Tiptoi - the German Black Magic Pen

Another toy I am hooked on ...

I am always on the lookout for something new and English to play with ... now I found a Ravensburger toy which is German and teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) for children, it is called the English Detective starter set... the recommended age is- as far as I remember- 6 years of age, but you can pretty much use it at the age of 2 or less, well not entirely but still bits of it.
I adore it, and the little Chatterbox likes it too, it is educational and entertaining too ...

The aim of the game is irrelevant at the moment for us, basically it is a board game and there is a villain (the bad guy) and Mr Detective (the hero) but I did not get very far with the interpretation of the German text .... for the rules are in German... the most important thing about this game is the magic pen (in our case the pen was included, because it came in a starter set). For a 1000 Forint I regard it as a real bargain, a brightly shining trophy of my bargain hunt :). Anyway ... we focus on the 'extra' sort of side boards, these are little thematic boards (children's room: introducing the names of different toys or a fast food restaurant with the names of simple snacks and drinks, my favourite board is the orchestra, which not only names the different musical instruments but also makes the sound of each, which is brilliant... also introduces the colours, different professions, zoo animals (with the sounds they make) and so on.
We keep it simple (considering the fact that the little one is only 21 Months old), my son holds the magic electric pen (and does it beautifully, most of the times in his left hand) and touches the objects the name of which he is curious about and this is when and where the magic happens .... I haven't got a clue how it works (it seems to be a piece of cardboard) but it names the object and sometimes makes some additional sound effects (like in the case of the musical instruments). I think it is a kind of magic....

Tiptoi test    (German)

PS: a big thank you for Daddy, because he cycled all the way down to Mezőkövesd from Miskolc and back on a very hot day just to bring it home :) So thank you, Daddy!

Spider in the waterspout aka the modern Sisyphus

One of our favourite nursery rhymes is the Incy Wincy Spider, which is like a modern Greek Tragedy (reflects the absurdity of human life).

The plot is simple: there is this poor spider he goes up the water spout then comes the rain and washes the spider out then out comes the sunshine and dries up the rain and the spider goes up the spout again and it goes on and on and on… so that is why it reminds me of the story of Sisyphus who had to roll his great big rock up the hill then when he reached the summit it fell back again and he had to start it all over again.  

The Spider fingerplay was one of the few rhymes I got familiar with when we started our bilingual journey I sang and fingerplayed it for my son god knows how many times and he loved it and he loves it still. But now we started acting out songs, we started using more props and started to have more fun with the nursery rhymes. One reason for this is probably the fact that we sang it over and over again, so it was getting a bit boring.

This time the fun factor is the use of proper props, I bought a waterspout in Praktiker for a couple of hundreds forint and bought the spider in a second hand shop along with the sun (which is a flower really, but it does its job as the Sun too) and made the representation of the rain as a little DIY.

It is a fun game to play, the little one knows now the words as well (he is now 21 Months old) so we sing it together and play it together sometimes we manage to engage daddy as well for a while with it.

It introduces the concepts of sun and rain, two directions up and down and it is very funny and easy to act out.

If you have a tunnel children can go through the tunnel and pretend to be an incy wincy spider, we use little blue balls to represent the raindrops so children can act out the whole drama J

CAST: IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

The Spider (Protagonist)  who struggled to reach the heights only to be thrown down to the depths ... what an epic




The waterspout (the ultimate objective is the reach the summit)



The Rain  (the challanger)



The Sun (the supporting character)

Mr Funny Face - társasjáték geekség

 

Mr Funny Face - board game geek

Játszottunk ... Mr Funny Face volt a játszópajtásunk, nagyon jó móka volt. Nagyon edutaining, mert amelett, hogy csupa móka és kacagás, még rendkívül okosító is. Megneveztük az arc részeit: orr, szem, száj, szemöldök, bajusz, haj, kiegészítőket: sapka, kalap, szemüveg (mi angolul játszottuk, nyilván nem nyelvspecifikus). A játék lényege nagyon egyszerű, minden játékos húz egy kártyát és a játékba épített mechanikus visszaszámláló kb. 10 másodpercet ad arra a játékosoknak, hogy a kártyán szereplő vicces arcot kirakják. Ha nem sikerül teljesíteni a küldetést, akkor az arc előre bólint és lepereg a felépítményünk J kezdhetjük előről az arcépítést J, ha sikerül a makeup, akkor leállítjuk az órát és nyilván az nyer, aki a legrövidebb idő alatt kirakta a kártyán szereplő arcot.

Mi még nem időre játszottunk és nem is használtuk a kártyákat, saját elképzelés szerint arcplasztikáztunk (21 hónapos a fiam), viszont az órát a végén indítottuk, számoltunk tíztől visszafelé és amikor leketyegett a 10 másodperc,  és Mr Funny Face ledobta magáról az arcvonásait újak után vágyakozva, akkor hahota és keztdük előről az egészet J.

 

Jó móka, mindenkinek ajánlom! (very edutaining és on budget (eredeti ára 4font ASDA, vagy létezik Argos-os Chad Valley 4.99 ért, Amazonos van, ott drága... én egy ezresért vettem az aukciós portálon ...Vtera)

Pozitívum: nem kell bele elem, bárhol, bármikor, bárkivel, egyedül is játszható...

Negatívum: akinek bohócfóbiája (coulrophobia) van, nem fogja szeretni...

Ajánlott 2-4 játékos számára 5 éves kortól... (szerintem egyedül is lehet játszani, illetve sokkal korábban elkezdhető szülői felügyelettel! )

 

 

HOMEMADE LADYBIRD NUMBER MATCHING GAME FOR TODDLERS

The 1-2-3-4-5-spot ladybird number matching game (homemade)

Today we played with our homemade ’spot the ladybirds’ spots’ game... It was all fun. I found this free printable sheet on busylittlebugs and I customized it a little bit... originally it comes with a set of leaves with numbers on them, but for my 21 months old it is far too incomprehensible... so I just left out the whole business with the numbers on the leaves, cut the number of ladybirds from ten to 5 and used little black buttons to be placed on the spots and basically that is it.

It is useful to have exactly the same number of black buttons as needed because it helps your child self-check (each button must go) and also it can be a bit messy if you overdo it with the buttons...

So it is a fun game and very-very cheap (you need a colour printer and a laminator or instead of laminator if it is just a one off you can simply iron the laminating pouches).

Plus side: on budget, hand crafted thus very valuable J fun to create and fun to play with

Drawback: toddlers might swallow the ladybird spots; have to keep an eye on them (or 2)