My exams are almost over!

Hi all,

I have one more exam only to finish but I couldn't hold my little darlings more than this:) SO, we're back to the fun. Keep in mind that I don't have access to all my materials and things here cost A LOT. Yesterday, I bought some colours, pencils, sharpeners, glue, a pair of scissors, some animal capsules (that grow in the water) and a small game (things that go together) containing only 20 pairs of flashcards and I paid almost L.E. 170. Also, I bought some things for a sensory tub and these cost me L.E. 68 so it is a little crazy but we're doing our best. I have a lot of observations I noticed in the last few days but I'll keep them for the end of the post. So here is what we did yesterday and today:

1- We played with a light pillow. This one is a gift I got from dad from the US. It was so much fun. We also threw it at each other as if we were playing with a ball. there were a lot of giggles.

Sarah also did some beading. This was a Dora foam beads I also got from the dollar store in the US.

Today, we started by doing some face painting. Sarah asked for a mirror to look at herself in the process. She found difficulty in standing still until mommy finished, lol.



 Then, she did some wood puzzle. This was one she had long ago and she was perfect at it  but she forgot all about her toys so she dealt with it with the same excitement of the first time. Unfortunately, there are a lot of missing pieces in it. I'll look for them later:)

Then, it was time to open the box of the things that go together. Now, let me say I regret buying it. It is too expensive, pictures are not very clear and I could have done a better job myself BUT in my defense, I had exams. I started by making Sarah identify the things she know and then I asked her about each picture on its own. For example, I held the tooth brush picture and asked her what goes with it, she pointed to the tooth paste picture and so on.

One of the pictures had a board on it so I thought about giving Sarah my white board and seeing hat she'll come up with. She could finally draw a circle, she drew a lot of inverted Cs :-) BUT seriously, look how she holds the marker, I find it amazing :-) The sun is mine ;-)

Finally, she helped me prepare some food.

The following are some random pictures for both girls.

^^^ At grandma's house.

^^^We all were playing with the ball, Farida shared :-)

^^^I am trying to make Farida practise holding and grabbing things, this is the only time she seemed interested. I gave her Sarah's box that had blocks and random stuff inside.

^^^Again, we were working on making her grab things, Sarah was there to help :-)

^^^With daddy on the beach.

^^^ At daddy's office.

Here are my observations:

Sarah was a little rebellious in the beginning, she didn't want to do anything herself, I think she just needed to adjust to the changes and have some alone time with daddy. She was also not used to the fact that people will pay attention to Farida so maybe, she developed some kind of temporary jealousy. Now, she's back to her normal self and we are all proud of her.

Also, she so into imaginative pretend play nowadays. We (daddy and I) are in the process of collecting her a real doctor's kit :) She feeds her dolls, burps them, changes them, takes them to the doctor and a lot more. I will have to come up with some things to feed this interest.

I think that is all for today. Thank you for your patience and for sharing us our fun moments.

Love,

Sherine

A little here and there...

Hi,

Life has been far from perfect the last few days. Emergency rooms, allergic reactions, blood tests, many last minute (since we are travelling) appointments and tons of shopping. Both mommy and the little girl are worn out and accordingly both of them are not acting as best as they can. Mommy has been short of temper and Sarah feeds on that. This emphasizes the meaning of trial and error for which this blog was created so we need to reconnect and I think tomorrow might be perfect for it since it is Sunday and mommy has some holidays-themed science experiments ready;) Anyway, Sarah has been asking to play over and over again and mommy had to do something so today, while Sarah was eating her yogurt, mommy prepared a sensory tub in 5 minutes. The theme is "Letter F". She loved it. It contained, flowers, Fs, 4s, a fan, a fox, fish, a feather and 2 flags (Egyptian flag and American flag). After we finished playing with it, Sarah got to know which one is the Egyptian flag and which one is the American one. Now, she also knows: fox, fan and that birds have feathers, lol. I put in some beads (brought from the dollar tree store) and they come in a flower shape container. This helped later in so many things, wait and see.

So, we of course used the beads for beading which Sarah spent 30 whole minutes to do only 4 beads before getting bored/frustrated and then, we used it in sorting;) She did it almost perfectly except that she constantly misplaced the medium and the small green beads. Honestly speaking, I don't blame her, the difference is minimal. Anyway, it took 30 more minutes until she finished all of them and she was so sleepy by then because of the meds. I was frustrated that I didn't have a frog to put in the sensory tub but I made it up for myself when we read the book, "Jump, Frog, Jump" that we got from the library.
 That was all for today and again, I'm so sorry for our short posts.

Love,
Sherine

I can't think about a title:)

Hi,

Are you still reading? Good! because today was extra fun:) We started off with the letter of the day "D". We watched a video about "ducks", "dragons" and "dinosaurs" on youtube. Then we did some crafts taken from http://www.kiboomu.com/ and again, she attacked all of us using the dog and dinosaur:

After that, we did the ABC letter soup which helped greatly in making her recognize the letter:

Some beading:

We did an experiment trying to make Sarah understand that water and oil do not mix

Yes, those are tears because mommy said no, she can't drink this water and oil

After nap time, there was a sensory tub, I love this one. It cost us $2 and we resued a lot of items we had before. The theme is "under the ocean"

I colored the water with blue, added some silver glitter and put some rubbery fish under some stones because I did not want all the rubbery fish to float, I wanted her to fish them:) I added some foam sea creatures from her foam puzzle. Then, I supplied her with these:

And the girl had a blast:

We made Farida touch the rubbery fish and please, don't hate me for the messy hair. Sarah refuses mommy to do it except once a day in the morning.

Again, she did not want to stop:) She learnt names of some sea/ocean creatures and learnt that the dolphin is our friend. After that, we watched a video about dolphin shows from Orlando on youtube and she wants to go:) Maybe, we'd go to the acquaruim soon.

After that, we played with play-duh and finally, we had to have some time for physical activity so we played bowling using our ball and shampoo bottles:)

Sarah is interested in a lot of things these days and I have to take advantage of this. She is interested in snow, snowmen, snowflakes, ...etc because we never had snow in Egypt. She is also interested in animals. I am waiting patiently for december to start with her the snow theme, my sensory tub is almost ready only missing 2 things I insist on adding which are : doll boots and jacket to get her to understand winter clothes. I think we can invest her interest in animals in role playing, we'll see.

Thank you for making it that far and again, I hope you enjoyed:

Love,

Sherine