Save a life this Christmas (oh, and every other day of the year)

We live on a paradise island where people come from around the world to spend their holidays on tropical beaches and enjoying all, this wonderful island has to offer. So what makes such a sought after destination have 34 suicides occur each year? 

Last week my husband informed me that around 34 people commit suicide in our town per year. Then he told me that means around 24 people will take their lives in the next six weeks! To say I was shocked is an understatement but what really pushed me (and him) to speak out was, that while we were discussing this in the car driving over the bridge that separates the island from the mainland, someone was (un-be-known to us) taking their life by jumping from the highest part of the bridge.

So, what can we do? Once I read a lovely story which has inspired me in the past to be kinder to strangers and I will tell it here for you. A woman was driving with her husband and he was just grinning at random people they were passing. She asked him what he was doing and he simply replied "saving lives"! Apparently suicide survives said they would have seriously reconsidered their attempt if a stranger had smiled at them that day. Well, I personally haven't met any attempted suicide victims but I like to believe those small gestures can change the world and save people in moments of despair. 

So, reach out. Smile, hug, converse or anything that you feel could help. I want to thin that if one of my sons was ever in such despair, someone would just ask them if they are ok.

Read my husbands article here (in Portuguese, but if you want it translated, just let me know in the comments below).

Earth, Moon and Space

Recently me and the boys went to a moon landing exhibition. It was really hands on and we had a fantastic time. We have spent the last week remembering different facts from the day and started to collect materials to reproduce a few of the activities we did.

Today while we were playing outside the boys spotted the moon in the sky. My eldest asked why half of it was 'missing' so I started explaining about the phases of the moon and he remembered things from the trip last week. He ran off to get a telescope so he could see better. Unfortunately we don't have a telescope so we decided to try and make one!. After finding the broken magnifying glass and a cardboard tube we fashioned something that resembled a telescope and the boys took turns trying to see the moon's craters. After a while I decided to get my camera and do a super zoom photo to see what we could see of the moon - unfortunately no craters.

Then I remembered the space torch we got my youngest for his birthday so we sat in the darkened corridor to view all the photos. It was even better as there are several shots of the moon landing including the foot print that they seem to have loved from the exhibit (you can find the torch here). 

This led me to try reproducing the footprint in our sandpit. This was so funny and we all had a good laugh while they tried to stride around in my big boot with crayons taped under (to make the right sort of groove).

After, we coloured in two polystyrene balls I had to represent the earth and the moon. We discussed the countries we had to add to the earth and the names of the oceans then remembered that the moon had craters and the big boy asked about the protective bubble that protects the earth from comets and meteors and why earth doesn't have craters like the moon. I was really surprised by how much information they both remembered from the day trip and how excited they were to try all these activities in their own home. When the earth and moon were ready they practiced rotating around each other being the earth or moon and this had them in fits of giggles as they got dizzy and fell down over and over!

Later on they asked to watch a moon movie and I remembered that there are several parts of a documentary called Cosmos that have nice images about earth and the moon. We enjoyed most of it although some of the cartoon parts were a bit overwhelming so we skipped past those!

For our bedtime reading I asked if they had any books about planets or space and they remembered a book about a boy who goes to Mars. It's called Marshmallows for Martians and was a great way to finish our day before turning off the lights for another look at the torch images.

I'm sure they will want to repeat many of these activities tomorrow and I will be coming up with a few more to compliment these (I will try and add them to this post later).

 

Learning about money!

Money is an important aspect of life and one that needs to be taught well so that children can learn the importance of saving and sensible money management. And it all starts when they are really young. Both my boys have been fascinated with money since a young age and we have encouraged this curiosity by giving them small amounts of pocket money and discussing where this money goes. They each have a piggy bank where they can put their money and save up for a toy they would like. We have a family donation jar where we put small change and encourage the boys to do the same. When they visit the turtle sanctuary near our home they take the money and donate it to the turtles to help them. Finally they have the option to put their money in the bank and this is what they do with any birthday and Christmas money. They are learning that this money is for their future and that by leaving it in the bank they receive bonus money called interest. 

So all that said, they also want to touch money! Play with it and post it into their piggy banks most days. This is great contact and we use these moments to teach counting, the names of the coins and simple math concepts such as ten 10 cent/pence coins make 1 real/pound (we are trying to teach them about the two currencies they will have the most contact with first).

Here are a few of the activities we have done recently which have been fun and received with interest.

Coin cleaning
This was such a simple activity and one they have wanted to repeat many times. We put one of each coin in a small pot and covered them with vinegar. Then we went off to school. When we came home the coins were super shiny. The boys got excited to see how shiny the coins had become.

Coin rubbings
We used our shiny clean coins to make a collection of coin rubbings. This is another simple activity which requires a piece of paper, some crayons and some coins. The only tricky part is trying to keep the coins still under the paper while they do the rubbing so we started with the bigger coins.

Drawing, counting and value representation
We took to the white board to draw around the coins then draw numbers and explore the values using our number rods. We discussed how two fifties make 1 real/pond and other summing of coin values. Although the boys are young they started to look closely at each coin to see what number was written on each one and they grasped the concept that certain coins go together to become 'the same' as other coins.

If you have some other ideas for us on how to learn more about coins, value and money, please share them with us and all Babysteps readers in the comments below :)

How to have a bug week

My boys love bugs and being outside so this week we have concentrated on having a bug week. This has involved collecting different insects to observe and draw, reading books about insects and doing worksheets centered around bugs. Their movie night film was bee movie to round it all off!

We spent lots of time looking at different bugs and drawing them. They both enjoyed trying to carefully catch ants and centipedes from the garden to look at through the magnifying box. We counted the legs and looked at antenna and wings. They drew simple pencil drawings of what they saw and the eldest wrote the names of the bugs while we practiced phonics.

They enjoyed reading 'The Hungry Caterpillar' and using the storyboard I made for them. This brought up questions about which bugs eat what and we discussed our favorite fruits and foods and the colours of these foods.

I compiled several worksheets I found online to make a small activity book for each of them. There were mazes, colour by number, word searches and  dot to dot and they really liked that it was a little book for them. All the activities were related to insects and they were keen to work hard in them.

Each week they have movie night as a reward for working hard all week and for us to enjoy snuggly time on the sofa watching something fun. This week I decided on 'Bee Movie'. I was going to go for 'Bugs Life' but the language and scenes are not so great for small children :(

They have had lots of fun with this project and have been interested in the life cycle of butterflies so I am sure it will lead to another collection of activities next week :)

Whatsapp para educação

Como dona de uma empresa pequena, trabalho em horário flexível e posso estar com meus filhos em tempo integral. Adoro fazer com que nossos dias juntos sejam cheios de animação, atividades e jogos educativos. Não assistimos muita televisão e, como sou especialista em educação infantil, busco novas maneiras divertidas de ensinar meus filhos sobre o seu mundo.

Então, imagina minha animação quando um grande amigo me convidou para um grupo de whatsapp com pais que pensam mais ou menos como eu!

Entre no grupo no mês passado, e desde então vi o grupo crescer até os atuais 14 membros. Somos famílias de vários países e falamos línguas diferentes. Todos as crianças falam inglês, mas não necessariamente como a primeira, nem mesmo como a segunda, língua.

Usamos o grupo para a troca de ideias e informações sobre o tema de educação infantil. Trocamos links e sites interessantes e as crianças mandam fotos dos projetos, trabalhos ou jogos que estão fazendo. As crianças também conversam entre si por mensagem de voz, o que foi bem especial para meu filho mais novo, que completou dois anos agora e recebeu várias mensagens de parabéns dos novos amigos internacionais.

Recentemente começamos compartilhando vídeos das crianças fazendo atividades e o resultado foi super inspirador. Pais e filhos se animaram muito em aprender sobre o mundo, novas línguas, geografia e culturas. Esse intercâmbio de ideias e informações se tornou bem presente e ocupa grande parte de nosso ambiente educacional em casa. Depois de uma chamada pelo Skype com uma família da Espanha, meu filho maior queria aprender palavras em espanhol e olhamos a mapa do país para ver onde os novos amigos moram. Fizemos também atividades sobre bandeiras e meus dois filhos curtiram fazer as de seus países (já que têm dupla nacionalidade) e as dos países dos novos amigos.

Para mim, o grupo deu confiança para fazer mais atividades com meus filhos e me sinto muito apoiada pelos outros pais. Há um ambiente muito positivo entre os pais do grupo e isso é verdadeiramente inspirador, não só para mim, mas para toda minha família.

Whatsapp for education

As the owner of a small part time business, which allows me to work flexi hours, I have the privilege of being a full time ‘at home’ mum right now. I love to fill our days with fun, educational games and activities. We watch very little TV and as my background is in early childhood education, I’m always thinking of ways to teach my sons more about the world they live in.

So, you can imagine my delight when a good friend of mine invited me to a whatsapp group with other like-minded parents.

I joined the group last month and I’ve seen it grow to presently include 14 members. We are from all ends of the world and speak an array of languages. All the children speak English but not necessarily as their first or even second language!

We use the group as a way to swap ideas and information around the theme of education for young children. We send links to resources that may help each other and the children send each other pictures of their work, projects or games (with their parents help of course). The children also speak to each other using voice messages and this was very special for my youngest son this week as he turned two and received many birthday greetings from his international friends.

Recently we began sharing videos of the children carrying out activities and the response has been so inspirational. Both parents and children have found a new interest in parts of the world motivating the learning of new languages, geography and cultures. It is a very present exchange of ideas and information, which has become a big part of our learning environment. After a skype call with a family in Spain, my eldest son wanted to learn some Spanish words and we looked at a map of Spain to find where his new friends live. We then went on to have a flag activity where both boys enjoyed making sticker flags of their own countries and of their new friends.

For me, the group has given me confidence to do more and more with my boys and I feel so supported by all the other parents. There is a huge positive vibe from the other parents and it is really inspiring, not just for me, but for my family as a whole.

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Top Travel Tips for Toddlers and young children

We are an international family, which means we travel a lot!

Last week our now 3 years 8 months and 1 year 11 months old

sons completed their 25th and 16th flights, respectively.

Most of our flights have been pretty calm and the boys have often been complemented on their good behavior! Although this makes us proud, we have worked hard to get to this point. So, we thought it was time to share our top travel tips with all our readers so you too can enjoy travelling with your young children.

• Timing is everything - we always plan our flight so they coincide with the children's sleep. This means long hauls overnight and shorter trips when they are likely to take a nap. Even if they stay awake longer that they normally do, they are quiet and happy to cuddle on the seat.
  
• Have an abundance of snacks. Now our eldest son is almost 4, he loves having a little lunchbox with snacks which he will only open after the fasten seat belt sign is off! It also helps him stay still for take off as he is clutching it watching the light!!! We try to bring some fruit (raisins or bananas that don't make too much mess) a small carton drink and some child friendly biscuits (by which I mean low sugar - no hyper sugared up kids on the plane please)!
• Have a fun gift for them to open. This is usually an activity book for our boys as it keeps them busy and if you wrap it there are usually no issues at security.
• Empathy is everything. Like you, your children are really excited to be on the plane heading to their holiday destination. Unlike you, they find it really hard to contain this excitement. Try to avoid telling them off and instead embrace their enthusiasm by asking what they think it will be like or what they want to do on their holidays.
• If all else fails, take a walk to the bathroom. I find that when they get that little bit too excited by it all, tantrums can begin to brew. I try to nip them in the bud by changing the subject or making jokes but it doesn't always work. So we don't have total meltdown I take them into the bathroom for a little one on one. We have a little chat and I wait for them to calm down before returning to our seat.
• Make sure you have a change of clothes for everyone. There is nothing worse than sitting in smelly clothes because one of the kids vomited/had a nappy leak or worse (i'll leave that to your imagination). As an adult it's hard to sit in wet or dirty clothes but for a child it can be unbearable. Clean clothes and lots of wipes and you should be winning!
• Make sure you have a prescription for pain relief/fever medication in case it's needed. With all the excitement of the holiday, children can get temperatures very quickly. Make sure you have a prescription otherwise you may not be able to take medication onto a plane.
• If it all goes pear shaped, just think, tomorrow is the first day of our holidays and today won't matter anymore (and don't worry about the return flight. More than likely it will be much better).

  

  The activity books for the latest flight

Happy flying :)

If you have any tips that could help us over the years please let us know in the comments below.

Walking with toddlers - three great walks in Florianópolis

We love to walk. Both boys (now 3.5yrs and 21 months) enjoy clambering up hills, trekking through woods and scrambling over rocks. But, as they are still very young it's hard to find places to take them that are safe yet leave them free enough to experience on their own. This post brings you three walks that have brought us a lot of fun and exciting moments and which we will repeat again. 

The first walk is in Barra da Lagoa. This beach is always packed in summer and sees a lot of fishing and penguins during the winter. It is a lovely place to go but there is also a trail that is perfect for little feet. The trails starts after crossing a large blue bridge over the canal and ascends up the hill. There are narrow paths, interesting houses and great views as you walk. At the end of this path you reach a hidden beach with great boulders and if you continue on a little further there is a tiny collection of trees (or a great big forest if you're three) which lead to giant rocks which you can sit on to look out to sea.
This walk would take an adult around five to ten minutes but for two small children it was a decent hour of adventures!

The second walk was to praia de açores in the south of the island. Crossing the beach there is again a bridge to cross (this time it's green) to reach another small island. The island has many rocks for climbing and interesting vegetation including huge cactus plants. There are rock pools below where you can find interesting shells and urchins and the waves often splash high enough to get you a little wet. There are spectacular views and plenty of short grass for the boys to run across.

Again this is a short walk for an adult but for those little legs over an hour of trekking and exploring was had. The added benefit was that this walk is circular so other than crossing the bridge to come back to the beach, the route is continuous.


The third walk is a footpath and cycle path on the via espresa sul. There are places to park along the way so ideal to take the children out for an evening stroll. This path leads into the fishermen's huts where there are piers to walk along and much wildlife to see. We once came across a large sea crap and usually there are some owls nesting in the surrounding grassland. Sometimes we take the boys bikes so they can have a cycle and it is a great place to watch the sun set behind the mountains. 

We love walking with our sons. There is so much to learn and experience and its a free activity. These are just a few of a lifetime of adventures we plan to have with our children.

WRITING - Wipe clean boards, letter wall and stickers

I want to bring this quick post on how writing has begun in our home over the past weeks. We have made up some materials which have become important tools in our day to day life and with very little adult input our children are beginning to write.

Our first item is our wipe clean activity boards. I made up some of these and have used an early writing skills book to make others. I started with patterns for them to follow, mazes and letters and numbers. This has progressed to the letters of their name, sight words and matching words and pictures. To make these up I used a sheet of A4 paper and some laminating sheets or old overhead projector sheets taped to the A4 paper. Then the boys use white board pens to draw, erase and re-draw and they spend 20-30 minutes at a time on this activity. 

The second activity is the number and letter wall. This was posted in our number week post but has been such a success I will share it with you again. It is simply a sheet of sticky back plastic taped to the wall where the boys can play with their foam number and letters. This has expanded to sight words which i have put on card and placed on the letter wall and the eldest has started identifying the letters in the words and making up the words himself.

The third activity is stickers. It's such a simple activity and with the right type of stickers can bring a lot of letter recognition. My boys have started recognizing the letters in their names and the eldest can make up his name from letter stickers.

So here is last nights 40 minute session:

6.02pm They start using the wipe clean boards

6.09pm Youngest (19m/o) loses focus and starts walking around with pens 

             Eldest continues his work

6.12pm Youngest comes back to the table to continue then comes and goes with my guidence. Eldest continues focused on his work.

6.20pm Eldest starts to loose interest in the activity and draw erratically!

6.22pm I end the activityand both boys run off to the letter and number wall and start placing letters on.

6.26pm both start throwing letters around so I end the activity calling them to the table to the new sticker activity.

6.42pm They finish the stickers and put the rubbish in the bin.

It was exactly 40 minutes of activities and not once did I have to discipline them or get very involved in what they were doing. My role was to provide the next step and guide the youngest when he lost interest and obviously praise them both when they showed me their work or answer questions about the letters and numbers. When my eldest is focused so well I try to guide my youngest more telling him the name of the letters and show him the letters in his name. This helps him to maintain focus and give him the input he needs to begin his literacy journey. This type of activity occurs in our house most days where for just under an hour they have writing and reading opportunities in a series of pre-prepared activities and I can honestly say it's really paying off!

Glow in the dark activities and facing fears

The Black-
light torch we used

My greatest discovery so far... tonic water glows under a black light! Over the past few weeks we have been doing some glow in the dark activities. Here I will show the ones that have worked and let you know the ones that have failed! I wasn't very interested in chemistry at school but I sure am now. Learning with the boys is amazing.

I was so thrilled to find out that something so simple could bring a new edge to our activities. And, even more so as it would be something that helped my youngest feel more comfortable in the dark. My eldest has always voiced his fears loud and overcome them quickly but my youngest seems more concerned about things and not so quick to adapt (poor guy hardly has a chance with his big brother around)! The dark was starting to be an issue I was going to have to address and these activities have helped my son to feel confident and enjoy the dark. At first he was quite reluctant but once his brother was set up I was able to work slowly encouraging him to enjoy the moment - and now - no stopping him!

Here are our activities:

First we tried just pouring and enjoying the glow! This was a great starting point as it glows brightly and the boys were able to splash it about in the bath with little concern for cleaning up. They had a variety of containers, jugs and funnels and spent quite a while transferring the liquid from one place to another. And yes, a few drops were consumed but neither were keen on the taste!

Next we tried cornflour and tonic water. This was another super glowey one. The white in the cornflour helped to keep the vivid glow and the boys had a great if messy time playing with this old favorite!

Then, I tried to be a bit more adventurous and made playdough. Big fail! I think the flour and salt are too dense to allow the tonic water to glow so we had to turn the lights on for this one! I also tried letting them draw white crayon pictures and letters but again these didn't really glow. Perhaps a white marker pen on black paper would work but we haven't tried that yet. 

So back to something that worked. Cornflour and tonic water in food bags to do drawing and writing (thick consistency and strong food bags)! We made up some sensory bottles using cooking oil, food colouring and tonic water. I made up several to explore colour and the reaction between the oil and water then decided to try with tonic water to see if it worked under the black light. It did and it was nice clean fun watching the bubbles go back and fourth in the bottle. 

Finally, and probably the most impressive, was Tapioca or Sagu seeds and tonic water. Tapioca is a popular food here and these are known as sagu here. But I see they are available from health food shops. I soaked the sagu in the tonic water for a couple of hours then added more water so they were 'swimming' around. They glowed so bright and they got quite sticky so the boys could press handfuls together. The next night I didn't add extra tonic water and the stickiness intensified so they could make really big 'snowballs'. Then I left the tapioca pearls to dry out. The next day they were able to have  dry play session in the dark and this was really great too as they threw up handfuls and searched to see where it landed!

Sagu seeds

This has been such a brilliant discovery, made even better as it helped my youngest son overcome a fear. We have had so much fun with it and will definitely be repeating these activities in the future. As always I will add a quick conscience note on food use and let you know that the quantities we use are minimal and all in the name of safe play for the littlies. 

If you have any ideas of ways to use our black light further please let us know as we just love it :) 



This post contains affiliate links for readers' convenience 

Purposeful Play - our first Kindle book is live today!

Today sees our first ever book for Kindle go live. It has been a year in the making and we are proud to announce it is finally here! Read on to hear more about the book and find links to several Amazon sites at the bottom of this post. Please let us know what you think below as any feedback is always greatly received. And a big thank you to all our readers for your continued support of the blog.

The Book

'Purposeful Play' contains a selection of activities to carry out with children aged between 0-6 years. The book is sub-divided into sections according to the type of activity and each activity is photographed to show how the activity can be implemented. 

The aim of the book is to give parents some insight into the benefits of these simple tasks and to enhance home life by getting children involved in simple everyday tasks around the home. There is a section on cooking which brings some of our successful recipes, many of which are sugar free and very simple so that children can be the main participants in carrying them out.

You can get your copy of 'Purposeful Play' from any Amazon site and for your convenience the links follow:

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Amazon Brazil

Clean Play - no mess activities

Continuing the collection of weekly posts from our facebook page here is a collection of what I call 'dry' activities. They are a lot easier to clean up and great for indoor play especially in the winter or wet days. Let me know what you think :)

Hand and footprint trails.

Drawing round hands and feet is great fun so we cut out a whole bunch and made trails to where we hid and the others had to find us. This went on for ages and it didn't even matter if we could see each other as it was all about the trail! When they finally tired of this activity we made treasure maps and they stuck stickers along a dotted line I mapped out for them.

Stone pictures.
This activity is not limited to stones and could include anything you have at home. It could even be done using the kids toys say lego, toy cars or beads or something similar. We used stones and did this activity in the garden but again it could be done inside. We used a hoola hoop for a frame and the boys had fun creating stone pictures. Even the little guy got super interested in making areoplane after aeroplane!


Dens.
This activity got such a large response from our facebook fans that it will be one I will elaborate on more in the future. We just love making dens. Any little place to hide out or have a snack in is just brilliant. We used the dining room chairs for this one draping our fairy lights around the top and finally covering the whole thing with a blanket. The boys have actually spent the entire week in there! We have read, built towers, had snacks and snuggled for movie time under there and they really don't want to take it down!!! If you have any inspiration for future dens for us please leave us a comment below or on our fanpage.

Re-usable worksheets.
These are just brilliant and the boys love that they can use big pens to work on them. They were really quick to make up too. If you're not good at drawing then just print off some worksheets online. I have found some really interesting things at www.activityvillage.co.uk I used some old overhead projector slides but laminating sheets would also work well to place over the activity sheet. Then secure it with tape and they are ready for use. Whiteboard markers and a small damp cloth are all the materials needed and they will keep the boys busy for ages.


Sticky back plastic wall work.
This is one of our absolute favorites! Just spreading a large piece of sticky back plastic out and taping in to the wall - sticky side out - makes a great canvas. If you don't want to put it on the wall it can go on a cardboard box too and will work equally well. This time we used our foam letters and numbers and a few of the sight words we are working on and it's amazing how both boys have suddenly got really interested in all things letters and numbers. The little guy can even name a couple of letters and the eldest is learning that putting the letters together make up words. This one gets a 10/10 from us :)

Messy play

I have decided to collect together a weeks posts from our fan page on facebook and write about all our messy play activities so you can find them all in one spot.

Firstly a quick note on sensory play. It has great benefits for young children in allowing them to experience new and different sensations and learn about the world around them. Senses are used to enhance their experience and give unique learning opportunities. Plus, it really is good for the soul to get your hands dirty and enjoy the mess!

We were ecstatic to finally find corn flour here in Brazil. Yeah I really should have been searching harder, it was right under my nose every time I went to the supermarket! So this weeks activities are primarily based on corn flour play :)

It is one of my favourite things to use for sensory play so I guess that's why my boys enjoyed it so much too!

We began with a simple corn flour and water mix. we added a packet of cornflour to a small amount of water mixing continuously until we had a nice textured goop that we could roll into a ball and let drip from our fingers. This activity can be even more fun if you make a couple of batches in different colours and watch them run together!

Our next corn flour fun involved making slimes! Soaked linseed makes a great consistency for adding to cornflour to make textured goopy slime!

The soaked linseed made great sensory beads too. We just added different colours and let the boys free on them (in the safety of the bath to contain the mess)! 

We then went on to make edible paint! We have two types - one is made from yogurt and food colouring which has a great texture (and smell depending on the yogurt you use). My boys actually eat most of it too so not at all waste full. They particularly enjoy licking it off the paper! The second type of safe paint is water with food colouring. Very simple and great for painting walls and paths in the garden!