Category: Uncategorized

Dacha…

Posted on May 29, 2015 by milajoy - No Comments

Dacha is simply a garden, usually with a little house that almost every Russian family have. When summer starts, family members go to dacha to plant vegetables. During 90s Russia had a horrible economic crisis and the dacha was the only means of surviving for some, and a lot of help for most. Now its used more for growing fresh vegetables and for grilling shish kebabs Russian version (gatherings with friend drinking  alcohol is a favorite activity among many). Usually, older people like gardening, so many are at dacha during late spring and summer taking care of the garden. Depending on how rich the family is their dacha will look better or worse. Well, our dacha looks something like below average… My grandma still takes a very good care of the garden though. She is not that strong this year, so I had to go and help her out. So I did.

First, we woke up at 7, ate close to nothing and went to take a train (subway) to Novosibirsk main railway station. There, we took a big train to station Kochenevo. The train took us one hour and 10 minutes. After that we walked about 30 minutes to our dacha from station. Of course wealthier families have theirs dacha closer to town and use cars, but those are not us. I remember when I was a kid we had dacha in different place. Back then we had to walk 50 minutes to the dacha!

One other attribute of coming to the dacha worth mentioning is that when you there, you must change to old  clothes and some old boots, so your clothes won’t get dirty and you can make home civil. It’s like a dress up for adults. lol. Look at me on the picture! 🙂

When we finally made to the dacha, we started with watering strawberry, apple trees and flowers. After that, we made 3 long garden beds. We planted carrots, beets, and onions.

Then grandma came up with the idea to plant potatoes. And we did. I was the only one with a shovel!! At the end, I was very proud of myself and asked my grandma to make a picture of me. After making a picture she asked me if I am proud to plant it. And so I said of course I am. She said that when she was younger her family planted 6 or 8 times of that. But hey!!

After all watering and planting we went home the same way we came. It took us about another 2 hours to make it home…

Matches are not for fire!

Posted on May 29, 2015 by milajoy - No Comments

Matches are so cool to play with! And no, we are not going to make a fire! We threw away the box almost right away and used a cup instead. Count, sort, put in the box and out of the box. Make shapes! Jump over them. Throw them.

Trace anything!

Some other ideas:

The following 5 pictures comes from the social group on vk.com called “РАЗВИВАЙКА ♥ РОДИТЕЛИ И ДЕТИ В ИНТЕРНЕТЕ ♥”. The link to the group is: https://vk.com/club_razvivajka

Next picture comes from the book “Олеся Жукова.Ловкие пальчики. Книжка первых занятий.Москваб 2014г”

Colored Sand Art

Posted on May 29, 2015 by milajoy - 15,095 Comments

What a fun project to do with my 3 year old!! Mila loved it! We spent about 3 hours playing with it! And most of the time she was occupied and didn’t need my attention. And we have a beautiful piece of artwork to hang on the wall!

Other ideas: counting containers, making shapes, drumming on containers, name colors, “pushing buttons”, shaking the tray, stacking them. Mila’s ideas were “pushing buttons”, making shapes (she called it “puzzles”) and drumming. We also played with scotch and painted ith sand on the tray.

If you are  interested to try those, here is several links to similar ones!

Simple sorting activity

Posted on May 18, 2015 by milajoy - No Comments

You need containers of all kinds and lego. Egg container was nice to have. She sorted lego by color in egg container.

Hand shadows for fun!

Posted on May 18, 2015 by milajoy - No Comments

All pictures copied from vk.com. There is n way to insert link to that page on vk.com

Dandelions, a scooter, pigeons, a sandbox…What else your 3 year old needs?

Posted on May 18, 2015 by milajoy - No Comments

We found money!

Posted on May 14, 2015 by milajoy - 1 Comment

Today we had unexpected money lesson! 🙂 We went to the playground and Mila found money.O_O

We were very exited! We counted how much she has and I said she can buy anything she wants for it. It was 26 rub

She said that she wants ice cream. We went to the little kiosk close by and she pointed out to the ice cream she wanted, but it cost more than she had. Than she choose the ice cream that she would want for the money she has. She gave money to the cashier and got her ice cream!:)

Look what you can do with those tops

Posted on May 13, 2015 by milajoy - 1 Comment

Hi!

I discovered that you can do a lot of fun things with those tops you usually throw away.

1) Stack them together as a tower. They connect!

2) Count them.

3) Use them in color recognition game!

4) Roll them as wheels too!!

5) Try different combinations of colors as a memory game

6) Imaginary play. Mila pretended they are her roller skates.

7) Throw them in a can

Mila had a lot of fun with it. I wish I knew it earlier, I would have big collection by now.