Month: February 2021

Moist Yogurt Pancakes with Strawberry Topping

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Moist Yogurt Pancakes (2)

Special snow days off from school call for special breakfasts, and these decadent pancakes fit the bill! Note: you can grind your own oat flour from regular rolled oats, which is a cinch to do if you don’t want to purchase an entire bag of oat flour at the store.

Ingredients:

For the Strawberry Topping:

  • 1 cup chopped strawberries
  • 1/4 cup water

For the Pancakes:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup oat flour
  • 2 teaspoons + 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, divided
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup applesauce
  • 1/2 cup apple juice
  • 2 cups plain non-dairy yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons melted Earth Balance butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Cooking spray
  1. To prepare the strawberry topping, combine the strawberries and water in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until you can easily break the strawberries up with the back of a spoon. Set aside.
  2. Meanwhile, prepare the pancakes: combine the flour, oat flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together the applesauce and remaining 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Add the apple juice, yogurt, vanilla, and melted butter.
  4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring just until combined.
  5. Heat a griddle coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Drop the batter on the surface and cook until bubbles appear, then flip and cook an additional 2 minutes or so on the other side.
  6. Top with the strawberry mixture to serve!

Lasagna Noodle Painting

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Lasagna Noodle Painting (6)

We love finding new “canvases” for painting, but today’s choice was one of the most unusual yet! I had a box of lasagna noodles in the pantry, so simply placed a few of them on a craft tray for Veronika. The long rectangles are practically begging to be painted!

Veronika picked out her colors of paint, opting for a mix of neon orange, green, and purple.

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At first I just let her smear the noodles with the paint any which way. After she had painted a few noodles, I showed her that she could also create circles, wiggly lines, or dots.

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She particularly loved dotting with her paintbrush after that!

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We also had one wide-bristle brush which could coat a whole lasagna noodle in one swipe. I showed her how to do this, but she asked for her smaller brush back. If your child wants to finish the noodles with a sprinkle of glitter, that would look great, too.

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As the noodles were drying, I decided to add Veronika and Travis’s names with puffy paint. Once the paint dried, I attached them to colored construction paper with hot glue.

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Now they made beautiful labels for the playroom! We’ll see how long our lasagna plaques last. 

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Cookie Cutter Painting for Valentine’s Day

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Cookie Cutter Valentines (7)

It’s February, which means we’re starting to think about all things Valentine’s Day, especially with regards to crafts. Cookie cutters are a great medium for toddlers because your child will delight in creating a recognizable shape on paper, even before he or she is able to draw shapes by hand.

I set out a tray for Veronika with two shades of pink paint and heart cookie cutters in various sizes.

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Veronika loved seeing all the hearts! She quickly had a knack for dipping a heart in the paint, transferring to the paper, and then turning back to dip again. “I made a heart!” she said proudly.

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Because we happen to have several heart cutters, this was also a great moment to talk about size. I had her point out to me which was the big heart, which was the small, and – the tricky one! – the medium.

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I love that cookie cutter crafts like this result in fool-proof art even for toddlers, meaning you wind up with great art to send to relatives or friends. Folded in half, the resulting heart paintings would make lovely Valentine’s Day cards.

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Snowball Showdown

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Here’s a fun twist on a snowball fight the next time you get a big snowfall!

We had nearly two feet of snow last night, so I shoveled out an area on our patio where Travis and I could make fort walls. Each of us then lined up mini snowmen along our side of the fort. Okay, the snowmen were basically just snowballs, because we didn’t have great packing snow that allowed us to make snow figures with a separate ball for the body and head. Still, they made cute targets!

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Now, we took turns trying to knock each other’s “snowmen” over!

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Depending how competitive your kids want to get with this, everyone can design their own full fort to defend with the snowmen sitting atop the walls, on opposite sides of a yard or patio. If you have enough family members for teams, then a player who gets hit by the opposite team’s snowball has to join that side. If your kids have a snowman showdown, we’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Veggie Burritos

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Veggie Burrito (2)

Homemade refried beans add a nice touch to these veggie burritos. You can prepare the recipe just before serving, or make in advance and wrap up for a lunchbox.

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/4 cup chopped onion
  • 1 (15-ounce) pinto beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 burrito-sized flour tortillas
  • 2 slice vegan cheddar
  • 1/2 cup cooked rice
  • 1/4 cup shredded carrot
  • 1/4 cup sliced or mashed avocado
  1. To prepare the refried beans, heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 10 minutes, until very tender.
  2. Add the pinto beans and water. Remove from heat and mash with a fork or potato masher to desired consistency. Set aside.
  3. To prepare the burritos, place a slice of cheddar down the middle of each tortilla. Cover each serving with 1/4 cup refried beans (refrigerate any leftover), 1/4 cup rice, 2 tablespoons carrot, and 2 tablespoons avocado. Wrap up tightly and cut in half to serve.

Veggie Burrito (1)

Camping Pretend Play

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I have literally been saving this activity for a rainy day (okay, a snowy one, but basically I was waiting for any form of precipitation). I had a never-used camping play set in the closet that included a pop-up tent, fake campfire with plastic s’mores, a lantern, and binoculars. This make-believe camping is the perfect thing to occupy the kids when you have a day too blustery to get outside and camp for real!

I pulled out the set, and from here the idea really was just to let the kids engage in imaginative play. Of course they wanted to climb into the tent right away.

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I wonder what nature treasures Veronika can see through the binoculars!

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The campfire was a big hit, as was the pretend food. Veronika loved slicing at the various sausages and veggies and the kids “roasted” their marshmallows.

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For a little arts & crafts, I printed out camping templates to color in. These featured signs of hikers, a tent label for our “campsite”, and a fire danger warning sign (you can even do a quick review of Smokey Bear while the kids color this one!).

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As a side note, there’s no need purchase a camping set for your kids to enjoy this activity; it just happened to be something in the closet. But any tent (or blankets over chairs!) can be your campsite. For a campfire, use paper towel tubes as the logs and red or orange tissue paper as the flames (tea lights add to the authenticity!).

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Real sticks with cotton balls on the end can be used for s’mores, and two toilet paper tubes taped together become binoculars in an instant.

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Needless to say, this was a great way to imagine we were in the warm camping days of summer while a blizzard raged outside!

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Rice Art

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This easy colored rice not only serves as the base material for a pretty craft, but doubles as a sensory material for toddlers!

You’ll need to prepare the batches of rice the night before. For each color, spoon 1 cup uncooked rice into a small zip-top plastic bag, then add 3 tablespoons white vinegar and 5 to 10 drops of food coloring, depending how saturated you want the color to be. I would have made a full rainbow of 6 colors but only had 5 cups of rice, so we skipped orange!

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Spoon each color onto a paper plate and let dry overnight.

In the morning, Veronika spotted the rice and instantly wanted to play. I spooned it onto a craft tray, where the rows of colors were almost pretty enough to be a game in their own right!

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But we had other plans for this particular rice. I set out pieces of cardboard to be Veronika’s canvas, because you’ll need a sturdy background for this particular art medium. We dumped on big pools of white glue and I showed her how to sprinkle the rice down to make pretty colored designs.

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Veronika loved choosing which colors to add where. As a two-year-old, her design was obviously very abstract, but older kids can make deliberate pictures with the glue before covering with rice. Sunny skies, rainbows, or flowers would all be beautiful made from the rice!

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Whenever you need to, pat the rice onto the glue and then tilt the cardboard over the tray to dump off any excess. Keep working until the design comes out to your child’s satisfaction.

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And of course, when the artwork was done, the leftover rice was a delight for Veronika to scoop through. She loved seeing the beautiful colored grains on her fingers!

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