May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and reading stories of so many fellow mom bloggers on Instagram, took me back to my initial days of motherhood and how I hated everything about being a mother, except my darling baby of course!
Ubitoyz.com Review
One of the biggest dilemmas facing modern-day parents is the ever-increasing number of fun and educational toys available for their kids, and the lack of space to store them. I recently came across an online toy library, www.ubitoyz.com and think it is a brilliant concept and the solution to most parents’ troubles. Ubitoyz goes a step further than being a toy library, it offers the option of selling toys too.
DIY Maze
We love crafting something useful that can be used to play with later. And using materials that are already available at home, makes it even more fun.
Since we have started crafting, I collect all sorts of stuff from Toilet paper rolls to Shoe boxes to cereal boxes and some chocolate wrappers too. Coming up with a craft idea and then hunting around the house looking for materials, is something we love doing as much as the craft itself. My niece and nephew got a hand-held Pinball game recently, and that gave me the idea of making a DIY maze or a marble run for my sons. We used a shoe box lid and some straws to make our maze. It’s fairly simple to make, except for the walls of the maze itself. You can choose to copy my layout or just do a simple Google search to learn how to create your own maze design.
It’s no secret for anyone who reads my blogs or follows me on Instagram, that my elder son loves Rainbows. He loves doing activities that involve rainbow colors. Recently, while looking for some fun activities for him, we came across the Walking Rainbow experiment and decided to give it a try.
This experiment uses basic ingredients available in your kitchen and is very easy to set-up. It’s great to teach them about color mixing, and primary and secondary colors. It take 3-4 days for the complete effect to take place, and will require some patience on the kids’ part.
My son, A, had been to Mattel Playtown in Citywalk, Dubai on a school trip with his friends, and couldn’t stop talking about it for days to come. They went for a short while, and they caught Barney and his team in action, but he missed seeing his current favorites – Bob, the Builder and Fireman Sam. I had promised him we would definitely be making a trip to Playtown with his little brother, P during the summer break.
Mattel Playtown has 5 diferent themed zones, dedicated to different characters, namely, Barney, Bob the builder, Thomas and Friends, Fireman Sam and Angelina Ballerina. Each zone has different activities based on the different characters, mainly helping with developing motor skill and social skills. There is a stage where the different characters come on to sing, dance and interact with their little audience.
So on a Thursday afternoon, my two super excited boys and I, went to Mattel Playtown! To save time, we bought our tickets online. We got our entry wrist bands from the reception and proceeded to the first floor, where we were just in time to catch Bob the Builder live in action, on the centrestage.
Nothing like a rainbow-themed craft to brighten up a summer afternoon at home. We are always looking for new ways to keep us busy and away from screen-time during the long summer months at home. If, like us, you are not travelling during the summer vacations and need ideas to keep the children constructively entertained and busy indoors, then look no further than here.
June, in Dubai, sees temperatures going up to 40°C and July and August seem like you’re living on the sun itself! We are fortunate enough to be able to spend most of our time indoors with air conditioning. The summer vacations will soon be here and sadly, we will be spending the entire 70-odd days of our summer vacations here in Dubai.
We are going to need a truckload of entertainment to keep an almost 5-year-old and a 2-year-old busy. Entertainment that is not screen-time and gadget related. Entertainment that can be constructive play, leading to brain development – development and exercise of both the right and left sides, i.e, creative and rational sides of the brain.
I love pictures. Not so much taking them or being in them, but surely love printing them and putting them in collage frames all over my bedroom. I do get lazy to update the photographs in the frames, but I make sure memories of all major events and milestones have their space on the walls all over the house.
My elder son, A, loves being read to and his favorite book is a compilation of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse stories. If it were up to him, I would only read stories from that book to him, day and night.
One of the stories in the book is “Up, Up and Away”, where Mickey Mouse and his friends go on a hot air balloon adventure. The story teaches children about shapes and shadows – how they are created and how they change during different times of the day.
It had been almost 4 years since I last went on a holiday. The main reason we hesitated over the last year or so, was that my younger son was less than 2 years old, and keeping him entertained while away from home would be a task. My elder son really wanted to experience a flight and the taking-off and landing.
I had heard of a lot of people travelling to Georgia lately and knew it appealed to a lot of friends as it was free entry for Indians living in the UAE.
So, in March 2017, we decided to plan a short trip for the spring break, and Georgia was on of the places that stood out due to lack of time for Visa application procedures. We did all our airline and hotel bookings less than a week before departure! That left me with very less time to pack for the kids and us, keeping in mind that it was quite cold in Georgia. My sister-in- law was going along with us too, and my elder son was really excited for the whole trip.
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