Friday 24 July 2009

Activities

I have been trying to do at least a couple of activities each day with the girls - as most of their toys have disappeared with the shipping, they have been a bit more at a loss as to what to do with themselves!

Lots of my ideas come from Trish Kuffner's Busy Books which I really would heartily recommend. I have the Toddler and PreSchooler ones and they have ideas that have been great from 2/3 year old CassCass through to her 10 year old cousin.

A few months back I spent a while cutting out photos of familiar folk (yes Grandma, Grandpa, Tatie Evie, Uncle Malc, you are all there!) and different scenes/objects then sticking them on cardboard. I could cover them in sticky back plastic but haven't got round to it. Then I wrote out cards with the name in french on one side and english on the other. We have used these cards in a variety of ways (mostly with LissaLou for the moment):
*matching the picture with the word in different games
*playing a version of Guess Who, where we each select a card and the other person asks questions to find out which card it is - not only did LissaLou manage to read each card by herself, but we also learned about different categories (man-made is our newest one)
*I tried a game where we guessed the card from clues, but that was a bit challenging
*with CassCass we played shout out a card and run and collect it
*when I run out of inspiration we make up stories involving the different pictures!

Recently we also had a session on bird's eye views (which funnily enough was a phrase that even Bertie, the English expert, didn't know!) - thanks to Mum for this idea. We matched objects with their shape and then drew a plan of the verandah and placed an object according to where it was on the plan. I think we are still grasping this one! However, it made for a lovely treasure hunt, where Stella had proper clues, CassCass had drawings with a cross, and LissaLou had a bird's eye view plan of the room with a cross for the position of the clue. They also got a tamarind with each clue. That went down really well!

We tried north south east and west this week. Once I explained which was which, LissaLou was supposed to run to the right side when I shouted it out. She claimed to be too tired, so I gave her a passion fruit to chuck in the right direction instead, which she then ended up running cheerfully after!! I would like to do a treasure hunt with directions ie walk three steps north but that will have to wait!

What else.... the girls had great fun cutting out scraps of paper and sticking them onto sticky back plastic today and it made for beautiful pictures. In fact, anything involving sticking goes down very well, but they have used up all the glue and lost all the pritt stick now!

Ah, and thanks to Tatie Evie for this popular one - we each cut out a postcard of Guadeloupe stuck on a piece of cardboard in jigsaw style then had fun putting them together again, then getting the other family members to do so! Last time we did this was Christmas 2007 and CassCass had a two piece jigsaw - she has sinced moved on!!

When we have had enough of all this creativity, we have been enjoying the computer by singing along to Cedarmonkees (!) on youtube or watching Balamory and Charlie and Lola. It's a fine life!

I shall go into more details about the kids in upcoming posts, for those interested...

3 comments:

Mum said...

Wonderful ideas! You are a natural born teacher Heather - or maybe just a very good mother.

Hevs said...

Or perhaps just well-taught....!

Susan said...

These games sound brilliant! Can't wait until Leo is old enough to play them! Must forward this post on to Helen!

Hope you are having a great day today for your anniversary! It's a lovely day here and we are about to go out for the first of three trips today!