Cats {Fun with Shapes}

  To add some more fun to our Cats theme, we invited some special friends over for a play date and we dressed up as cats. With some marshmallow mice and fish in our bellies, we then made some very easy cat faces from pre-cut shapes!

Do you recognize our feline friends? Arrowboy and Sweetpea (on the left) belong to Joyful Mama and Little Mouse (on the right) belongs to Trudie. We are so lucky to have these special ladies and little friends live so close by!

Cats {Nursery Rhyme Fun}

 

I recently shared about a terrific book, Origami for children, by Mari and Roshin Ono, so I was very excited to find Origami Club, a fantastic website, with lots and lots of ideas and great instructions. You can print the instructions, or watch a video if the printed version is to tricky to understand. All ideas are also rated, so you know the difficulty level before you start.

As part of our cat theme, I focused on some popular cat nursery rhymes...

 The Three Little Kittens

For some fun related to this nursery rhyme, we traced around Little One's hand and then created three sets of mittens. He loved sticking on the cotton balls. Little One loves glue, and calls it "gloopy glue", like Mr Maker does.  He gave this bottle of glue a good squeeze (great for those little fingers), but in the end I needed to help squeeze the glue out. We then played a game of hide and seek with the mittens. Just like in the nursery rhyme, we "lost" the mittens and had to find them. He really enjoyed this! (The mittens and the kittens are great for counting practice too.)

For some more fun, I made origami puppets (see above) to act out the nursery rhyme and we once again used our mittens as part of the play. I made a happy and a cross face for the Mommy cat, which I stuck back-to-back to a craft stick, so that the face could easily be flipped over during the story. This was also a great success!

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where have you been?

Acting out this nursery rhyme also turned into a great learning activity, with me focusing on prepositions. In my version, the pussy cat frightened and chased the mouse under, over, and onto the chair.  

PS. I'm linking this to...

Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity 

Show and Tell @ ABC and 123 

High Paw @ the best toys for toddlers

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars
We Play @ childhood101 

Cats {Dress-up and Sock Kitty}

 

"I like cats!", Little One announced (some time last year). I giggled! For two reasons really...one being that I was so surprised that at the tender age of two you can know with such certainty what you like, and also because we (husband and I) have always thought of ourselves more as a doggy family...should we get a pet.

Little One is still at home with me full-time this year and because he is a bright, busy little person and seeks constant stimulation (like most two-year-olds), I decided to introduce some mini themes to direct our craft and learning activities. Needless to say, when I was considering my first theme, I thought "Cats". So what follows in this and the next few posts, are all the cat-related activities that we got up to.

And while we have been playing "cats", it's been reading month in the United States and Polly from Helping Little Hands has had a fun Read-Along, where she has asked some bloggers to share a book-related activity. I have joined in the fun and am sharing this sweet sock cat, inspired by the fabulous little book, Katie the Kitten , by Alex Scheffler. We have a small box set, including four of his titles (to read about another one, see here), but Katie the Kitten has been Little One's all time favourite! 

"She loves nothing more 

    than a night on the prowl.
She doesn't get scared

 by a woof or a growl."

Do go along and check out some of the other fun reads and activities shared by other book-loving bloggers!

PS. I am also linking Katie, the sock kitten, to:

Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity

Show and Tell @ ABC and 123  

High Paw @ the best toys for toddlers

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars

Speckled Hearts

 

These were our Valentine's gifts for the awesome grandparents we are so blessed to have in our lives.

We took an A4 sheet of red paper and Big One wrote an "I love you because..." note on it. We then wrapped this around a nice slab of chocolate and decorated with speckled hearts (I don't know what else to call these :)). 

I think everyday...any day...is a good day for an "I love you" note...don't you?

To make our speckled paper, I gave Little One a toothbrush and some watercolour paints. He found the toothbrush spraying rather tricky, so this was a good fine motor workout for those little fingers! 

I found the origami heart pattern in an amazing book, Origami for children, by Mari Ono and Roshin Ono. I also found a similar pattern here, if you would like to make some of your own.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity.

Magazine Cover

Do you have a favourite baby or parenting magazine? Well here at home, the Your Baby  magazine has always been a huge favourite of mine.  I was buying them long before I had children and continued to buy them long after it was necessary. With it's informative and well-written articles; the beautiful photography that one finds in their pages; and, not to mention, the most gorgeous cover pictures, it is really hard to resist. I hang onto mine, and even though I do regular cupboard clean-outs (I'm quite good that way), I find it nearly impossible to throw these mags away.

So having said this, you can well imagine my great delight when I heard that Little One was going to be a cover baby (squeal!).  And to make it just a little more exciting, the shoot took place at my home and I had the real treat of having tea with the editor and her team. It was an experience! The shoot actually took place in November 2009 and Little One was the cover baby for the March 2010 edition.

So this got me thinking about how much fun it could be to make your own magazine covers and print them. I found this website, MagMyPic, where you can download a photo and create a cover in minutes. It's really very easy to use, with the only downside being that you are restricted to their templates.

You could of course also create one in a software package like Photoshop, or in my case, Picasa (I'm not yet a Photoshop girl). You could then personalise these and make the titles of the articles applicable to your little one's personality or developmental stage. If you did one a month, you would have a quick fun overview of your child's year, nicely summarized in twelve mag covers that you could frame or put in a mini photo album. These would also make fun birthday invites. This one below was created in Picasa and it shares a little of the prevalent topics in Big One's life at the moment.

Let me know if you make any :). 
Have fun!

PS.  It's Love and Lollipops' birthday today! It's been one year since my first post and it's been such an awesome ride. Thanks to you all that come and visit and leave such lovely warm fuzzies for me!

My first newborn shoot...

 ...was of this little guy...ahem, I mean puppy :)

And of course this was my favourite photo of the shoot, 'cause of that other cute little dude in the pic!

My neighbours have recently brought home this little pup, called Max. So I popped on over with Little One for a visit and we did a quick impromptu shoot. I'm going to enter this one in the next iheartfaces challenge, which is Best Face of February. If you have never visited iheartfaces and you enjoy photography, you must go and see...

Dr. Seuss inspired fun

Today I am posting pictures of a game I created and that we played in March last year. I thought that today is surely the best day to post these rather old photos, 'cause today is Dr. Seuss' birthday!

This little project was (once again) inspired by the wonderfully creative Katherine Marie and her Green Eggs and Ham fun (Want to see, click here). 

  

Big One LOVED this game, especially because it involved the usually forbidden Smarties. (Big One is mostly gluten and dairy free, so these are a real treat!). And what a fun way to practice blended sounds. Throw the dice, move your counter, and if you land on an egg white (or green) in this case, turn it over and say the blended sound. If correct and you are lucky, you get to eat a Smartie.

  

This book was a huge hit in our home a few years back. I have been trying to recall how old Big One was when I had to read this story over and over and over again...:). I think he was about five. If you don't have this one on your book shelf, try your local library. They are sure to have it - it's a classic.

PS. I'm linking this to Show and Tell @ 123 and ABC and For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars.

Batman Lego Party

A little short of a month ago Big One celebrated his 9th birthday with this special party. Unlike years past, we had a much smaller group and it was mostly family and a few friends that joined us for the afternoon. It was great fun and I really focused on the children and left the adults to chat and eat yummy cake. Deciding on a birthday theme seems to get more difficult as Big One gets older, but the inspiration behind this one was a Lego computer game he received for Christmas. (This Mommy needs a theme to work to!)

This year I opted for cupcakes rather than a cake and made the toppers myself. I used my favourite circle punch (can't live without it!), awesome Batman stickers care of Grandpa, and toothpicks. The party boxes were bought from a local party shop and decorated with plastic bats.  If you are very observant, you may have noticed that the party boxes do not look the same in the two photographs above. The table was all decorated, when Big One said to me "Mommy, there are no polka dots in Batman." I knew he was right and the boxes did look a bit babyish for his age, so with minutes to go, I pulled off the polka dot strips (they were simply cut from wrapping paper). Afterwards I had a giggle...here I am trying to slip in pretty blue polka dot paper into a 9 year old Batman theme! I should really have a girl :).

The games were a huge hit, with the children coming back for more and more.

  For some more super Batman inspiration, check out this party here. 

Till next time...

Teaching Kindness

I think most of us would like to be thought of as kind individuals...I also think that we would like our children to possess this quality, but have you ever thought about how children become kind? Can you teach kindness? I think so. For me it comes down to this ...you need to be what you want your children to be. You need to teach by doing, not preaching! It's a simple truth...a behaviour modeled and observed is far more powerful than a behaviour spoken about.

Now speaking of kindness, this past December, I was bowled over by Katherine Marie's advent post, where she committed to 24 acts of kindness running up to Christmas day. (To read about it, do go see here). But even more impressive, is that Katherine has decided to continue with her kindness mission and has challenged fellow readers to commit to 52 weeks of random acts of kindness in 2011. Quite extraordinary don't you think?! Katherine has called this amazing project 52 Smiles and has given lots of wonderful ideas and inspiration over on her website, so be sure to check it out.

I have certainly been inspired and so have decided to take up this challenge. I would really like to focus on kindness and compassion in 2011 and in making it part of my life, I know I'll be instilling it in my children. They will join me for the ride! Now, I don't know what it is like where you live, but here in South Africa we really have many opportunities to be kind...without having to look very far. On a daily basis South Africans are approached at their homes and in their cars (at traffic intersections and shopping malls) and we are asked for food, clothing and money. We have such high rates of unemployment here, that others begging is a part of our lives and honestly, sometimes one can even feel a bit harassed. (Just keeping it real) For me personally, this year I want to always give with a generous and happy heart and I want to give more intentionally. I also want to share my plans with my children and I want to act on it.

Maybe you want to join me for the ride too? I'll keep you posted now and again of our efforts.

Take care till next time...

PS. Yesterday here in Cape Town it was about 35 degrees Celsius, so my postman knocked on my door with a huge grin on his face. Being kind felt really good!

Georgie's Picks {Absolute Joy}

What can be better in the sweltering heat than this?

  

I have been meaning to post these for awhile - this happy moment took place in December.  As I look at these pictures now, I realize that these are some of my last "in a nappy" pictures of Little One. We started potty training just over two weeks ago and it's been going so well. It's only nappies at night time right now. It makes me extra happy that I captured this!  

Tonight I was reading Snapshot in my inbox, a newsletter sent out by Ingrid Owens of CameraShy and she asked, "Why do you take pictures?" She writes that for her it is about sharing beauty. She says that she wants to share the beauty of a moment with others, not to brag, but just to share the joy of the moment. She would like everyone else to SEE what she saw and to FEEL what she felt when she took the picture. I couldn't agree more!

Ingrid's blog is great, especially if you want to learn more about your digital camera and taking better pictures. Do go check it out.

Till next time, happy capturing...

PS. Georgie's Picks is where I share some of my favourite pictures and moments with you.