Tofu Lasagna

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The kids have loved lasagna lately, but lasagna recipes often feed a crowd, and we never quite make it through leftovers. This version bakes up in an 8-inch pan and is just the right size!

Ingredients:

  • 6 lasagna noodles
  • 1 (14-ounce) package firm tofu
  • 1 (14-ounce) can quartered artichoke hearts, chopped
  • 2 cups chopped baby spinach
  • 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
  • 1 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 2 cups marinara sauce
  • 1 cup shredded non-dairy mozzarella
  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil; add the lasagna noodles and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
  2. Meanwhile, mash the tofu with a fork to desired consistency. Stir in the artichoke hearts, spinach, nutritional yeast, and garlic salt.
  3. Spoon a little of the sauce into the bottom of an 8-inch baking pan. Add three lasagna noodles. Top with the tofu mixture, followed by the remaining lasagna noodles. Pour the remaining sauce on top and sprinkle with the mozzarella.
  4. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes.

Toddler Ball

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Spring weather and spring sports are calling us outside! It seemed like the perfect time to finally invest in a wiffle ball bat and tee set for Veronika. These sets are great because they work so many gross motor skills for kids. Batting, of course, was the first step. But then we mimicked a full game of baseball!

Whenever one of us whacked a ball off the tee, we ran to the nearest tree as a “base”. She might not have understood, but my excited modeling of the behavior and cheering of “Go go go!” had her running and grinning.

Pretend to try and tag each other “out” on the way back to home base.

Of course enext you can work on tossing skills (i.e. fielding the ball). She loved passing a ball back and forth.

For fun, I also had her kick the balls a few times, which is always good practice even if these balls were not meant for soccer. That meant we tackled three sports skills with one set: batting, throwing, and kicking.

It all looked like so much fun that big brother Travis ran out to play!

He even hit a few home runs out of the park!

Simple Origami Jumping Frogs

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These little folded frogs were too complicated for my kids to follow along with the steps, but they loved leaping about the final product!

Rather than attempt to explain instructions for folding, simply check out the step-by-step tutorial here. I cut green construction paper into squares to start, but you can also use standard origami paper. By the end it should look something like this from the bottom:

And like this from the top:

Once the little frogs were folded up, we drew on eyes and black spots. Kids can decorate however they choose, or even add long paper tongues!

Place a finger near the back legs, then release to watch the frogs hop hop hop.

The kids loved watching the frogs leap, making this well worth the folding effort.

Dump Truck Domino Counting

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Here was a fun way to combine Veronika’s truck play with a little early counting! She can count by rote up to about 20, but it’s still early for her to connect the idea that those rising numbers correlate to one more thing added each time.

We chose dominoes for the activity because we have lots of them and they fit easily into the truck bed. My hope was that physically them out would help her make the link. First, we just started filling up the truck randomly:

She eagerly counted along as we placed each domino in, and we made it all the way into the teens before she was too tempted to… dump!

For the next round, I challenged her to fill the truck with only a certain color. This meant we only counted as high as ten, and then it was time to dump. We repeated with the remaining colors.

For older kids, you can even make predictions about the point at which dominoes will start to spill out, without having to tip back the bed of the truck at all.

We played this version toward the end, piling in all the dominoes (confession: we stopped counting!) and watching them spill out. Chances are your toddler will stay happy with trucks and dominoes for some solo play after the lesson, too.

Density Tower

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Travis and I have explored density with a jar like this in the past, but our layers haven’t always mixed quite right. Using our past experience as a guide, Travis helped set up the following 6 liquids today:

Corn Syrup

Maple Syrup

Water – tinted blue

Dish Soap – tinted green

Vegetable Oil

Rubbing Alcohol – tinted red

A few of the liquids were left their natural color but for those that would otherwise be confusingly clear, we added a little all-natural food coloring.

Travis and I talked briefly about our hypothesis (the day’s fancy word!) for the order they should go in. The only one we got wrong was water and dish soap, having thought water would float atop the soap, but it turned out to be the opposite.

As our layers took shape, Travis loved bending down to see the strata.

The red alcohol on top was hard to see, but the rest of the layers were quite well demarcated. Overall, this was a neat little STEM experiment in a jar.

Musical Teepee

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Sound is often a neglected part of “sensory” outdoor play, since we focus so much on touch or sight. This was a great way to get Veronika’s ears buzzing on a spring morning.

First, we gathered a few large sticks (which were easy to find after recent wind storms!), and then positioned them until they formed a little teepee. The sticks propped each other up so securely that I didn’t have to do much more, but added a little string for extra insurance.

The first item I wanted to add was a small wind chime. I dangled this from one of the sticks so it hung just below the teepee. Veronika was immediately intrigued!

I also added a musical triangle, a metal colander, and a metal cookie cutter, then handed Veronika a mallet. Time to play!

She loved exploring all the different sounds, from the tinkle of the wind chines to the ping of the triangle, to almost a snare drum sound from the colander on top!

I plan to leave this up for at least a few days so she can interact with it differently every time we pop outdoors.

Foot Tracing “Pedicures”

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Veronika is far too young to get her first pedicure at a salon, of course, but this little tracing game also involves a bit of make-believe for adorable “mommy & me” pedicures at home!

To start, I stood on a piece of paper and showed Veronika how I could trace around my foot with a pen. She wanted to help out with the tracing, meaning the print wasn’t exact, but that didn’t matter.

Next it was her turn! She stood so still on a sheet of white paper as I traced around her feet, and giggled when we got to her ticklish toes. “We made paw prints!” she said with delight.

You can take a moment to talk about relative sizes (big versus small), and then it’s time to decorate!

Toddlers can fill in the tracings with crayons and markers, but for something extra fun, I trotted out a vial of real nail polish. I showed her how to dab this into each toe like she was painting a little nail on each.

The soles of our feet were painted, too!

I hope your little one enjoys this day at the “spa” as much as Veronika did!

Avocado Yogurt Dip

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You can serve this recipe as a dip for tortilla chip or drizzled over baby spinach like dressing, but it’s so yummy that your kids might just want to eat it by the spoonful!

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 avocado
  • 1/4 cup plain non-dairy yogurt
  • 1 teaspoon agave nectar
  • 2 tablespoons orange juice
  1. Mash the avocado in a bowl with a fork until smooth.
  2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix until combined. Serve!

Eraser Stamped Sheep

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We recently re-read a favorite picture book, The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds, which had us thinking about other ways to make art from just dots. This sweet craft is easy enough for toddlers to follow along, and felt just right for springtime and baby lamb season!

To start, I set out a plate of white paint, along with a few sheets of construction paper and pencils. I handed Veronika one of the pencils and showed her how to dip just the eraser end in the paint, then dot on the paper.

White dots!

Veronika had fun simply experimenting at first, but then I showed her that if she clustered a few of those white dots together, it began to look like a woolly sheep. She loved seeing the little animals take form.

Of course she couldn’t control her dots exactly, which I wouldn’t have expected from a two year old. Anywhere that gaps needed filling, I added a few extra dots to make the sheep. That meant sometimes we had big mommy sheep, and sometimes baby lambs.

Once the glue dries, just add an eye and four legs for each sheep with black marker.

We loved the ways these looked once we cut them out in individual circles, resulting in a whole little flock.

Toddler Mural

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Veronika loves to scribble and draw, and always narrates to me what her scribbles and lines mean, everything from “balloons” to “rainbows” to “dogs”. I keep a small notebook in my purse to pull out at restaurants or waiting rooms and she instantly begins her doodles. Today we made a giant version of that for her to use at home!

I taped a large sheet of craft paper to an empty space on the wall at a height she could easily reach. Already she was intrigued.

You can simply set out crayons next to the paper, but for extra enticement, I attached some above the mural.

Simply hammer a few nails into the wall, then tie a string from each and secure the other end around a jumbo crayon. “They’re dangling!” Veronika said with excitement. Not only did she immediately grab one of these dangling crayons to draw, she told me she was drawing the dangling crayon.

Needless to say, she paused to scribble on the paper every time she walked by it all day, even if just for a quick line. Other times she stopped and stayed busy for a while. “Up and down, up and down!” I caught her saying for this particular bit of abstract art:

When the paper fills up, simply swap it out for a new piece!