ask him to.... when he feels like it of course! He knows colours in both languages and will often pick something up and ask 'What's this colour in Greek Mummy?'  to reply with 'yes that's right Mummy, that's clever' when you reply! I've been following a great website now for a while - Greek For Kids and I'm certainly going to start...