Barcelona en miniatura

This place, museum, I don´t really know how to call this, it is a place that I had in my mind more than 3 weeks to go with Damian, but everytime we had something else to do, and never had this hour or two to visit this place. Finnaly this Sunday we went with Damian. I haven´t expected to see too many things there, but I wanted just to pass great time with my boys (Damian and daddy).

More information about this place you can get on their page barcelona-en-miniatura.com. It is a little museum with all the famous places of Barcelona in miniatura. The idea of this wonderful place was to show the life of Barcelona in its ´30s. There you can see a lot of cars, builduings, trams, buses or even trains from that period. It is amazing activity for children as it is not like a typical museum where you just watch this places, the fun thing is that all the trains, ave or buses are in move, some of the trains even make noise, what amazed Damian a lot :D.

It is not really big space there, and not so many builduings, so you can see all the stuff in almost 15-20 minutes, the great part of this space, is that there are toys like trains and cars with whic all the children can play and not get bored. Damian enjoyed it, see in the pictures below. :D:D:D

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Toddler activities - Part II

This weekend we didn´t go out of Barcelona, we stayed at home, our lovely flat became a fortune for a lot of funny things with Damian (on Sunday evening we´ve spent a lot of time to put all in order when Damian went to sleep :D). I browse on internet what we can do and how we can play with our child and not to get bored. I want to say that I have never expected that I will have so much fun, playing with him. Try with your kid and you´ll see :).

- fine motor activities

 duck craft - I´ve seen on internet chicken craft here, but I decided to try it with a duck, as Damian loves so much ducks and when he sees a duck he begin to say ¨quack quack¨ :). For this craft you will need, paper, some feathers and glue. Look what we have got:

shape matching - is another activity, here we didn´t make too much effort, as he has a really great toy that helps him to be entertaining. But, if you don´t have such great toy, it is very easy to do it, you will need cardboard, and you can paint the forms, then cut from colored paper the shapes, and leave your child to put cut paper on the shapes painted on the cardboard.

fill the bottle- amazing activity, if you want your toddler to be amused and doesn´t require too much your attention. The idea is to have an empty plastic bottle, rice (you can choose whatever you want), space. Show your child how he needs to fulfil this bottle and that´s it.

make pyramids from cubes

- Montessori activities (1-10 numbers)

 I found this activity a little bit difficult to do with Damian, I think that he is not so big enough for it. I will try again several times to see if it was his first time, or he is too little for this activity.

I used TP tubes for matching the numbers and straws to count the numbers, I find this activity interesting, but maybe it is too early.

 and last but not least activity, you can do it even with babies or your kids is reading or books, babies just love them.

Have a great week.

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Little farm in the heart of Barcelona

Last week we found out that we have a little farm not so far from where we live, it´s like 10 minutes walking. It is Hort Masia Can Cadena, more information you can get here. I knew about this park, because time ago I saw people raise vegetables there, but I didn´t know that there are domestic animals as well. I began to browse on internet more information about this park, and for my big surprise I found that there are few specialties of domestic animals. There you can see a part of farm life almost in the heart of Barcelona.

 This weekend is the second time when we went with Damian to this little farm. There are raised sheeps, rabbits, ducks, goats, geese, chickens and roosters. It was really fun to go there with my toddler, as now he develops another life, and as he can´t tell us that this is a sheep, he can tell us ¨beee¨ and we understand what he means. It is interesting as, Damian is keen to learn new sounds, and even more when it is about the animals. All children love animals, and domestic ones are the first who they meet and have a special attraction.

 It is a great opportunity for children who grow up in big cities to have this kind of things and don´t need to look up for a farm that is out of the city.

 See below some pictures how Damian enjoyed this experience :)

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Toddler Activities

I told you various times that I believe in going out and spend time with my baby on fresh air, but even though we can't stay all day long out, and there is a part of time that we stay at home. While we stayed at home, we have made various activities that helps toddlers to have great time with parents.

1. Fine Motor Skills activities

- this activity Damian used to do in a previous nursery, is called "treasure bag" is a bag full of different toys, it can be as well normal day by day things with different tactile and form structure. It is very important that not all objects used to be plastic ones, as in this activity your toddler learn texture of each object. I have gone even further, I took scissors for kitchen use, and he had to take each object with these scissors and to put them into the bag. First time it was almost impossible that he made this by himself, so I helped him a lot. The second time he understood how to play and was easier for him and for me. I encourage you to try this very interesting activity with your toddler.

- another motor skill activity is putting circles on a stick and create a pyramid, we found this toy in IKEA, firstly I thought, what can my baby do with this, but after we bought it, this become his beloved toy, he plays every day with it. This toy develop his motor skills on putting all the pieces together and create one single form, as well for a toddler that have just 1 year and a half it is not so easy to get this circle into the stick :)

2. Attention activities are various:

- painting - I think all children love this activity, and we (mothers) don't like, as after his play with colors there is so much work in the apartment. Yes, but remember you, when you were a kid how much you liked this activity. They create and they feel them powerful.

- stick color sorting using TP tubes or plastic cups, it requires a lot of attention, as first time for them it is really difficult to understand what you want them to do. For this activity you need to have sticks of different colors, I don't have sticks, so I used straws of different color, some plastic cups, you can use TP tubes and show your child that he has to sort all the straws by colors. We've played 3 or 4 times, and each time is easier to play with him, but as well it is not an easy task. Be patient.

- salt dough - this activity I described in another post, that you can see here

- sorting caps from plastic bottles. I used some caps, and put into them colored paper, and asked Damian, to sort in a line all the caps by theirs color. We played just once, and he didn't do what I asked, but we had fun together :). At the end it doesn't mean that your child have to be a genius, you just need to spend really great time with your toddler

Stay with us for more activities for toddlers in the next posts.

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