Spontaneity, Imagination and Cuteness

I sometimes just marvel at the imagination and quick/spontaneous responses of very young kids. The other day while we were still in Hyderabad, two of M's cousins A and F , 4 and 3 yrs old were playing house. Now A was "mommy" and F was her baby when suddenly the younger one, F, said "OK now I'll be mommy and you'll be "Daddi Amma" (grand ma ) that was quite funny in its own as she didn't ask the other one to be her baby probably coz she is older but A's spontaneous response was hilarious ... She was quick to point out "Oh I am not THAT old"

On our way back from Hyderabad (on 1st Feb.) M also kept us well entertained she pretended all sorts of things we had My shawl tied to the opposite ends of a bunk to make our house and then M got these empty boxes, one on each hand and declared they were Mittens and 2 days later this wooden trunk in college was her horshiii, the turned up part in front does look like an animals head with an eye ain't it

slide !!!

wow finally M got over her fear and took her first Slide! Yeh I mean real slide she even dared to climb up the monkey bars.... it sounds funny Now But it sure is a big achievment for a 23 months old I Believe
and that sure is the positive influence of her cousins :)
pics will come later!!

Vacations!!! Finally

After two very very hectic weeks finally we are free and at M's grand parents in Hyderabad for vacation and M is having a blast. A new place , full time available parents, grand ma to appreciate and praise each and every utterance, so many cousins of her age (to play and Fight), open out doors, birds, cats, "baby cows", and dogs and sheep and what not!!! WoW ! so M sure is busy and very very happy :)

As for me I am even happier as i got two books that I longed for, the first one is "Letters for Emily " by Camron Wright . I so desperately wanted this so that i can pass it on to M when she grows old ... Ya it sure is that type of a book...only that i am not sure at what age should i give it to her ? well i guess i have plenty of time to decide that. The second one is "Teaching Montessori in the home" by Elizabeth G. Hainstock again I wanted this for M ( that's pretty obvious) I read its review online and it appeared to be a great book on homeschooling basics but the actual book is even better than my expectations.

Sanam, My sister in Law bought these for me on my request as I could never possibly find them here in Pakistan and the shipping charges were much too higher than the original price so i wouldn't ever dare to order them online..... A big Thank you to Sanam... I love you for this :)

First Reading Theme Challenge: The Mitten

The first reading theme challenge of the year gave me the inspiration to make my second home made book for M. I found this simple version online and I am still working on Our book as i didn't want to simply print and bind it, will post about our book once its done so stay tuned.
Meanwhile I introduced the mittens to M by getting her a pair with cute lil bunnies on them. She hated mittens as an infant so we were not sure about her reaction this time... but to our surprise she simply LOVED them. so much so that now our "MetOons" are a constant with her :) also our lil "anomOls" can take shelter in them just like the story!!That gave me the clue to make a memory game !!! I am planning to make 5/6 pouches in form of mittens with an animal's paw's picture pasted in the front.I think it would be fun watching M making a guess about the animal inside. Lets see how long she takes to make a link between an animal and his paw print.The other activity that we created for this theme and put out every day is "match the mitten". I made 4 pairs of mitten M decorated them with her favorite mickey mouse stickers and we are ready to play. Instead of plain sorting into pairs of same color M loves to mix'n' match and count them.

please note that the theme continues till the end of this week so we still have 3 days!!! and that means more Mitten Activities :)

Matching Cards !!!

Wow!! finally i manage to create the matching card activity for M. It was on my agenda for quite some time now. They were supper easy to make I just got two identical wall charts and cut them up into cards and that gave me 15 pairs
You can pick up any theme, I choose "safety measures" firstly because it gave the best opportunity to introduce safety measures (we all die to inject into our lil ones :)) in a very friendly manner. Secondly all the other themes like; shapes, animals, Alphabets etc we already incorporate and stress on in almost all toddler activities that the the theme seemed quite novel to me. then it had cute illustrations that will definitely add her vocabularyThe only problem that I have is that some of the illustrations don't show what they are saying like the one that says "do not play with detergents and medicine" shows the kid that seems very happy playing with the stuff he is not supposed to. Or the one with caption "do not climb trees"First I loved climbing trees as a kid and would never want to stop M from doing so ( of course i would want her to be careful) Secondly it shows a very nasty kid poking a nest which is a different issue all together. so I might skip these.I am planning to introduce these in batches of 4 to 5 sets at a time and our first session will hopefully start this sunday. lets see what happens when we do so. fingers crossed ;)