Category Archives: ponpon

The 65610 shades of green Sinhala – Sri Lanka part 1

Posted on October 27, 2014 | 4 comments

I am sure you noticed me being away from my blog for the last two weeks. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I miss you and came back with a series of interesting posts about my trip to Sri Lanka.

Once a year go someplace you’ve never been before – Dalai Lama

A trip for only the three of us as a family, my lovely husband Antoun, my precious son Nady and I. This is what i call quality time for the family. We chose Sri Lanka on purpose to offer to Nady a new enriching journey, full of discoveries, adventures and novelties. It was indeed!

Our trip kicked off in Pinnawala, a village in Kegalle district of Sri Lanka, situated 90 km from the capital Colombo. It is well known for its Elephant orphanage.

Pinnawala elephant orphanage: was started in 1975 to house the abandoned and wounded elephants. The number of elephants has increased now, including baby elephants brought from various parts, as well as the babies born, as a result of the captive breeding programs. The best time to visit is the feeding time from 9:30-10:00 am and 13:30-14:00 pm and the bathing time from 10:00-10:30 am and 14:00-14:30 pm when all the elephants are taken to the river close by.

You can spend time there watching the elephant bathing. Vendors are everywhere selling small bags of bananas to feed them too.

We proceeded then to Kandy to spend the night there, the second largest city after Colombo. It was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO as it was the last stronghold of the Sinhalese Kings during the Portuguese, Dutch and British rule and finally ceded to the British in 1815 after an agreement. To the Buddhists of Sri Lanka and the World, Kandy is one of the most sacred sites as it is the home of the “Dalada Maligawa” – Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha.

The next morning, walking up fresh and enlivened to go to my favorite place where i can spend hours and days contemplating the beauty of the mother nature in the Royal Botanical garden of Peradeniya, situated about 5.5 km to the west from Kandy.

147 acres in extent; Started in 1374 as a pleasure garden of the Kings of Gampola and Kandy. There are more than 5,000 species of trees, plants and creepers. Some rare and endemic! As well as flora from the tropical world are found in the gardens. Spice Garden and Orchid House are popular with tourists. There are 5 Palm Avenues beautifying the gardens, the earliest and tallest Palm Avenue (Royal Palm Avenue) was planted in 1905. Also Double Coconuts from the Seashells Island, with the largest seed of all plants in the world.

Trust me it was so hard to choose 20 pics out of hundreds. It’s a piece of heaven on earth. I recommend this site big time, as it is not usual wherever you live to find all this beauty in one place. It was a great opportunity to enjoy and reserve a big dosage of green and oxygen…

Stay tuned to Sri Lanka part 2….

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Posted in travel

Tagged buddha, coconut, colombo, creepers, elephant, flowers, kandy, kegalle, orchid house, palm trees, peradeniya, pinnawala elephant orphanage, plants, royal botanical garden, sinhala, spice garden, sri lanka, travel, trees, trip, world heritage site

Personalized birthday gift wrap – Nady’s DIY

Posted on October 6, 2014 | Leave a comment

A beautiful art that will make papa antoun very happy. A personalized wrap done by Nady (and the help of mama) with so much love and joy.

Get a roll of white paper, some colors and get down with your child to design the best gift wrap that papa will find more important than the gift itself. As i always say small things done with big love are the most important.

It is not just beautiful but unique and so meaningful! This is one side and here is the other side:

I used washi tape to wrap it and a blue ribbon. Can’t wait to see Antoun’s reaction 🙂

DIY fridge magnet for a birthday daily note surprise

Posted on October 2, 2014 | 7 comments

Antoun’s Bday is in less than a week! Nady’s is so excited about it, especially he loves birthdays and singing “to you” (happy birthday to you). We decided to make for him a daily small drawing with a cute message till the big day comes (tuesday, october 7). Happiness and love are in small details, and it’s so important to teach your kids how small gestures can bring happiness to someone and show care and love. Our motto is “we don’t do big things, we do small things with big love”- mother teresa

To post them, there was no better than the fridge to serve us as a message board, therefore we needed magnets. It was so quick and super easy to craft them, we just glued small magnets on colored buttons and that’s it! I told you it’s super easy 🙂

Nady took care of the drawing part and i did the writings. It was so fun thinking that Antoun will love it and wait for his daily dose of love from us!

That was our first note on the fridge. Aren’t these buttons so cute?! But nady didn’t like the fridge so plain, he wanted to draw on it as well. Why not?! this is a cool idea, now the fridge is a mini gallery! With beeswax crayons (safe and so easy to clean) he did a really good work and concretized his dream of drawing everywhere with no restrictions… Everything is permitted, it’s “papa to you” (daddy’s bday) surprise.

Yesterday we posted our second note with more drawings! Now I am sure Antoun is waiting impatiently for his daily note!

Today we posted our third note. Antoun didn’t see it yet, he will now as he is reading the post.

There will be 4 more notes until the birthday. It’s an ongoing post, come back everyday to check the new images updated for the daily notes. See how the fridge will look on the day of Antoun’s birthday 🙂

As promised this is today’s fourth note.

and today’s fifth note is:

The sixth note, the one before the last! yessss papa to you is so soon 🙂

And here is the final note before papa’s bday!

Happy birthday Antoun ❤

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Posted in DIY, special occasions, way to play

Tagged birthday, blog, buttons, craft, creative, cute idea, DIY, fridge, how to do, jaymmy, magnets, marmite et ponpon, note

Digging toys in ice sculpture

Posted on September 29, 2014 | Leave a comment

An enthralling sensory play to experience melting ice. Very simple activity but has a lot to discover and learn. You will hear lots of ahhhhhs once your kid touches the ice. Nady was so fascinated by his frozen toys and got so excited to melt the ice and take them out, he got so driven, he forgot how cold the ice was.

How to do this beautiful sculpture? I put Nady’s favorite small toys in 3 different shape containers, added few drops of food coloring and froze them for over night. To remove the ice, I ran water over the outside of each container and held it upside down. I placed the three parts on top of each other to make the sculpture like form.

We started with squeeze bottles full of warm water, Nady was in a hurry to take out his yellow ball!

Nady was so enthusiastic, he was eating raisins when we started the play, he grabbed the bowl to fill it with water to throw it on ice, experiencing different ways maybe the gush of water can melt the ice faster!

Now it’s hammering time we should get all toys out!

It’s a fun activity for all the family actually, we were all playing with Nady! We must admit it’s a senses stimulating play, (experiencing hot – warm – cold and of course solid – liquid or frozen – melted) it fosters learning in all developmental areas and engages extra words to your kid’s lexicon.

All toys are out, mission accomplished! Nady’s hands were ice cold, but he was warm at the heart! He really enjoyed playing…

If you liked this post and you want to see more of interesting activities , follow this blog and like marmite et ponpon facebook page. Happy reading!

Fantastick art

Posted on September 22, 2014 | 6 comments

Children enjoy having a go at arts and crafts activities, especially cutting, gluing and sticking. If your child is not old enough to use scissors and glue, it’s a brilliant activity for collage. All you need to do is tape a clear contact paper with the sticky side up, give him colorful paper cut outs, pompoms, wiggling eyes, feathers…. (anything you find in your creative play box) and watch him making shapes and getting creative. Today Fouad, (Nady’s friend) is participating as well. Hourray amigo!

This activity is amazing for fine motor skills as for teaching geometric shapes, colors, textures and introducing new words… It’s important to know that your child’s messy art represents a huge milestone in their physical development. In the space of one year your child has gone from not even knowing they have hands to being able to cut or glue or just stick, it needs enough pressure, and fine motricity skills. That’s incredible!

As children get older, arts and crafts help them to socialize with others, they get together to play and create. It’s no secret, doing such activities in groups (or at least tow kids) provides a positive outlet for children to share, socialize and express their emotions.

it’s an open ended activity, you start by something and ends up by playing other totally different games. For instance, Nady was enjoying the paper rain, (throwing on him the small pieces of colored papers as if it’s rain) and imitating the rain sound!

After sticking for long time, the boys got enough (and it’s normal after 2 hours) they switched to basketball, and left behind those two beautiful pieces.