Baking cookies - Τα κουλουράκια

My girls and I do a lot of singing. It helps them build a rich vocabulary and promotes imagination too! Young kids all love to sing and you will be very surprised to see how quickly they learn a new song even if it is in a language they don't speak. It is a great way to expose your child to a second language which they will be learning without even realising! It is a great exercise for native speakers too, since it promotes good use of grammar, syntax and word association. 

Here is a song called Τα κουλουράκια. Use the printable to laminate it or print it on a card paper and hold it for your child to look at while you are both doing the singing. You can also watch the video of Maya singing the song. She is a bit distracted but you can still get an idea of how to sing this song with your kids. It is a very cute song and you can do some lovely cookie baking to accompany your singing too!

I love my family! Η οικογένειά μου!

 A family tree! Maya and I really love this one. We update it every now and then - it started with the four of us (μαμά, μπαμπά, Μάια, Θέα) and now we have added up to cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents too!

You can make your own simple tree by cutting a brown rectangle for a trunk and a green cloud for the leaves. If you are feeling more adventurous you may want to draw a more elaborate tree. Once you have your tree you can add the family member leaves and why not, attach a picture for each member of the family as well. Decorate them, cut them, laminate them if you like. You could add some texture to the trunk by gluing  different materials on it such as sand, pebbles, felt paper, macaroni or really anything else you may think of or have available. You could also use some real leaves/green felt paper/green paper strips to give it some extra volume and texture. A lovely craft!

What day is it? Τι μέρα είναι;

At some point I realised that my little girl knew all the days of the week in English but was struggling with the Greek ones. I was getting questions like "How do we say "Monday" in Greek, mummy?", "what comes after Τρίτη". I decided I had to do something about it and include another fun day-to-day activity for my little girl. So I printed out on card paper the days of the week in Greek, cut them and laminated them. I put them up on the wall and I let Maya put them in order. She quickly learnt all of them and now every day she moves the arrow we printed out to indicate which day of the week it is. Great fun!

I hope you will like this activity! It makes a useful and fun addition to your child's learning wall. You could download the coloured version or the black and white one for some added colouring fun!