Apple Pear Crisp

Leave a comment

Apple Pear Crisp (1)This easy dessert lets the natural sweetness of the fruit shine. Serve with your favorite vegan vanilla ice cream if your kids like their dessert served a la mode!

Ingredients:

  • 3 pears
  • 3 apples
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup old-fashioned oats
  • 1/4 cup melted Earth Balance butter
  • Cooking spray
  1. Peel, core, and thinly slice the pears and apples; set aside.
  2. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, vanilla, flour, oats, and butter.
  3. Spoon the fruit into a 13×9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray, then top evenly with the brown sugar mixture. Bake at 400 degrees F for 40 minutes and let cool slightly before serving.

Apple Pear Crisp (2)

Balls, Balls, Balls

Leave a comment

Balls Balls Balls (2)

Veronika attends a toddler gym class once a week, and her favorite part is always when they bring out a big bin of balls and a hoop and she practices her “slam dunks”. The only problem is that she’s sad every day that isn’t “slam dunk” day! So today, we brought the ball fun home.

I wanted to try working on several different ball skills with her, so first we sat with our legs together to form a little enclosure and rolled a bouncy ball back and forth.

Balls Balls Balls (9)

Then we upped the ante. Turn a laundry basket on its side and roll the ball into this “goal”. She initially wanted to bounce the ball in, but soon switched her focus to rolling.

Balls Balls Balls (5)

Next, we turned the basket upright. Now she could toss or bounce it in!

Balls Balls Balls (4)

Time for slam dunks! Place the basket on top of any slightly higher surface, like a coffee table or stool, and let your toddler reach up high.

Balls Balls Balls (1)

Slam dunk!

Balls Balls Balls (3)

For a final challenge, we angled a couch cushion down like a ramp (you could also use cardboard or a wooden plank for this step). First we rolled the ball down into a waiting basket.

Balls Balls Balls (7)

And then she rolled it up to the tip top of the ramp so we could roll it back down again. This took great concentration, as well as dexterity, on her part.

Balls Balls Balls (8)

In sum, there are so many ways to play with a simple ball at home. What’s your toddler’s favorite ball game? Please share in the comments!

Balls Balls Balls (6)

Bubble Wrap Snowman

Leave a comment

Bubble Wrap Snowman (7)

While we’re eagerly awaiting the next snowfall ample enough to build a real snowman, Veronika made do with this painted version today!

The novelty here was painting the snowman using only a piece of bubble wrap. Little bubble wrap pouches are better for this particular project than a sheet of bubble wrap, since they can easily slip over a hand.

Bubble Wrap Snowman (2)

First, we painted the bubble wrap in wintry shades of white and pale blue. While Veronika painted, I drew an outline of a snowman on white paper.

Bubble Wrap Snowman (1)

I slipped the bubble wrap over her hand like a mitten and showed her how to press down. She loved this, and also wanted to check out the way the painted bubble wrap felt with the other hand. I recommend having a pack of wipes handy, in case your toddler does the same!

Bubble Wrap Snowman (3)

Set your snowman aside to dry, then cut out and glue onto a blue construction paper background.

Bubble Wrap Snowman (5)

Finally, I cut out a few accessories for our snowman.

Bubble Wrap Snowman (6)

For a little vocabulary exercise, Veronika named all of these as we used a glue stick to attach them: a black top hat, red buttons, a red scarf, and an orange carrot nose!

Bubble Wrap Snowman (8)

Cartons of Fun

Leave a comment

Cartons of Fun (2)

This is the type of activity that’s great to do when you’re using up the odds and ends in your craft bin before restocking. Any clean and washed food containers make great bins for small hands. I used empty non-dairy yogurt and sour cream containers, but juice cartons would work, too, with the tops cut open.

Simply fill each container with a different craft material. I presented Veronika with an assortment that included fabric scraps, felt pieces, ribbon, buttons, beads, and stickers. Then I set these down for her along with glue and pieces of construction paper.

Cartons of Fun (1)

Older preschoolers can take it from here solo! If your child is old enough, you can also provide safety scissors. For Veronika at age 2, I had to supervise the activity a bit more closely, but I tried to sit back and see how she wanted to use the materials, instead of guiding.

Cartons of Fun (3)

She liked the buttons best and wanted to glue them down. I helped her make dots of glue that she could press the buttons on. We added a few bits of fabric and ribbon to this first creation, too.

Then I made a “cake” for her with fabric scraps for the cake and ribbon as candles. This time, I added dots of glue so she could add “icing on the cake” with more buttons and beads.

Cartons of Fun (4)

For the final creation, I smeared glue all over a piece of construction paper, This meant that no matter where she pressed down an item, it was sure to stick. This page was soon covered with the fabric and felt scraps.

Cartons of Fun (5)

And don’t discount just letting your toddler fill a page with stickers. That counts as art, too!

Cartons of Fun (6)

Pool Noodle Games

Leave a comment

Pool Noodle Stringing (5)

We had a few pool noodles in the closet that were left over from summer fun, so today Veronika and I found a few indoor winter ways to play with them!

First, we tried making a pool noodle “necklace”. Cut pool noodles into smaller pieces so they are like giant beads and then give your child twine (or a rope) and thread them on.

Pool Noodle Stringing (2)

Preschoolers can get in some great threading practice by doing this activity solo. I helped Veronika by inserting the twine into the hole of each pool noodle piece, and then she would pull it through.

Pool Noodle Stringing (3)

At first this made a fun pull toy! She loved dragging it along behind her or wiggling it in the air.

Pool Noodle Stringing (4)

Once we had enough of pieces looped on, I tied the two ends of twine together to form a giant dress-up necklace.

Pool Noodle Stringing (6)

Next, I cut out slightly larger pool noodle pieces, and these were great to stack like blocks!

Pool Noodle Stringing (8)

These towers were particularly fun to push over, because the soft foam won’t hurt a thing.

Pool Noodle Stringing (9)

I loved that we found a way to reuse a summer material on a winter’s day!

Unpoppable Frozen Bubbles

Leave a comment

Unpopable Bubbles (4)

My philosophy about really cold weather with kids has become not to shy away from it, but to embrace it. That’s exactly what we did today with frozen bubbles; this is the kind of trick that can only work once the weather dips down low.

The secret to making this activity a success is to leave a bottle of bubble solution outside overnight so that it’s chilled and ready to go when your bundled-up kids get outside.

The second trick is to wave the bubble wand, instead of blowing through it. With those two modifications, the bubbles will act differently, freezing in kids’ hands or in the air (if it’s cold enough!) instead of popping.

Unpopable Bubbles (3)

The first time we tried this, our solution wasn’t quite cold enough.That meant the kids could still pop the bubbles on their fingers.

Unpopable Bubbles (2)

But they lasted and froze over if they landed on cold surfaces, like our plastic slide. This was mesmerizing to watch!

Unpopable Bubbles (6)

Travis wondered if this particular bubble might just last forever.

Unpopable Bubbles (5)

The next night was even colder, so we headed outside for more everlasting bubble play.

Unpopable Bubbles (7)

And this time they were so cold that sure enough we could poke at them without making them pop!

Unpopable Bubbles (8)

Is it cold enough for frozen bubbles in your area? Please share in the comments!

Match the Tracks

Leave a comment

Match the Tracks (4)

This winter twist on hide-and-seek is fantastic for early hiders and seekers (think preschoolers and toddlers), and you don’t even need much snow to play it; even a light dusting on the ground will do!

As soon as we saw it was snowing, the kids were eager to head outside, so I challenged them to find mommy… by following my tracks. Leave nice, clear footprints in the snow as you head to your hiding place. You can make your actual hiding place easy to spot or hard to find, depending on your child’s age.

Match the Tracks (1)

Veronika grinned as soon as she had the gist of the game, and eagerly followed along my prints in the snow.

Match the Tracks (2)

Peek-a-boo! She found mommy behind a tree.

Match the Tracks (3)

It was harder to get her to understand being the hider, but she did love noticing her own tracks in the snow!

The beauty of this game is that each round will gets successively harder as the tracks start to get muddled. You can challenge older kids to make a giant maze of footsteps by the end! And while they’re at it, keep an eye out for any other animals that might have left tracks in the snow.

Seek and Find Shapes Water Activity

Leave a comment

Seek and Find Shapes Water (4)

Toddlers always love the chance for a little splashy water play, and here’s a way to combine that with shape review!

To start, I used marker to draw a few shapes on a regular piece of white paper. I also labeled them for early sight words, although Veronika is a ways off from understanding that.

Seek and Find Shapes Water (1)

Place this piece of paper under any clear baking dish. Ideally use a large casserole dish, but even my smaller cake pan worked in a pinch. Fill the clear dish with a shallow layer of water. If your child wants colored water, go ahead and add a few drops of food coloring! But Veronika wanted to leave it clear.

Seek and Find Shapes Water (2)

Now, simply call out the name of a shape and your child can pinpoint it under the water! If you’re using a large dish, you could have a clear cup on top that your child moves from shape to shape. That wouldn’t fit in the cake pan, so Veronika used a shiny pipe cleaner as a pointer instead.

Seek and Find Shapes Water (3)

She aced this test in moments.

Seek and Find Shapes Water (5)

Even once we quickly ran through the shapes, she had so much fun looking at the shapes and swirling around the pipe cleaner for a while. Because as mentioned, toddlers always love water play!

Seek and Find Shapes Water (6)

Flying Fish

Leave a comment

Flying Fish (3)

Before you recycle whatever magazine you’re currently reading, rip out a page or two and you’ll be able to make a quick batch of fish to delight your toddler!

On the magazine pages, I used a ruler to mark off one inch strips and then cut them out. Next, mark 1 inch in from both the top and the bottom. Cut a slit at this one inch mark from the left at the top and from the right at the bottom. Now, you can fold the strip of paper over itself so the notches slot together, making a fish tail shape.

Flying Fish (2)

I recommend not just one, but a whole school of fish for maximum effect!

Flying Fish (4)

When I had about a dozen “fish”, we let them fly! If these catch the wind just right, they flutter end over end until they hit the ground.

Flying Fish (8)

Cue Veronika’s delighted squeals and eager cries for more!

Flying Fish (6)

Needless to say we launched our fish to “swim” in the air many times before she tired of it. Your toddler can get in some good tossing and throwing practice, too!

Flying Fish (9)

Restaurant Play with Italian Bruschetta

Leave a comment

Italian Bruschetta (1)

Not only did the kids help make an elegant Italian appetizer today, but they opened up their own “restaurant” to serve it! This was all part of Travis’s latest Italian-themed kit from Raddish Kids. Before opening up that restaurant, though, it was time for some cooking!

To prepare the bruschetta, slice 1/2 a baguette into 1/4-inch thick slices and arrange on a baking sheet. Brush evenly with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Bake at 400 degrees F for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop 2 large tomatoes and thinly slice 6 fresh basil leaves. Combine the tomatoes and basil in a bowl with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cut a garlic clove in half; rub the cut sides over the warm baguette slices, then top evenly with the tomato mixture.

Italian Bruschetta (3)

Before we sat down to enjoy, Travis and I went over the concept of a restaurateur, and the idea of creating a restaurant from the ground up. He’d need to think about location, name, decor, and more! Travis immediately had an idea, although admittedly it was a 1st grader’s idea of a restaurant.

He proudly wrote the sign for: Darth Vader’s Bistro. He then planned out a nearly all-black menu, including black tomato soup and chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles for dessert. The exception was our bright red bruschetta!

Italian Restaurant (1)

The decor was predictably Darth Vader-themed.

Italian Restaurant (5)

The kids loved dining at this “restaurant”, and pretending to take each other’s order.

Italian Restaurant (3)

Of course, older kids can take this idea much more seriously, creating a whole restaurant concept and layout, carefully selecting the restaurant name, designing a logo, or even making a banner before welcoming family members as guests.

Italian Restaurant (2)

Consider adding tablecloths and fine dinnerware and then let your little chefs cook and open up shop! I leave you with this image of Darth Vader enjoying his bruschetta. Who knew?

Italian Bruschetta (2)