Alicia and Marina after our face painting workshop. Luckily there is no photographic evidence of how my face turned out, but what should have been a Bird of Paradise ended up looking remarkaby like Harry Potter as a French waiter. Gracias chicas.
Aupairing is by no means a dificult job, it isn't easy either though, and so, should any future/present aupairs stumble upon this blog here are some tricks that have proved very helpful;
- Mini Festivals- facepainting/dressing up/make a playlist of party tunes (wierdly enough spice girls still go down really well with 6 year olds!)
- Youtube nursery rhymes with the lyrics posted up
- Make bedtime a competition- literally such a good trick- First one to fall asleep is the winner!
- Find out what makes them laugh and refer to it often (children don't seem to get bored of the same joke), here, refering to something e.g. a fly/basket full of socks as 'your neighbour' always gets a good laugh.
- When in doubt, musical statues.
- Stick post it notes with english words around the house, shout the word and the winner is the first person to find it...extra points if they can act out the word- e.g. for a monkey by making monkey sounds.
- Randomly shout out colours and make them run around to find something with that colour.
- Remember that a 5 minute walk for a normal person is about a 30 minute walk for children as they are easily distracted by just about everything, and have tiny legs.
...Make sure that you spend a good couple of hours without them, other wise they may well start to despise you!
Whilst jogging I often see these chicos who try to sell me cakes or sing a little song which goes,
'Feliz en tu dia, mmmm, Feliz en tu dia' etc.
I'm not sure what their names are, but they are too sweet for words.
