Handmade Cards: Mummy’s and Daughter’s Tender Cherry Tree

Natalie's Japanese cherry tree impressed me already in spring… And here appeared an occasion – I decided to make a beautiful gift to some person…   

In a word, I bought black ink, paper for watercolour and cocktail straws. Together with our little daughter (29 mo) we sat down at her little table and started blowing through the straws onto big drops of ink. And at that point I really appreciated the fact that the creation of such a card is not only a very creative activity but also a very developing material (for the mummy and toddler ).   

 In fact, then we were only experimenting. Having understood Читать дальше…

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Homemade Gifts: Knitted Toys

I ventured to knit socks for myself… having found that there were almost no heels left in the ones I had knitted several years before. Soniya (29 mo old) is greatly interested in the process: knitting needles, so many colourful hanks – it is something new for her (taking into consideration that it is unlikely that she remembers the transformation of the hanks into wound balls of threads after her games when she was 7 mo old ).

Naturally, she also needs needles. But, to my relief (these are too sharp toys for her so far), she quickly turned her attention to the threads and informed me that she was also knitting

And only then I remembered that a gift had been lying on the wardrobe for our daughter already for 2 years (no, I am not such an absent-minded mum – I had tried to present Soniya with this gift a year before but then she got frightened, the toy was almost of the same size as she).

And now Читать дальше…

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Painting with Kids: paper tape for creating masterpieces

As you may remember Natalie has recently raised the issue of making the windows warm for winter… I am continuing the topic and will mention the paper tape which we used for the creation of the design for the T-shirt.

We've recently bought new paints. And Soniya (28 mo) is so inspired by the bright colours that she is ready to paint with one colour for ages on end! And her mummy's suggestions to change the colour are not heard at all! Idea!

I suggest Soniya sticking some paper tape to the sheet of paper. She cannot resist the temptation to try it and while working with the tape she was telling me that Читать дальше…

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Painting with Kids: designer clothes by toddlers

Do you remember our first (collective) experience of painting on T-shirts? The our 2-year-old (and younger) kids were painting with hands and brushes in the process of which each T-shirt got an exclusive design. "But when there are clothes only with hand- and/or footprints in the wardrobe it somehow gets not interesting at all", – I thought pondering on in what other way we can decorate one more white T-shirt.

Of course, I could iron the T-shirt but I though that this way it will look more 3-D in the pic

Munny takes Читать дальше…

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Painting with Kids: InterestingTechnique for Creating Autumn Forest

It seems there is no child who has not gathered leaves in autumn (for a bouquet, into the body of the toy car, into the pockets of his jacket, into his mummy's hands…). And very often these leaves turn to be brought home. In our apartment, they were inefficiently lying on Soniya's chair for three days until they became absolutely dry. And then an idea came!

"Soniya, look what beautiful trees we’ve got behind the window, yellow, red and some are still green… let's paint an autumn forest!"

I'm drawing the trunks of the trees and then suggest that our daughter  Читать дальше…

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How to make modeling from clay interesting for a toddler?

Our daughter enjoys “working” with clay very much. But what can you create with a 2-year-old who can make only "sausages"? How to make this activity interesting for both mummy and child? Not only mum should make masterpieces!…

The idea came spontaneously. We hadn't used clay for the last 3 months and it had got dry. So, mummy had to make it soft again adding some water to it and Soniya asked me to roll each of the clay pieces in a ball. And we got some material for… construction! The balls can be easily stuck to each other, they can be even transformed! Isn't it a construction set! According to their functionality, they resemble snow balls which one can built, let’s say, a fortress from:

Or one can make a flower: Читать дальше…

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Handmade Toys from Foam Rubber Tape

Autumn has come. It's time to make the windows warm. Ha-ha, yeh, I know that it is exotics for most of you but it is quite topical for our garden house . By the way, only now, having lived with double glass panes for several years, I learnt the true value of the wooden frames which should be "made warm" in autumn by gluing something to cover the gaps between the frame and the windowsill and which should be "uncovered" with crackles in April-May. A good replacement of air, a possibility to recolour the window frames and windowsills in any colour and… inexpressible feelings of the process of "gluing the windows"… childhood, mother, September and clean air streaming into the window…

But to tell you the truth, we haven't started to "warm up" our windows yet. And we are not in the garden house now but in another town visiting our grandma. And the idea which I'd like to tell you about occurred to us in summer, in the mentioned garden house, when, once again, I was looking for something to make our 2-year-old son busy with and found the last year's stock of foam rubber tape for windows by chance. It turned out to be really needed!

Читать дальше…

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