Vacations begin...!

“Mum-ma, now what to do”

“Mum-ma, I am bored”

“Mum-ma, let’s play”

“Mum-ma, what do I do?”

Mothers, I am sure, your little ones bombard you with such questions, frequently.  I never remember asking my parents, such questions. My vacations were planned. The whole morning was spent in the building compound, playing football, badminton or cycling (there were no gardens). Afternoons were spent lazing around in each other’s house, playing cards/ludo/snake & ladder/carom. Evenings again, we gathered in the compound and played till our stomachs growled in hunger.

However, the scenario is quite different these days. We as parents need to keep our children occupied or else, they get easily attracted to technology. They prefer watching TV, playing video games, downloading apps on smart phones/IPad/Tab. Also not all parents can afford to enroll their children in summer camps, Art & Dance workshops or even a family vacation.

Being a fulltime working mother, I have to seriously crack my brains and get stuffs for Samu, or else the easiest way-out she finds, is to coax her granny and watch her favorite show, Chota Bheem and Doremon. With each passing year, she is becoming more smart, and I have to be super-smart and search for new ideas, or else prompt comes the reply, “Mum-ma, yeh toh pehle bhi kiya tha” (We have done this before). Huh! Whoever said, children are innocent, forgot to mention the frequency of innocence.

 Over the last three years, I’ve gathered some ideas from the blogsworld, from friends and from my own childhood experience.

Painting is one such activity, which Samu loves to do. She enjoys playing with colours, water and the brush. I am not very good at painting; however, I do try my best. This was one such activity, which we did last year. We spent around 3 hours on this and Samu was super happy with the outcome.

Things you would require:

Ø  Drawing paper/white sheets

Ø  Water colour (I used Rangela Tempra Colours)

Ø  Paint-Brushes of different sizes

Ø  Palette

Ø  Black sketch pen/marker

Ø  Cute little fingers J

How to do:

Ø  Take a white sheet and pin it to a writing pad.

Ø  Mix blue colour with enough water in the palette

Ø  Take a thick brush and let the child paint the entire paper with blue colour

Ø  Let it dry (it takes almost 45 mins)

Ø  Let the child use his/her fingers and make small thumb impressions on the paper.

Ø  Let them draw few lines here and there, in green colour, to represent under-water plants.

Ø  Use a sketch pen to outline the thumb impressions and give it a finishing touch.

Samu wanted to do the outline thing on her own, so I just left it to her.

Age Group:

You can easily do this activity with children above the age of 3 years.  Samu’s drawing teacher introduced me to this technique. Thumb painting is fun; you can make flowers, mountains, house, and tree. You can keep newspapers below the white sheet, to avoid any possible mess.

Did you like it? How do you keep your little ones busy? Share your views in the comment box or email me- awesomemumma@gmail.com

Happy Holidays!!

Love,

AM