(tiny) tot school - Nursery Rhyme - Fluraichean is rosan



Luath is 15 months



Flùraichean is ròsan

A h-uile duine còmhla

A-tuisiu, a-tuisiu

A h-uile duine sios

Tha sinne air an ùrlar

Tha sinne air an ùrlar

Tha sinne air an ùrlar

Ach leumaidh sinne suas

This week I picked a Scottish Gaelic nursery rhyme, it is a bit like ring a ring a roses, can listen and download here.  I selected a flower theme as the bluebells in the woods have just come out and are looking stunning. The only problem was that we have very little flower things to work with.

We sang and acted out the song.

Our books were very loosely based on flowers/gardens.

We spotted flowers and blooms while out for our walks.

We made flower shapes

 

We did lots of activities with milk bottle tops - working on sorting by colour (on/off success with this), picking the same colour as I held up (again on/off success), stacking, making into shakers (the dog loved this!). throwing them into a basket.

We also had out some lego style blocks and enjoyed making castles.  Luath's baby had fun being the king of the castle and humpty dumpty.

Craft
I made some playdough dyed with carrot and then butternut squash.
Music
we listened and danced to the waltz of the flowers from the nutcracker (we listen to music free here - might only be available in UK and Ireland)
Other things this week
we went for a sensory touching leaves walk

Had a sensory cooking experience

Find out what others were up to this week at 1+1+1=1

some flower resource pack links

http://3dinosaurs.com/wordpress/index.php/free-mini-flower-pack/

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2012/03/flower-unit-expanded.html

http://homeschoolcreations.com/gardenpreschoolpack.html

this weeks 7days7ways

 This week's 7days7ways to add a little more to our outdoor time:
Day 1- Stop at a lochan to listen for this year's first cuckoo

Day 2 - Feel the different tree (and bush) leaves while on mummy's back

Day 3 - An after dinner evening outing to see the cows

Day 4- Stop to talk to the cockerel and hens

Day 5 - Spot flowers

Day 6 - Train the dog

Day 7 - watch some bikes taking part in a competition

Background:

I read about famiglia&seoul's 365days outdoor challenge she set herself after reading Rebecca P. Cohen's Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids (you can get 50 ideas via Rebecca's blog if you sign up) and I also have read Greening Sam and Avery's everyday outdoor play resolution and I decided to do the same.  Simple things to get more out of our outdoor time (we already are out most days dog walking) and to try and be outdoors everyday (some days it is so wild daddy walks the dog, but we will try and go outside for a little while).

(Luath is 15months)

Sensory leaves walk

 

The deciduous trees leaves are starting to really come to live and some are gorgeous in colour.  They were  very inviting the other day as it had been raining, they had some droplets of water and were looking fresh, young and bright.  As Luath starts our walks on my back (it gives the chance for the dog to get a decent speed walk), she is at the perfect height to touch many of the leaves.  I needed to gently bring a few branches closer to here and hold them steady.  We (yes I touched them too) had a good investigation of some of the different tree (and a bush) leaves - soft, hard, smooth, spiky, different shapes and sizes.

  

 When Luath was off my back she decided to check out last years leaves.

 

Book of the week -Whoosh around the Mulberry Bush ad this week's 5-a-day books

Book of the week

Whoosh around the Mulberry Bush

A fun book that you can't help but sing.  It begins with children around a mulberry bush and then moves to different habitats, with different weather and different animal noises and ways that they move.  2dig and vie", "hot and sticky jungle vines" .  The illustrations are colourful.  I think it is the singing that Luath loves most about this book.

5-a-day books
(I started doing this after reading this post from almost a year ago on the Imagination Tree blog about selecting five books to read everyday for a week and why it is important), 

The litle mouse, the red ripe strawberry and the big hungry bear

We have this in Gaelic but I can't find it online.  The story is in the style of someone speaking to the mouse.  The mouse has found a juicy big strawberry but the narrator tells the mouse about a hungry bear who loves strawberries and can smell them from miles away/  He gives the mouse some advice.  Short text, detailed pictures.  We like the ending.

Tickle Tickle

Board book.  Short text per double page.  Great sounding words.  Luath enjoys the actions and loves the final page and the tickles

On the go (just like me)

Board book with large flaps to lift.  Has a picture of an animal and an action the animal is doing i.e beetle is crawling.  Lift the flap and their is a baby/toddler doing the same action and says Just like me.  We have another book that repeatedly says "just like daddy". Luath used to say just like daddy for this book, but now she says just like me to both books.  We will get them right one day!

Humphrey's garden

Board book, short text with line drawings.  Humphrey loves going outside to the garden.  It tells why he loves the garden.  Luath liked pointing out things in the pictures especially the ducks and flowers

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Summer Bucket List

I have a few ideas that would be fun to do over the summer and I want to make sure that I have anything we need beforehand.  Summers here are a bit hit or miss.  Our first summer here it pretty much rained for the whole six weeks of the school holidays, last year we had a glorious two week spell of hot weather.  The chances are it will rain quite often, but we should hopefully get some "summer" days.  I am making summer the period from the summer solstice (20th June) until our village show date at the end of August.  The list is pretty low key and I've tried to have things that we can still do no matter what the weather is.  I'll print it and put it on the fridge as a reminder of things that would be good to experience. 

Our list (some with links), have listed any prep (more for me!)

• nature wand walk - stick, double sided tape
• paddle in the sea
• tickle game - make tickle wheel or similar
• PYO fruit
• wet paper fun - paper from recycle bin 
• picnic -rug,basket, goodies
• a family wedding
• make lemonade - 4apples and a lemon (supposed to have a juicer but will give it a go)
• bandy net fun - a bandy net
• have a BBQ -BBQ bag, goodies
• walk outdoors barefoot
• fly a kite -kite
• a storytime walk -book and maybe props
• use bath paints (growing a jeweled rose has great bath ideas) - bath wash soap, cornflour, food colouring, ice cube tray, toothpicks                      
• blow bubbles - washing up liquid, water, sugar using recipe here, a wand
• build a sandcastle -bucket, spade
• start a magic tree - some shiny things
• see Olympic football
• leisure centre activity
• paint with feet -homemade paint, heavy paper/cardboard
• have a puppet show -puppets, sheet 

linked up with Little Wonders Summer bucket list 2012

(Luath will be 17-18mths over this period)

UPDATES - Posts of our summer bucket list activities

An early start
A story walk with chalk

Indoor Play - Baldilocks and the three mismatched bears

Last week after I had been unwell I needed to find some low key but engaging activities.  Luath loves stories and we have done some story time with props before which went down well so I decided to use some of the week's bear themed books.  One book in particular - Goldilocks and the Three bears screamed out to be acted.  Only problem we don't quite have the right cast,

Goldilocks has lost her lush locks.

Daddy is a koala bear.

Mummy is a pink patchwork bear.

Baby is a panda bear.

I used an upturned basket for a table, three mini muffin cases as porridge bowls, with 3 of Luath's spoons.  The chairs were a step stool. the armrest of the sofa and the sofa itself.  For the beds I used 3 different cushions, all with different textures.

We began by reading the story a few times  The book has a part of each double page to feel so we ended up reading it a few times.

Next we acted out the story.  I deviated from the words in the book so it would last longer.  Luath loved the eating the porridge part, so much so that she would rescue the bears from the woods (hiding behind me) and feed them some too.  We had lots of fun when Baldilocks went to try the beds as both Luath and I would rest our heads on the cushions too.

We acted out the story slowly a few times on two different days.  It was a brilliant game for a low energy mummy.  It was only later when I was thinking about  how different our characters were to the traditional cast, that I realised that it really shows the type of person I am and hope Luath will be. It is nice to have the right gear and things to be close to perfect but I would rather make do and still be able to enjoy the experience.   If there is a recipe I want to try but I don't have all the ingredients then I adapt.  I hope the in the future Luath  can do similar i.e. if she hears some ballet music and wants to dance but has no tutu and pumps that she will happily dance in whatever she has even if it's wellies - of she takes after me she will unlikely have a tutu!

I had almost finished this post and it was in my draft folder when this morning I read that Rainy Day mum had acted out the same book with he kids, here is her take.

Toddler kitchen - making cooking a sensory experience

I found a great book on slow cooker curries in the library, so I dusted off the slow cooker and have been making some meals based on recipes from the book.  Using a slow cooker really suits us but for some reason I seem to forget we have one!

I decided to make a version of Spiced  red kidney bean curry today.  Recently I have read about how a child's sense of smell doesn't develop well until around 2years, not sure how accurate that is or not, but I thought that since most of the ingredients in today's recipe were quite distinct, that it would be a fantastic sensory experience.

I measured and set out each of the ingredients.  The spices I put into small dishes, I felt just like a TV chef.  I followed the recipe and talked Luath through each process, with her helping me a little.  Luath is still very much a cling to her mummy, so she was on my hip through the cooking process.


At each point when a new ingredient was to be added, I told Luath what it was, and then slowly brought it towards her nose and let her sniff it if she wished and for as long as she wished.  Her favourite word at the moment is "no" (can mean, yes/no/or anything in between), so we had lots of "no"s, but each time I offered her a smell she either had a short sniff and wasn't interested, or she lingered.  She liked cinnamon, but we already know she loves the flavour.  She liked coriander but wasn't keen on the onion/garlic combo.

I found having all the ingredients pre measured quite an enjoyable experience and well worth the extra washing up.

Recipe
original with what we did in brackets as I didn't have all the ingreds and we had curry yesterday so decided not to have curry again today
2 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 onion finely chopped
1/2 cm cinnamon stick (used ground cinnamon)
2 dried bay leaves
4 garlic cloves minced
2 teaspoons peeled and grated root ginger (used ground ginger)
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons mild or medium curry powder (missed this out, but added some smoked paprika)
400g tin tomatoes
825g red kidney beans (used butter beans)
200ml boiling water

Heat oil in pan, add onion, garlic, cinnamon, bay leaves, ginger and strir fry for 5mins.  Then add coriander, cumin and curry powder.  Mix.

Put tomatoes and beans into slow cooker.  Stir in onion mix and boiling water.  Cover with lid and cook 4-6 hours . Remove bay leaves and cinnamon stick.  Can swirl in natural yoghurt and chopped corainder leaves to serve.

I accidentally switched the cooker off after 4 hours, didn't realise until a few hours later but it had cooked well in 4 hours.

We ate it with couscous.

Shared with happy whimsical hearts see what else kids are baking and cooking this week  

(Luath is 15months)

Dye from orange vegetables revisited

I had a trial a few weeks ago at extracting dye from carrots to use to colour paint..  I hadn’t given the process much thought but I did manage to turn some paint slightly orange.  After reading a few different articles and having a think I tried a different method.

Method
First peel, top and tail and chop the carrots into smallish pieces. 
Use a mini blender/chopper to grin the pieces up small.

Spoon the vegetable pieces into the centre of some muslin.  Wrap the top of the muslin, sort of into a cone shape.

Then twist, squeeze, squash the bag over a dish, to extract the juice.  I made some playdough and added the carrot juice as it was heating.  It was only a tablespoon into a 1/2 cup of flour mixture.  It did turn slightly orange

The next day I was cutting up butternut squash to make a curry and decided to do the same process with the bottom of the squash.  The butternut squash yielded juice easier and much more compared to the carrots.   I just added the juice directly to the playdough I had made already, along with some more flour to even out the wet/dry balance.  It was a much better colour.

I would suggest using the squash, it is much easier to extract the juice and you get more.  Squash is more expensive to buy, but I used the top half for a curry and the bottom part to make the dye so it was quite economical.

I gave Luath the playdough as I finished off preparing the curry.  She played with it for a short time then threw it on the floor.  Oh well, at least the dough keeps in an airtight container for another day.
shared with Tuesday tots see what else tots have been doing


(Luath is 15months)

(tiny) tot school - Nursery Rhyme - teddy bear, teddy bear

15 months

source

I hadn't quite decided what theme we would do this week but as we had ended up with most of our library books featuring bears, so I selected the nursery rhyme "teddy bear, teddy bear". 

This week things were mostly stories and songs as we had quite a few mini traumas.  I was unwell (daddy managed with help of his colleagues to take an afternoon off as I could hardly lift my head off the floor that afternoon), our 30year old fridge broke (not easy to get another one where we live so we have a mini fridge meantime), my car had to go into the garage to get checked (thankful it is fine and they looked at it for free) and our boiler broke (it took one afternoon and the next morning for the guys to repair it, now that wouldn't be free!)

Learning Basket
lots of books featuring bears

some soft toy bears and some bear cookie cutter


Activity File
Acting out the words to "teddy bear, teddy bear".   There are plenty different versions and sometimes we added in some more verses.  Luath can do most of the actions but struggles sometimes with the "touching the floor" line.  We also sang and acted out "if you are happy and you know it" as it was one of her bear books.

We used the teddies, Luath's doll and some household objects to act out "Goldilocks and the three bears".  It turned into a  very unusual story - a koala daddy, a pink patchwork bear mummy, a baby panda and a bald Goldilocks.  Luath loves feeding the bears porridge.  We also acted out "going on a bear hunt".







We ate some marmalade sandwiches (Paddington bear), had some honey on oatcakes (Pooh bear) and of course some porridge.

Other things this week
We enjoyed the acting out a story so much that we did it with one of Luath's favourite books "aarrgghh spider".



Luath did lots of screwing a top on and off her doll's beaker it seemed to really engage her.

We had a lovely warm day and had our evening meal outdoors, listening and watching the sparrows going to and fro their nest.

Luath had great fun playing with some thread spools, putting them in/out of a bag, stacking and rolling them.


She was determined to  put on and stand in my croc style shoes, she had many goes over a few days and did manage to stand up.


We attended a party in the hydro pool for a cousin's 5th birthday.  Luath also had fun playing with her cousin before the "Big" girls arrived for the birthday lunch (we weren't staying for that).

Find out what others were up to this week at 1+1+1=1

This week's 7days7ways

 This week's 7days7ways to add a little more to our outdoor time:
We had an off week, I am rarely ill (apart from almost all 41weeks I was pregnant!) but this week I was a bit floored.
Day 1    watch daddy draw a circle in the sand with a stick and then try to do the same

No Day 2 - mummy was unwell
Almost no Day 3 - a couple of very brief fresh air moments, mummy recovering

Day 4- Have an evening meal outdoors, listening to and watching the house sparrows fly to and fro their nest

Day 5 - Spot a (dead) crab among the stones

Day 6 - Mummy had a slight relapse, so have a quiet moment or two watching bumble bees

Day 7 - Learn from a cousin how to climb up the slide part of a chute


Background:

I read about famiglia&seoul's 365days outdoor challenge she set herself after reading Rebecca P. Cohen's Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids (you can get 50 ideas via Rebecca's blog if you sign up) and I also have read Greening Sam and Avery's everyday outdoor play resolution and I decided to do the same.  Simple things to get more out of our outdoor time (we already are out most days dog walking) and to try and be outdoors everyday (some days it is so wild daddy walks the dog, but we will try and go outside for a little while).

(Luath is 15months)

Book of the week - Clap your hands and this week's 5-a-day

All our books are from this week's bear theme.
Book of the week

Clap your hands (an action book)

A board book with photographs of teddies doing the actions to "If you're happy and you know it".  Luath has really started to enjoy these action books/songs.  This was one of the books given to Luath by a cousin, I wouldn't have bought it as we already have "If you're happy and you know it" by Jan Ormerod,  but I am glad we have it as it has given us so much fun this week.  We usually also sing "Teddy bear, teddy bear" once we have sang this book a few times.

5-a-day books
(I started doing this after reading this post from almost a year ago on the Imagination Tree blog about selecting five books to read everyday for a week and why it is important),  I am finding it difficult to fit the Gaelic books we have or the ones in the library into our theme.  We did have one this week that has a bear in the story but it was too difficult for me to read much of it.  We did look at it and I read or made up in Gaelic what I could.

We are going on a bear hunt

Our version is a  small picture book.  The words to the story are not how I know it but it still follows the same theme of coming to a different obstacle and having to go through it with the appropriate sounds.  As the text is repetitive Luath was able to join in.  She liked the noise pages - they are in colour, the "we are goinng on a bear hunt" words are on black and white pages.

Goldilocks and the three bears (touch and feel)

This was another passed on book.  I like the touch and feel aspect but I don't really like the way the story is told, however as it was bear week and we enjoy porridge I had to read this one.  Luath enjoys the touching part of each page.  We read and acted out the story wth some bears and her (bald) doll.

Princess Aasta

One of the library books that prompted our bear week.  A picture book with different style drawings and also text that changes font, size and line position.  Luath will sit and listen/look at this book even when she is going through her, "close each book after two pages" spells.  Princess Aasta is lonely so she writes to a paper looking for a bear friend, she chooses Kvitebjorn.  They become friends even though the king is wary of having "an Ursus maritimus" around.  Kvitebjorn takes Princess Aasta to see the Northern lights.  (Norwegian author/illustrator if you are curious)
This is the Bear

A favourite in our household.  Simple rhyming text, an easy reader style book with only a few words per page.  The sentences start with "this is the bear..."  A tale of a bear who falls (or was he pushed ) into a bin and ends up at the dump.. The boy and his dog go to the dump to search for him. The ending is great. The pictures have a little extra text of what is being thought of by the dog or bear or people - "I must be mad" says the man driving them all home.  This book makes me laugh.  We have just discovered there are more books in the series so will be on the look out for them.

Apple, Pear, Orange, Bear

Another library pick.  This book uses the four title words in a different order and with commas in different places.  You could say it tells a story or you could say it is just nonsense.  The drawings are simple but convey what the words say.  I wasn't sure the first time I read it but the book has grown on me.  Luath listens to it well; it is short, repetitive and simple with clear pictures, just what suits her at times.

We read these and other bear books plenty times each day, this week was more like ten a day (and all Luath's other favourites!)