Hello everybody! It’s been a long time since my last Blog and i miss a lot to write. Nowadays, we are overflooded with modern technology or easy to say gadgets. We spend a lot of time on screen. Even our children are pampered with gadget. I don’t doubt that gadget such as Handphone, TV, Tab, iPad, and so on could be a good babysitter for our children. I don’t say that they are bad, i can see the advantages of those technology for my children. They learn a lot of things such as language, art and craft, etc from different apps, but like to side of coins….it has also disadvantages that they got when they have a lot of screen time. From my experiences, my children could be more irritable, they get easily angry over a small thing, they become lazy, they don’t learn how to express they feeling in a good way except showing Tantrum.

So i always limit their screen time and make a break with something that we like to do together, such as painting, art and crafting, or other sensory plays. I found that conventional plays still have their important roles in children’s development, especially art and craft. For me, art and craft provides plenty benefits, such as enhance imagination and creativity, critical thinking, develop hand/eye coordination, finger and hand strength, communication, and also bonding between me and my children.

For those who’s looking for some ideas, i hope that this blog will be a helpful resource ☺️. Please allow me to share some activities that i and my youngest daughter did last week. We tried to make aquariums from paper. Here are some materials that you might need :

• Different colors of papers
• Sticker
• Glue
• Scissors
• Transparent paper

After that, we make first the aquarium’s frame like this one below, by cutting the white paper as the frame and stick the transparent paper inside the white paper. Then we can decorate the blue paper (it’s our water anyway) with sea grass, fish or water animals stickers, or we can also paint other things, as we like.

This activity takes around 30 Minutes till one hour, but trust me…you will enjoy it a lot with your children. Let me show you how our end results are….

The left one was mine and the right one was my daughter’s, she is almost 6 years and look how details her aquarium is. I think hers is better than mine, isn’t it?? See how their imagination develops when we give them space and opportunities! We can let them also tell a story from it to enhance their communication skills and also their emotional intelligence.

I hope that this could be an inspiration, so that we can do a lot of activities together with our children besides letting our children always on screen. I wish you all a wonderful weekend. Have fun with your beloved one! God bless you!!!