Month: April 2017

Coffee Filter Globes

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Earth Day is tomorrow, April 22! I wanted to help Travis start to understand what protecting our planet is all about, so we made this craft today in anticipation of the holiday. You’ll celebrate Earth Day while teaching your little ones how they can help!

First, make your Earth. We scribbled in green and blue marker on a plain coffee filter, and as Travis worked I talked about how the Earth contained more water than land, so we needed more blue.

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Then came his favorite part – spritzing his globe with water to bleed the colors! From there we left it to dry overnight.

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The next morning, I traced Travis’s hands on black construction paper.

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We glued the coffee filter to a piece of paper, leaving half of it above the sheet. Glue the hands below, and now your child is helping to “hold up the Earth.”

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As a final touch, you can talk about simple gestures even kids can do (not wasting water, helping to pick up trash…) and brainstorm a sentence to add to the blank part of your paper.

Mini Cheese Pizzas

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Mini Cheese Pizzas

A mix of non-dairy milk, nutritional yeast and miso makes a wonderfully cheesy sauce to go over these individual pita pizzas. Try the cheese sauce anywhere else you’d like too – it’s killer over french fries!

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup pizza sauce
  • 2 whole wheat pitas
  • 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
  • 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 tablespoon whole wheat flour
  • 1 teaspoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon yellow miso
  1. Spoon 2 tablespoons pizza sauce over each pita; set aside.
  2. In a saucepan, combine the milk, nutritional yeast, flour, lemon juice, and miso. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until bubbly, stirring frequently.
  3. Divide the cheesy sauce evenly over the pizzas. Bake at 425 degrees F for 5 minutes, then let cool slightly before slicing and eating.

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

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This recipe introduces curry flavor in a mild way for children who are new to spicy food – it’s the first time I’ve gotten Travis to eat curry, anyway, and he didn’t stop until the bowl was empty!

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 minced garlic clove
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 teaspoon mild curry powder
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 1/4 cup cooked wild rice
  1. Wrap the potato in foil and bake at 425 degrees F for 1 hour, until very soft; let cool, then peel of the skin. Discard the skin and transfer the flesh to a blender; set aside.
  2. Meanwhile, combine the onion, garlic, water, and curry powder in a saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes.
  3. Add the onion mixture and coconut milk to the blender and process until smooth. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat until heated through, stirring in the cooked wild rice at the end.
  4. Garnish with a dusting of cinnamon before serving, if desired!

Shoes for Sale

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This idea from High Five magazine was too adorable not to play! Use any blocks or boxes you have on hand to create the racks for your shoe store – ideally, I wish we’d had bigger blocks to utilize!

Once we had our “shelves” arrayed, I asked Travis to help gather shoes, and he was so excited to bring pair after pair from his closet. The game became even more exciting when we added in mommy and daddy shoes.

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Now all you need is a little imagination (though a toy register helps too!). Travis loved “beeping” shoes at checkout, and helping me try on pairs before we reversed roles.

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What would you construct your shoe store out of? Please share in the comments!

Foot Sensory Bins

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Why should hands have all the fun? We set up bins today to see how things felt with our feet instead!

For your mise en place, set out 3 separate bins. I used one each of: shaving cream, water beads, and sand. You can make your sand wet or dry, or start with it dry and then gradually add a little water.

Travis wanted to hop in the water beads first, which he declared very cool.

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Quite quickly he was ready to see how the sand felt. It only took a moment before he requested we add some water beads to the sand, and he mixed it all together with his toes for a while.

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He was very hesitant about the shaving cream, but I got him to sit on a stool and we dipped his feet in, after which he decided he liked how creamy it felt. Then he declared we needed water beads in here too.

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When you’re done, dump any trash out and then rinse your buckets in the tub – which is half of the fun anyway!

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Four Seasons Tree Pictures

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The buds are on the trees, and we’re discussing the annual cycle of a tree and the seasons a lot this week! It was the perfect time to make a beautiful picture showing all the stages of a tree throughout the year.

To set things up, I cut 4 trunks from brown construction paper (preschoolers can help with this step!) and glued them down to poster board.

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Then it was time to rip up tissue paper for our 4 different trees – Travis was an eager participant for this part! We used pink for spring flowers, green for summer leaves, and orange and yellow for the fall. I had intended to use white tissue paper for winter snow, but we decided cotton balls would be more fun!

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I set out a dish of glue, and showed Travis how to wad up each piece of tissue paper, dip in the glue, and then apply. So he wouldn’t get confused, we worked on one season at a time, starting with bright pink flowers for spring.

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He was definitely proud to determine where each leaf or flower should go, and very seriously told me, “I’m all done!” when finished with one season and moving on to the next. A very cute way to talk about the seasons.

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Green Power Smoothie

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This power-packed smoothie is full of surprising ingredients – a great way to sneak new foods into a child’s diet!

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup vanilla almond milk
  • 1 ripe banana, frozen
  • 1/2 cup frozen mango
  • 1 cup baby spinach
  • 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
  1. Combine all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Enjoy!

Note: The smoothie comes out thick, so sometimes Travis likes to eat it with a spoon, more like a slushie. Or, add a little water to thin the consistency and drink with a straw.

 

 

Sink or Float? Nature Experiment

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Spring is finally here, and we are getting outdoors as much as we can! Yesterday we turned it into a treasure hunt, and I posed a question to Travis… what did he think would sink or float, once we returned home?

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We returned with our bag of treasures and he couldn’t wait to find out, so I drew a tub of very full water in the middle of the afternoon. This in and of itself was super exciting!

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Now it was time to start tossing in our items one by one. Floating pinecones and bark were a big hit…

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…as were flowers, pine needles, and bits of grass.

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While we collected things, Travis was very into teeny tiny pebbles, and he was quite surprised that these sank! This was a great way to talk about how floating didn’t depend on the size of something, but on its density compared to that of water.

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Once all the items were in the tub, it was time to swish them about with a rake for a while. The play only ended once his shirt was soaked! All in all, great fun.

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Play Dough Cupcake Shop

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With leftover play dough from a goodie bag, we decided to open up our own birthday cupcake shop this morning! All you need are cupcake wrappers, a few jeweled embellishments, and your imagination.

I shaped our play dough into cupcakes and added to the liners to get Travis started, after which he loved pressing in star beads and jeweled stickers from our craft bin as the “frosting.”

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Of course we needed to add a few candles for authenticity!

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After a while he wanted to bake his cupcakes, so I pulled out his play oven.

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When the cupcakes were finished, he decided they were for daddy, so that got to be dad’s morning surprise!

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What imaginative food play have you tried with your play dough? Please share in the comments!

Matzo Crunch Bites

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These three-ingredient bites are easy for kids to help make, kosher for Passover if you’re keeping kosher this week, and absolutely delicious.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup pitted dates
  • 1/2 cup almond butter
  • 1 and 1/2 pieces matzo
  • Powdered sugar for rolling (optional)

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    1. Combine the dates and almond butter in a food processor and process until mixed.
    2. Break the matzo into small pieces and add to the food processor; process until combined.
    3. Using your hands, roll the dough into 12 balls; roll in powdered sugar if desired for a sweet coating.
    4. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving.