Tag Archives: kids activity

Christmas candle holder -DIY- crafts for tiny hands

Posted on December 10, 2015 | Leave a comment

Christmas decoration fiesta is still going on. My little Lutin is so excited and counting down to the big day D. Meantime we are enjoying crafting some decorations to add our personal touch in every corner in the house.

I really loved working with the baking soda dough that we explored this year. Last week we did the keepsake ornaments and the result was amazing, so we decided to use it again for candle holders. For a reminder to the dough recipe, click here.

Cut out star shapes and while the dough is still soft, mark the place of the tea candle before baking. When it’s totally dry and cool, hand it to your little helper and watch the lovely golden fingers coloring them. Red, green and golden are the dominant colors in our house for this season.

I am amazed how dedicated Nady is. I love Christmas more and more because of his excitement, to the extent i feel like a kid again and i believe in Santa 🙂

After the paint is perfectly dry, place the tea candles. We used vanilla scented ones because we are planning to light them the Christmas eve at the dinner.

Like i always say, personalized things are the most meaningful. I am sure these candle holders will remain for many coming christmases.

If you are doing this with your little girls, add glitter on the paint they will love it. Little details make the difference. Always give options to your kids to develop their creativity.

If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the joy. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.

Color changing flowers experiment – My Little Scientist

Posted on September 21, 2015 | 2 comments

This experiment is a great lesson of “patience” to give to your children, of course beside teaching them about flowers and osmosis. But before going that deep let me tell you it’s also a great fun for the whole family!

Very easy set up; begin by filling the vases with water and desired colors. We used roses and daisies for the experiment. Give a fresh cut to the flowers before placing them in the colored water, it helps for a quicker absorption.

As the flowers drink the colored water, they will start changing colors (due to osmosis effect, in simple words moving water through the stems to make it more comprehensible to your kids as the flowers need to drink). The change won’t start before few hours.

Our first observation was 6 hours later.

The roses were more colored than the daisies. Not all flowers react the same. Nady is so into experiences nowadays, he expects to do one every day after school. I am sure he is fascinated with the outcome thinking it’s magic more than science. I don’t blame him, i would like to believe so also, it brings more fun to the experiment 🙂

Each time we go back to check on the flowers, i don’t hide it, i was even more excited than Nady! And this is how they looked after 24 hours.

The red and yellow looked amazing! the slowest was purple, so we eliminate it, Nady thought it wasn’t fun 🙂 Don’t do that maybe yours will work!

After each observation, Nady wants to take pictures with his magical flowers. Then we put them back each in their corresponding vase.

Honestly i was very impressed with his patience, personally i wasn’t. It was a good exercise for me too.

Last observation was 48 hours later. Here are our beautiful flowers!!

You can leave the flowers in the water as much as you want, the colors will be certainly brighter. It all depends on the patience of your children.

If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the joy. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.

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Posted in DIY, way to play

Tagged blog, color changing flowers, experiment, food blogger, jaymmy, kids activity, learning, lebanon, little scientist, magic, marmite et ponpon, mom blogger, osmosis, patience, qatar, science, way to play

Back to school – Double chocolate chip cookies with origami paper pouch fold tutorial

Posted on September 8, 2015 | 1 comment

Back to school means summer is over. I still recall this period of time from my childhood; full of excitement and concern. But this time is different, it’s my precious boy’s first year at school. Yes, my baby love is all grown up now… I have mixed feelings; i am happy, proud and anxious.

Hopefully it will be a good new beginning to a promising future. I wish you all the luck habibi Nady.

Like all kids of his age, he is fond of chocolate. I said why not preparing together a nice chocolaty dessert for his first day at school; double chocolate chip cookies for double happiness!

To prepare these rich cookies you will need

½ cup butter (100g almost), softened
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup cocoa powder sifted
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 180°C, and prepare your baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Add the baking soda, salt, cocoa powder and flour. Mix well then dump in your chocolate chips. I am telling you it’s very simple to make it 🙂

Shape the cookies, place them on the tray and bake for 10 minutes. This quantity makes 12-14 big pieces. Let them cool before serving.

These cookies have a fudgy texture, they melt in your mouth, leaving an after taste of heaven. When you shape them, make them a bit thick to enjoy the taste.

These cookies are meant to be part of Nady’s lunchbox. So we need to wrap them in a nice way. I prepared a paper pouch for each cookie. You already know i am fan of origami.

These pouches are really easy to make. Easy like 2 minutes! trust me. Follow this step by step tutorial:

1- Cut a square paper (color and size of your choice)
2- Fold it in half diagonally
3- Fold one of the lower corners to the middle of the other side
4- Fold the other lower corner to the middle of the opposite side
5- Fold down one layer of your top corner to create your pouch
6- Now it’s ready to fill in your cookie

This type of folding is called diaper fold pouch!

You can use it not just for cookies, you can fill it with corn flakes, sandwich, pop corn or anything of your choice. Maybe just a paper with a message 🙂

If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the joy. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.

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Posted in design, dessert, DIY, kids food, special occasions

Tagged design blog, diaper fold pouch, doha, double chocolate chip cookies, food blogger, jaymmy, kids activity, lebanon, marmite et ponpon, origami, recipe

3 fun games to teach your toddler the geometric shapes and colors (free printables)

Posted on April 23, 2015 | Leave a comment

Teaching your child about shapes and colors is greatly important. This knowledge manifests in their daily life. It helps:

Improving the verbal communication: by providing them the exact descriptive vocabulary we are offering an opportunity to communicate more effectively. By that we avoid their frustration of being unable to ask for a specific thing. ex: “i want the blue car not the red”, “i like the square biscuit more than the round one”…
Building up the logic skills: do you know that when your kid is able to build a balanced lego tower, means he is making use of his geometry skills?
Improving pre-reading skills: Children will apply the same skills that they used in recognizing circles and squares to recognizing and naming all of the letters, as letters are just more complicated shapes.
Being creative: the knowledge of shapes and colors will help them to create what they imagine in their minds when drawing or creating shapes with playdough…. Also the use of colors can express feelings and emotions that young children may not have the words to describe. Ex: using the color red to express anger.
Teaching perspective: realizing that shapes not only exist in flat form on paper but as objects in everyday life, will give them a new perspective of their surroundings.

First comes recognizing the shapes and then drawing, tracing or coloring them is a plus. And maybe building 3D shapes in an advanced stage.

I created series of cards for the most common shapes that a child will encounter in his daily life (square, rectangle, circle, oval, triangle, heart, star…..). Total of 12 colorful shapes with animals, to make it more fun. This way we are learning shapes, colors and animals.

Click on french cards or english cards to download a high resolution file.

As Nady loves singing, we were spending time on each animal to sing a related song and name its benefits.

We played 3 games with these cards:

Game 1: Tracing the shapes with colored pencils

A smart way to enhance his motor skills and practice the pre-writing ability by learning how to hold the pen and draw, beside naming the colors and the animals

Game 2: Making the shapes out of playdough

This game couldn’t end without using the cutters! The favorite activity of Nady 🙂 We found a way to make it beneficial, by cutting same animals to make assimilation!

A great way to build fine motor skills while the child rolls out the dough to trace around the shapes while learning the shapes, colors and animals.

Game 3: Coloring inside the lines

A different type of exercise, teaching a tough skill that needs time, drawing inside the lines! My son is a reluctant artist, he doesn’t like to follow rules he wants to be a free! Without forgetting that this exercise aims also to learn shapes, colors and animals.

We had a new experience each time we played with those cards. The sky is the limit. You can create your own games depending on what is your aim from the exercise.

Don’t forget playing and having fun is very educational! Enjoy every moment with your children, they are precious.

This is what i call a way to play! If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the fun. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.

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.