7 Inside and outside activities with a preschooler.

If you have another baby in the house and your preschooler is already on holidays, like I am, then I have some fun activities you can do to survive and make happy both of your kids.

1. I used to go walking a lot with my baby while my first son was in the nursery. Now, I had to think that my kid won't walk as much as I do. So my daily walking routine, changed on going to different kids' parks to uncharge somehow his battery.

2. Outside activity - Feeding pigeons, this activity is always a good idea, every time we fed pigeons our kid enjoyed. He loves to run after them. What is great as well.

3. Read books, great inside activity. Here I would like to mention that I have observed that if my preschooler is not watching any video or TV, he is keen to listen while I am reading. As well it is great activity for a not sleeping baby.

4. Playing with montessori toys or not so montessori, leaving him play alone, while baby need your attention.

5. Inside activity - scissors. Help to develop his fine motor skills on cutting paper. By the way, it is montessori activity as well.

6. Inside activity - painting. If till now, painting was more for developing his skills on discovering colors and create new things. Now this activity is to develop his ability to write with pencil.

7. Outside activity - zoo, discover the greatness of nature that exists in the World. Here you need help. Daddy is always with us on such complex activities.

Now, our kid is with his grandparents, my parents-in-law, and I understand how much free time I have for me. If you have somebody who can help you, just leave them to help you. I was too tired after such a full activities week. And yes, my preschooler didn't have any screen activity during these days.

P.S. You can follow us on socials. I began to upload little videos with our daily routine. Come and enjoy them.

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Inside activity for a rainy day. Boys love cars.

On a rainy day it is most difficult to keep quiet a toddler, who enjoy running, skipping an playing football. One thing is true, all boys are the same, and all of them love to play with cars. In my last days of pregnancy I thought that it would be a great idea to make my toddler a high-way and parking for his little cars. As well, I thought that it is a great idea to remember him the rules of a traffic light.

I think we've done a great job together, and my toddler enjoyed playing with his cars.

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Montessori weekend. Montessori activities for toddlers.

I am on maternity leave now, so I have more time to dedicate to my toddler and make him some interesting and montessori activities.

1. Crafting activities - this activity was inspired from quiet books ( I was thinking in doing one for my toddler, but I decided to see if he would like something like this). He liked my imitation of quiet book, but he wasn't engaged too much in this activity, I mean that he played as much as 10 minutes and not hours as I have seen in comments of quiet books.

2. Car play. My kiddo loves cars, I suppose that all boys love plaing with cars, even girls nowadays. The idea was to play with big ones and small ones, differentiate the forms and colors of each one. And how one can help another one in case of emergency.

3. Montessori truck from ikea. Great toy for moving pieces of different shapes, colors and learn how magnet is working.

From all 3 activities that we have done on weekend, last 2 my toddler enjoyed most. I always prefer diy activities like first one, and it is true that he always enjoyed more, but not on this weekend. I suppose that it is matter of his desires, sometimes he enjoys diy and sometimes bought ones.

Enjoy your weekend!

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Christmas activities for toddlers.

Quite late post on the things we have done on Christmas Day, but as I have a lot of things to share with you, and the pleasure to write another post of the day, I want to share our experience on the Montessori things we´ve done on that magic days of Christmas. I hope these ideas will be useful for you for the next year or for the future. Any comments are very welcome.

I thought about activities that would entertain my toddler and would help me to motivate him to stay away of youtube, the only thing that I am aware and I think it gets more complicated to restrict him once he grows.

The idea was to prepare: a Christmas tree, Santa Claus, a wreath and an unusual toy for Christmas tree. All these things were prepared from recicled things.

Christmas tree.

For this toy we needed: green watercolor, pompoms-little ones, and sticks of ice creams.

First step was to color into green all parts of Christmas tree. I think that my kid enjoyed this part more than any other thing of preparations.

Santa Claus

For this I needed: toilet paper, red color paper, scissors, glue, removing makeup discs, white stickers

Wreath for Christmas Tree

This was the easiest thing to do for me, and quite complicated for my toddler as this require a lot of patience.

I needed:  different colors paper, scissors and glue.

A toy for Christmas tree

I needed: pompoms, toilet paper tube, yellow color spray, glue.

Very easy thing to do for our kid, he enjoyed working with pompoms and glue.

Christmas Tree

1st Christmas Tree

I needed: colored paper, pompoms, glue, scissors

2nd Christmas Tree

I needed: paper, pompoms, glue, scissors, watercolors

As it was mentioned before all these activities are screen free activities. From my experience once the toddler grows up the task to keep him away of tv and other screen free activities is very complicated.

P.S. Be aware once you propose your toddler such activities, as I have used some dangerous utilities, and it is very important to make use of these very accurate and let your toddler to work with them less and only in your presence.

Enjoy your free time with your kid.

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Tiger is our best friend. How nursery teach from early months to care somebody?

In every nursery there is a toy, that represents the class. And during the year this toy is shown as being one of the best friend of a class, which kids have to care. Then every week one of toddlers is choosen to be a Hero of the week. This means that they have to take this toy at home during the weekend, to care of this, play with this and be amazed as this one of theirs best friend in the nursery. It is likely to take one of your best friend to stay with you at home.

Our son, was choosen as Hero of the week this weekend, the main character is Tiger. Our toddler had to play, read, sleep and care of Tiger. We had to make some images and then to print them and give them to the nursery. During this week, Damian will explain (I don´t know how) to his mates how he passed his weekend with theirs common best friend Tiger.

My thoughts. It was amazing to see our kid to be so keen of caring of this toy, and time he dedicated to play with it. I suppose that even if he is not talking too many words, he is aware about his experience as he has seen it before in his kidergarden and saw how others was caring of this toy. Then I thought that it is wonderful that they learn in the nursery to take care of something and somebody, they teach them then to express their emotions during this process of care. This develops his social interaction with other kids and as well to grow his self esteem as being a hero in the eyes of his mates.

Our toddler even posed for taking the photos. This means that he knows what will follow :).

Here you go with this lovely experience.

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Crafting ideas for Mothers Day, what we prepared for such important day.

I know that this post would be more suitable some days before, but anyway I want to share with you some crafting activities that we have done on Friday, preparing for Mothers Day.

In my country Mothers Day is celebrated on 8th of March, very different from Spain or USA or other countries who celebrates this day on first Sunday of May. In any case I think that this is one of the most beautiful days in the year, even better than birthday, as on this special day you receive all the love of your men.

I thought it would be a great idea to do some crafting activities, I don't use to do these kind of activities, as these needs scissors, and our toddler do not know well to use scissors, even if I show him how to use them. As main present on such day are flowers, I opted to make some crafting with flowers.

For crafting activity we need: scissors, colored paper, glue, transparent duct tape, a lot of fun and imagination.

The task is easy to do as you just need to cut the forms you need of different colors, and to stick them with glue or transparent duct tape as we have done on the images below.

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Great fine motor activity with pipe cleaners

Few time ago I bought pipe cleaners on Carrefour, as I found them a good choice for inside activities with my toddler, as well some other thing to play with my toddler at home. Looking through pinterest I found out a lot of great ideas to play with pipe cleaners, and thought in our own activity that we could do together.

Preparation: It took me less than 10 minutes to prepare all. I took pipe cleaners, scissors, and pack of colored foam paper. Cut foam paper into pieces, and then made a slot on this pieces.

The goal was to learn to insert these pieces on pipe cleaners, learn colours, and learn the texture of each thing.

The result: I enjoyed this activity, and my toddler did this. It took all his attentions as he found difficult the task to insert these pieces on pipe cleaners, but after several times of trying it was ok for him. He loved the texture of pipe cleaners, he took them into the mouth, made shapes with them and we made some colorful bracelets with them.

I didn't expected, but on this activity my toddler spend more than half an hour, this means that this activity was interesting and unusual for him.

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Educational activity - printables with fruits

I found printables almost one month ago on pinterest and I thought that this is a one of the best educational activity for my toddler. Living in another country far from my birth place and far from people who would speak him my mother tongue language, apart of me and my husband, I thought this activity suites perfect in our educative process of our toddler. Before finding out this amazing printables we have bought some books, we have watched youtube videos, always speak to him in Russian, but I felt this is not enough to learn a language. Printables come as a supliment to all other things we do together, and I can firmly say that this is a great way for a toddler to learn another language, even if you born and live in the same country, try to develop language skills of your baby with printables. For sure it will work, as I see really great results with my toddler.

This time I decided to choose FRUITS theme, as he loves fruits, and not just because of that, but also I thought it would be easier to ask him what he prefers to eat. Yesterday was our first day when I showed him them and he began to repeat some of the fruits he ate earlier but didn't know how to call them. Another thing I have observed was, if you show your toddler something regarding food, you need to be prepared to have it, as Damian asked me for fruits on printables and I didn't have them. I felt sorry and for the next time I will try npt to miss this.

If you need help with printables or you want me to share with you my printables on online format, just shout and I will send these to you. I'm in the process to create another page where you would be able to download all my preparations for free.

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