Home made concert!!

Its wonderful sometimes to see the imaginations of a child. All i saw was a bunch of diaper bags... but in the eyes of my RG, she saw a whole stage and an opportunity for concert!

the night before her debut performance she told all of us to be ready for the next night... she was going to hold a concert. i didnt realise what i was going too see..

the next day after i got back from work, she said 'ok everyone, after dinner i am going to do a concert'. and after patiently waiting for dinner to be over.. she set up her 'stage'... she put down a full diaper bag as the stage floor, stage backdrop and two half full bags as the side.

after giving a short intro RG gave us her rendition of 'the more we get together' rhyme... we also had a backup dancer.. GJ clad only in diapers suiting the theme so to speak..

a child's imagination.... it is exceedingly a beautiful thing!

Impasto Pencil holder: A work of art

I don't have a pencil/pen holder in my office. so I thought of getting one. Then I thought I might as well get safeerah to do one for me!

So I bought a plain wooden box holder (RM3.90, that's about 1.20 US Dollar) and set up the workspace for RG. The red flowers are just stickers and the plastic flowers salvaged from a hantaran (wedding gift).

The stuff needed:

Items needed (we didnt even use the sticker nor the flowers)

and I let her paint. This activity took her about 45 minutes.

She used really a lot of paint making the painting thick! I wonder if this can be considered impasto since her brush strokes are so visible and the paint extremely heavy.. 

Artist at work

but it turned out real wonderful and is sitting  proudly at my desk at work!

View from one side

The other side

At my desk!!! i love it!

Kinetic sand : Two kids, One toy

Assalamualaikum and Good Day people,

this was an interesting activity to do. i did this at two different times. at first RG was asleep so i let GJ play. then when GJ was napping i let RG play.

the toy? i found this Kinetic Sand thing from a friend and got a small amount of it for the kids to play with (about 1 kg of it). the brand i got is this. but better explanations are given here. 

Malaysians, you can get yours here: RizqiRuse

what is kinetic sand? the company brands their item as 98% sand, 2%magic. but it is basically sand with some polymer additive that makes it 'wet' and kind of sticks to itself. is it mess free? personally i feel it is not. since the sand goes everywhere like sand does BUT having said that it is easy peasy to clean it up since it DOES stick to one another and not fly away everywhere.

ok... here is part one:

SENSORY PLAY with GJ

i let GJ have a free reign on this. he was curious (in fact he a really curious baby!!!) at first, then moved in on touching the sand. his first reaction? he hated it... hahahahah it was really cute to see him brush of his hand and the disgusted look on his face!

after that his curiosity wasn't sated. it was a love-hate relationship.. he touched the sand briefly, then shook his hands free..

then he rubbed the sand between his fingers. (i forced his hand into it, simply to see his reaction.. he didn't like it). i took some sand in my palm and offered it to him... he touched it and slowly felt it from my palm..

i added some tools, now that.... he liked! he poked the sand with the tools. but most of all, he started to take the sand and throwing it everywhere!! after about 20 minutes, he still couldn't place the feeling of touching the sand.. he wants to play with it but when he touches it he throws the sand everywhere..

but one thing for certain, when i ended the activity some 30 minutes later, he protested REAL loud. the place was a bit messy but like i said its really easy to clean up.

look at that curious face!

Feeling braver after a while

Tools! i like em!

Part 2:

Now its time for RG to play with the sand. since she is a whole 3 years older, the structure of play was better. i gave her tools from the start so she started sculpting, digging, excavation and moulding the sand. the tools i used? all of them are just from her playthings; kitchen utensils, hardware tools (toy version of course), plastic containers etc.

I hid some small items in the sand for her to find. She also made simple sand sculptures. to her, it was like playing with a different kind of play-doh... and now she wants to go to the beach!

Digging for hidden treasures!

It does look like real wet sand

Some of the sand sculptures we made.

Same toy: different learning opportunity for both baby and a preschooler! and no, i am not going to try to let them play together with this yet. hahahahhahahah!

have fun y'all!