family tree/ straw blowing

Today began as one of "those days" .... less than 4 hours sleep the last three nights now and its really catching up on me. Add to that the fact that I was up too early with little sqwarks, plodding the neighbourhood in a foul and tired mood.

And so my littles busied themselves as they pleased this morning... I made tri coloured playdough as an apology for my terrible 'tude, they were thrilled at this and all sat up and played whilst I gathered myself and made breakfast.









They seemed to know I was having an off day and for once, instead of me yelling more often, they found things for themselves to do.. I found them all scrunched together quite a number of times, happy in each others company.



Whilst the two littles had a sleep today, I had something special to do with Jumeirah. We dont see alot of my family ( all hubbins family is nearby, except for his extended family)as they live overseas and Sydney and Newcastle which often leaves Jumeirah forgetting Uncles or not realising what family she actually has.

And so I wanted to show her in a visual way who all her family was, on both sides. We started out by making a tree with straw blowing.

Now I would totally not advise you do this with young children, the spit that comes out the end is truly gross. Older children dont seem to create as much fluid. Its quite tricky to do, but she did well adn this was her tree.

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Unfortunately it was too small for what we wanted to do ( we had a bigger family than I realised!) but we are going to use it for a smaller version of our family.
I typed, printed, cut out and laminated all the names from both sides of the family. She sorted them into male and female, then older and younger, and then into Mummys side and Daddys side. She was actually pretty good at this! I remember really struggling with the concept of my dad having a dad until I was quite a bit older...

Once sorted, we arranged it into the tree form so we could see where everyone fitted in. We talekd about each person and who they were to her and also who they were to me. Lots of new words came out: Sister in law, brother in law, great grandma.. so it was good for her to see how it all works, how we all come together.


We are going to add photos to it next week and somehow hang it somewhere so we can admire our family :)

happy weekending!!