Puzzled/ watercolour painting

Now doesnt this look like fun??? 7 loads of washing to fold... Luckily Greys Anatomy is on...

I got out some puzzles today for my littles. I dont do them enough, probably because I hate missing pieces.. and I have two people that are notorious for hiding them to "find" only to forget where they were hidden... but as they arent that well and need a lot of distracting, I got them out.

This week Amahli has truly amazed me. She is growing up so fast and is doing activities I set out for the bigs and having no trouble at all. I gave her some really simple peg piece puzzles to start with, thinking she'd be here for a minute then give up. She sat and completed this transport puzzle and said " I did it!" quickly follwed by "more?"

I have always done puzzles in stages. First is the simple peg puzzles that have knobs for easy grip for little fingers.

This first stage also has the picture underneath so it can easily be matched.

Second stage is knob puzzles but without the picture underneath. You have to try and work out which shape is the same and try it.



It takes more concentration, more turning pieces around, to get them to fit.With each piece I heard the triumphant " I did it!" She also finished this one without any help and asked "more?"




Next stage is puzzles without the knobs but that have simple slide together pieces ( not as yet interlocking). We have a good one that also has the picture underneath so I can be matched quite easily. This one she was able to match the pieces with the puzzle board but needed a little bit of help to get all the pieces in.

And then she went back and began the first two puzzles again on her own :)

Jared watched Amahli, and followed her "I did it!" with a very mummy sounding " Yes you did!"

He didnt want to do the puzzles at first, but I played the memory game with one of the puzzle which he loved, and he put each piece back after guessing which one was missing. I then took out all the pieces and he told me "harold" ( helicopter) was going to try and do it.

Since the day was so glorious, we decided to do some painting outside. Amahli has been walking around with paintbrushes for the last few days saying "now? paint?" so I figured I would ler her today.
Simple Water colour painting today, seeing as they have been enjoying making their own creations rather than mummy-directed ones lately. I put out 4 colours of food colouring and 4 different thickness of brushes so they could experiment. Amahli was straight in.

"Ooh"ing and "Aahh"ing over each brush stroke she really got into it.

And then she REALLY "got into it". I turned for half a second (yup thats all it takes) to put her first painting aside and give her another piece of paper, when she did this. So now whilst I am still Avatar green from yesterday, she is now a shocking shade of pink. :)


My, arent we pretty.

Jared came over and sat down once Amahli and the paint had been removed. He told me he was going to paint something. And so he set to work.

His stage of painting is to only use one colour at a time on a page. Jumeirah did this for ages, only really using more than one colour if I asked her to. Jared also paints like this as he doesnt like to mix the colours as often it looks "messy". He did finally paint with a few colours on one page but he was very careful not to let the colours mix or touch too much.

Today he carefully did these amazing works.

A car (which, for probably only the second time, I can actually see it!)

A face (I can see this one too!)



I am also being really good and not directing him in his art. Hes much better at creating than I am anyway :)

Amahlis completed masterpiece