Tag Archives: way to play

Fathers day shirt folding card- DIY – kids activity

Posted on June 18, 2015 | 1 comment

Simple ideas come out the best when made with love. Father’s day is so soon! Like every year, I make sure to let Nady add his personal touch to make it special and memorable. A personal DIY souvenir along with the gift, means so much. This easy yet beautiful card folded as shirt with a message of love, picture or drawing will definitely warm papa’s heart.

All you need is a rectangular double side cardboard and 3 buttons. The one we prepared is one side stripes and plain blue the other. If you want to make the same design, click here to download this card design. It’s within A3 paper and you can resize it.

Fold the two sides to meet in the middle, keeping the stripes on the outside. Bend the top corners to look like a collar, then stick the buttons. Of course with the help of your kids.

Now the card is ready, leave the inside to your kid’s imagination and choice. And this is i guess the most important and meaningful to papa.

I love the look on Nady’s face when he is so proud of what he did!

Nady celebrated early father’s day at the nursery, he came home and was so in the mood so to keep the celebrations we made this card at home. I got the chance to share it, kind of warm up before Sunday 😉

Happy early Fathers day !

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, special occasions, way to play

Tagged blog, card, card folding shirt, DIY, father's day, jaymmy, kids crafts, lebanon, marmite et ponpon, qatar, way to play

“Mini chef in the kitchen” 2- Jus de lapin (carrot-banana-mandarin smoothie)

Posted on April 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

In the “mini chef in the kitchen” series, today we are preparing a healthy fruit smoothie to beat the heat.

Giving the juice a creative name, attracts your kids attention and stimulates their curiosity. There is no way they won’t try it especially if they are picky eaters like my son.

“jus de lapin” or rabbit juice because it contains carrots and has a bright orange color!

You will need

1 large carrot
1 big banana
juice of 3 mandarines
half cup ice (optional)
1 tsp honey (optional)

Mix all and blend for 2-3 minutes until smooth and frothy.

My son is not fan of sweet taste, i didn’t add the honey since the mandarin were not very sour.

If the fruits are already cold or some frozen, you can skip adding ice. I put two colorful ice sticks for fun and to keep it chilled.

This activity provides your kids with plenty of opportunities to learn. Click on benefits of cooking with your kids to know more about it.

To add more fun and encourage Nady to have the whole smoothie i prepared moustache cut out and insert it in the straw. Click here for the printable file.

There are endless options for smoothies, use the favorite fruits of your kids, or even introduce some other veggies like celery, spinach or cucumber and make the green giant.

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.

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.

Solve the riddle to find the egg surprise – Easter kids activity

Posted on April 1, 2015 | 2 comments

It’s very important for your kid to have interest in the play to enjoy it. This game was inspired by my son, seeing him Lately enjoying hide and seek game, and leaning toward riddles.

Since we’re preparing for Easter season i thought of doing an “egg surprise” hunt (stretched over 10 days for more fun). Everyday i hide one egg surprise and i give him directions in the form of riddles.

Putting everything he likes in one game was absolutely the ultimum!

Riddles are fun and challenging, they have been shown to improve children’s comprehension and creativity, by working their brains. At 2 years, riddles are very simple, the aim is to have fun and not break their heads, but if your children are older and can read than you can make the challenge harder, in this case riddles increase reading comprehension and strengthens problem solving and critical thinking skills.

The written riddles was read by his father. They were both playing, since Antoun is a big fan of such games as well. For french version click on french riddle cards to download a high resolution file if you’re willing to play this game and for english one click on english riddle cards.

Such a fun and highly beneficial game, excellent to set Easter mood and bond with your kid.

If you try it with your children, expect to see proud and victorious faces especially when they found the egg! it’s priceless!

This is what i call a way to play! 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 posts yet to come, stay tuned!

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Posted in DIY, special occasions, way to play

Tagged blog, crafts, DIY, easter, Easter season, egg surprise, game, hide and seek game, jaymmy, lebanon, marmite et ponpon, qatar, riddles, surprise egg, toddlers, way to play

Easter/spring burlap door wreath

Posted on March 31, 2015 | 3 comments

The second item falling in the burlap decoration series, a colorful door wreath! Last year we did buttons made bunny, we had to remove it after Easter which made Nady a bit disappointed. This year our door decoration is more springy to keep it longer!

Cut a big circle of styrofoam then a smaller one within to make it look like a hoop. Wrap it with burlap and here it is, ready to decorate with pinwheels and flowers done with your sweetheart’s tiny hands with so much enthusiasm and love!

All you need is felt and burlap cut in squares and glued back to back. This is how we do pinwheels, step by step.

Depending on the size, you decide how many pinwheels to do. We made 3 different sizes and colors, as per Nady choice. He was the leader of the craft and i was following his instructions.

Initially i prepared for only pinwheels, but he asked to add flowers, specifically green, yellow and purple 🙂

Click on flowers to download a high resolution file to help you trace them before cutting.

Such activities develop your child’s motor skills while having fun cutting, pasting, folding, drawing, tracing, and coloring. . . These are big skills for tiny hands. It’s beautiful to see your children growing and being proud of their achievements!

“i can paste”! don’t undermine this sentence. Motor skills enable your child to perform important everyday tasks, and when combined with hand – eye coordination also open new doors to exploration, learning, and creative expression.

Researches show that emphasis on purely intellectual activities such as memorization of letters and numbers… is far less useful at this stage than encouraging fine motor abilities and hand-eye coordination. These skills lay the foundation for academic learning in later years. In order to learn to write or draw, for example, a child’s hand must be strong enough to hold a pencil steady for a long period of time.

The best way for you to help promote motor skills is to provide your child with a good choice of materials (blocks, crayons, nontoxic and washable markers and paints, paste, glue, modeling clay, safety scissors…) to manipulate as his imagination dictates.

We played a bit with the wreath before mounting it on the door. That was the best part; my precious is exploring the different usages of it 🙂