Sofía’s Halloween Disfraces from 2009 to Presente

Look at how my Gatita has changed over three años!

Tigger 2009 

 

 Jirafa 2010

 

Campanita 2011 

 

 

Princesa and Astronauta 2012

Yes….Sofía had two disfraces this Día de las Brujas!  The Princesa disfraz was for our inside festivities.  The Astronauta was for Trick-or-Treating outside in the cold!   We didn’t want this to happen again this year!

Papi dressed up as Pelé.  (I can’t even write this with a straight face!)  But Sofía does know who Pelé is because he wrote a super chévere book!

¡Feliz Día de las Brujas!

 

Disecando Las Calabazas

Our end result is tres different decorated calabazas.  For Señor Calabaza, we used a drill and THAT was super fun!  For the felt sticker Calabaza, Sofía got to do it ALL BY HERSELF and so of course, that was a whole new kind of entertainment.  So when it came to actually carve the last calabaza, Sofía wasn’t too interested until she saw what was inside the calabaza. 

Sofía helped her Papi scrape out the insides and use pinzas to remove all the innards.

The seeds MUST be stirred once in a bowl!

 

  Wow… “¡Mira Mami!”  The pinzas double as a musical instrumento!

Papi shows Sofía how to draw the face before cutting it out.  “¡Hey!  Papi, ese no es cara de princesa!”  He tried to explain why it wasn’t.

She didn't like his answer, so she drew her own cara de princesa on the back!

Halloween Playdate and Parade in the Barrio

The first play date we ever hosted was Sofía’s first Octubre. We are lucky that our barrio has a group of girls all born in 2009 and they are amigas and we try to get together often. The next Octubre, we added costumes to our play date and we have tried to make it be an annual event since then. This year at the Halloween Playdate, Sofía dressed as a Princesa (her newest obsession!)

 

Sofía dressed as Tigger on her first Halloween.

This year we decided to add a Toddler Halloween Parade to our barrio play date.  We decorated our wagon for the event and let the neighbors know we would be out making noise with instrumentos musicales.

The parade was a big hit!  It was nice for the niños to cruise around the barrio in NICE weather (No Huracán Sandy in sight!) and in daylight!  The parade will definitely be an annual event!
And I almost forgot!  One of our neighbors brought a paper crown-making kit for the adults to wear since we are all Royalty!  That was a super idea that certainly needs to be repeated next year too!

Juegos y Premios en la Feria

 

We went to the Fairfax Feria (I don’t know its real name!) But the definite highlight was playing the carnaval/Feria juegos!  (Notice I didn’t mention WHOSE highlight it was!)

 Sofía used a huge martillo and won a premio!  She was allowed to pick out the prize ALL BY HERSELF!

 

 

This gigantic Crayola rosada is increíble! (And can double as a horse when needed!)

 

 

The Pumpkin Granja

October is almost over and we have posted nada about one of our favorito holidays, Halloween!

Early in the month, we make our yearly trek to the Pumpkin farm to enjoy Fall actividades and choose our calabazas!

The park added a new Cow-Train ride.

Sofía visited with old amigos!
 

And we couldn’t miss an opportunity to go down the slides with Papi—Sofía LOVES to do this with her Papi!  (I think she could ride alone, but it is much more fun with dos!

Mezclando Colores y Agua

Does your Tot like to mix things?  I mean just about ANYTHING?  Well mine certainly does! 

 

I gave Sofía some empty take out containers, mixing bowls, squeeze bottles and plastic spoons.  All this to be paired with some water color and water.

 

Literally for about 50 segundos we talked about watching the drops of water mix around in plain water.  And then basically she wanted me out of her way.  She wanted to do all the mixing and swishing and coloring that she wanted to do at her own pace.  I of course had to participate and LIKE whatever she conjured up!

 

What was nice about this is that we kept recycling water and paint.  When Sofía mixed up all her clear water and used all her paint, we just refilled the squeeze bottles with her new concoctions.  This lasted for 3 days of play and dreary gooky beautiful colores!

It can be messy a little bit of a pain to clean and organize…..but educational benefits of free messy play certainly outweigh my minor annoyance about cleaning!  And the PURE JOY that Sofía gets out of this activity is topped by few others!

Astronauta Printable Pack Actividades

We have been concentrating on Space and Astronautas for a while since Sofía is going to be an Astronauta for Trick or Treating on Halloween.

Jolanthe from Homeschool Creations has some great resources for a Space unit.  Her entire packet can be found and downloadedfor free here!  I thought the actividades were great – I haven’t used them all yet and I did make some accommodations for language and age.

Here is what we did!

Sequencing

I cut out the cohete espaciales and Sofía put them in order (Both ways, increasing size and decreasing size.)  We did this a few times for various days before we glued them on paper.  She liked the actividad.

Matching Shadows

 Again, I cut out the squares and gave them to Sofía to match together.  She enjoys repeating the actividad several times.  The next day, I let her glue them in pairs on the paper.  She was very particular about HOW she wanted them lined up.

Countdown and Cutting!

  We talked about how a “countdown” works and practiced saying the numbers backwards and forwards.  We even watched NASA video clips of countdowns and take-off!  Over a few days, Sofía cut out the numbers all by herself!  (She LOVES cutting paper!) Then she put them in order and together we glued the numbers on the paper so they would fit.  ¡Despuegue!

 

Letter Matching

Sofía colored her female astronauta and then I gave her the construction paper already prepared with writing on it.  The actividad was to match letters together.  The construction paper had letters written to spell out Astronauta and Sofía had to find the proper card with the corresponding letter on it and then glue each one down.   (She really does tell me that she wants to be an Astronauta, by the way!)

Reading and Your Spanglish Bebé on SpanglishBaby™

If you follow La Mother Tongue, then you know that Sofía and I have been learning our Abecedario and the sounds for each letra and from the foto you can see that it becomes an entire familia event!  Check out our latest SpanglishBaby™ artículo, Reading and Your SpanglishBaby, about fostering reading with your young tot and take advantage of some handy resources available for your personal use!

The Many Names of Tinker Bell

Today, Disney released its newest film in the Tinker Bell Disney Fairies Films, “The Secret of the Wings”.  I was honored and so very thrilled that I was asked to review the DVD for Spanglishbaby™.  While the review isn’t due out for a few more days, I wanted to share the Walt Disney Studios trailers of what I found to be an ESPECTACULAR movie!  As usual, Campanita rocks and Disney shines!  So until the review comes out and until you get your hot little hands on your own copy of “El Secreto de las Hadas”, enjoy the linguistic assortment below!

P.D.  Click HERE to read the review published on October 25, 2012 on SpanglishBaby!

Tinker Bell (with Antonio Banderas' accent):  El Secreto de las Hadas (Mexico)




Campanilla:  El Secreto de las Hadas (Espana)



Tinker Bell:  The Secret of the Wings (USA)

Tortilla Soup

One of my favorite blogs to read is MyBig Fat Cuban Family.  Martha is witty, sweet, creative and very familia oriented.  She also cooks and has a cook book out with the same name as the blog. 

I decided to try her receta for tortilla soup and I love it!  I finally figured out why I love it so much…..the soup is so hardy with tons of tortillas, the textures remind me of Mexican chilaquiles and I really, really, really, really LOVE authentic chilaquiles. 

HERE is Martha’s receta.  I make a little variation of her receta.  I use fire roasted tomates and puree them with a half onion in the blender leaving it a little chunky.  I make my own chicken broth and slow cook the soup for a while to marry the flavors.  Then really, the soup can be topped it with anything….black beans, avocado, corn, but two constants are always shredded cheese and tortillas! 

¡Deli!

Fall Plastilina

We like to make homemade plastilina and Fall’s seems to be my favorite!  You can click HERE for our plastilina recipe!  For Fall’s, we add cinnamon and allspice. 

  

 

 

After Sofía helped me mix up the batch, I gave her some pasta, coconut flakes, and beans and let her play. Here is her creation!  

 

 

Sometimes, we search outside for fun things to add such as leaves, sticks, rocks, flowers and seeds. One thing is for sure though…our casa smells yummy!  

 

Here is Sofía mixing up our Fall plastilina from 2011!  I can’t believe how much she’s grown! 

 

 

La Letra C with a Cámara

A while ago Sofía and I were doing an actividad for the Letra C.  I had something planned out, but as we were doing it, something else occurred to me us, and so we followed the tangent!  We were cruising the casa for objects in our daily life that begin with the letra C.  There are quite a bit en Español!  I ended up giving the cámara to Sofía and she (with only a poquito of my help) took fotos of the things around us that began with the Letra C. 

Here are the results! 

caramelos

 

 carrito

 

coche

 

 

café

corazón

 

corazón

cuchara y cuchillo

 cepillo

celular

 

As a follow-up to this actividad, you can make your own flashcards with fotos or make a collage of the letra C fotos that the niño has taken.  Sofía LOVES to look at the fotos that she has taken and reviews the names of the objects and practices the sound of the letra C!