Tuesday Teachings - Play With Your Food

I know what you are thinking. We want kids to eat healthy, not to play with their food. Here my thoughts though, get the kids involved in preparing a meal and let them use math skills to help.

I was recently signed up to make a meal for a group of 3 - 5 year olds.Since it was so close to Spring, that is the subject I chose. I could have just made a casserole and hoped the kids ate it, but I like for food to be fun and tasty. I decided to let my son help me with the meal. First, we counted up how many of our friends we were expecting for the meal, then we went to the grocery.

We decided to serve, bananas, apples, cheese, ham, turkey and a dessert. I told my son that we were serving 10 kids and he had to help me get enough food for all of the children.

When we got home, we cut the ham and turkey slices with bunny cookie cutters. We allowed enough of each meat for every child to have three slices. My son helped me to count out the 30 ham bunnies and the 30 turkey bunnies. Next we moved on to the cheese. We were serving our cheese in the form of circles to represent coconuts and we needed at least three slices per child. Again, he helped me count out 30 slices.

Next, we moved on to the dessert. We decided to make birds in a nest. We counted out three square pretzels per dessert and laid them out in piles on a piece of waxed paper. Next, we melted chocolate and drizzled that over the pretzel "nests" and followed it up with rainbow sprinkles. Once the chocolate had hardened, we came back and melted some more chocolate and dipped bird shaped peeps into the melted chocolate and sat one on top of each pretzel nest. We allowed that to set and then we put each bird in a nest inside of a a cupcake liner to serve.

When it was time to serve up the meal, we cut up one banana per child and laid them out on the plate. We then added three apple slices at the top of each banana slice. These were our palm trees. We then added three cheese coconuts to the top of each palm tree. Next came the bunnies, we laid three ham and three turkey bunnies on each plate. The kids all loved this treat, but the favorite was by far the birds in a nest dessert.

Math is not my son's favorite subject, but he had lots of fun counting out all of our treats for our friends and he was eager to make sure we had enough for everyone.

Get your kids in the kitchen and open up a new perspective on math!

Monday Meanderings - Halloween Snacks

With Halloween fast approaching, I went on a hunt for some great snacks to prepare.
Here are some of my favorites.

First we have Taste of Home with these adorable Marshmallow Witches. They look quick and easy and may be great for kids to put together.

Our Best Bites made these cute Mummy Dogs and Monster Jaws.

Cute As A Fox made these very cute, er I mean scary, Monster Rods. I love these!!

Have a great Halloween!

Monday Meanderings - Pack a School Lunch

Some choices are not easy to make. You can send your child to school to eat what is probably heavily processed food, high in fat, calories and sodium or you can get up early every day and pack a lunch for him.

The first option is depressing, as kids need energy to learn and most school cafeterias serve food that has been processed far beyond it's natural state. The second option can be healthier, but it can also be time consuming.

Here are some great ideas for packing school lunches.

First we have This Lunch Rox with some healthy recipes and beautiful lunches. She does take an extra minute to make them decorative. In this case she sliced a piece of cheese to resemble Pac-Man and laid it on top of the sandwich. Check out her website for some great lunches, recipes and snacks.

Next we have Wendolonia. She does a weekly recap of lunches and snacks that she packs for her young children. Some of the pictures look delicious and I love that she does a week at a time in her posting.

Kat's Bento Love shows how to re-use leftovers for an appetizing lunch. The meals are for adults but they are healthy and tempting.

One thing that can get expensive and wasteful for packing a lunch is plastic bags to store sandwiches or snacks. We try to use bowls or reusable bags. There is a great tutorial for making your own sandwich bags at We Wilsons Blog. You can make them in a variety of sizes and just pick out your favorite material at the store and you are ready to go.

If you start packing lunches there are some small things you can do that will make it more pleasant for your kids. First, get some cookie cutters! A shaped sandwich can be lots more fun than plain. You can use the cutters for just about anything you put in the lunch box. Second, buy some small stickers or write a short note to your child. They will be so excited to see it in the lunch box that they may even eat all of the vegetables you packed.

Photo Credit: Neato Bambino

Another neat trick: Banana writing! Take a toothpick and write on the skin of your banana without going through the skin to the fruit. It takes a little bit, but by lunch time your message will show clearly on the banana peel.

Monday Meanderings - Christmas Crafts

Last week was Hanukkah crafts, this week we move on to some Christmas crafts. Next week we will be covering some Kwanzaa crafts so be sure to come back for that.

A cute and simple snack for the kids. Love the marshmallow snowmen at Random Thoughts of a Super Mom.

Love these ornaments from Mumma Made It and if you used plastic ornaments it would be doable for most ages.

Homemade Mommas made a very cute gumdrop tree. For my son (3 years old), it would be hard to use a glue gun and let him participate so I would probably pre-stick toothpicks into the tree and let him stick the gumdrops on in any design he chose.

Have a great Monday!

Tuesday Teachngs - The Letter O

Another week and another letter down in our lessons. You can print out the letter O here.

Words that start with O: Oar, Oregon, Organ, Ostrich, Orangutan, Open, Oscillate & Orange.

For our crafts we focused on Owl, Octopus and Orbit.

For the first craft, we made an Owl by painting the letter O and then gluing on pieces that I cut from construction paper. My son walked around for at least an hour saying Owl, Owl but I think he meant Ow, Ow because he kept looking for the band aids.

Next up was our Octopus. We painted a letter O with blue paint and then he wanted to give it black legs so we cut eight strips of paper from black construction paper and wound it wound the end of the paint brush before gluing to the page. We then glued on two black eyes.

Our last activity was an Orbit. I opened eight markers and rubber banded them all together. Remember that poor Pluto was demoted so now there are only eight planets. We used the eight markers to make a big circle (an O) on our page and then we glued a yellow construction paper sun in the middle of the orbiting planets.

Foods that start with O: Orange, Octopus, Okra, Olives and Onions.

We stuck with the Owl theme and made an owl face snack. The base is a Chocolate Mini Moon Pie, the eyes are banana slices with chocolate covered raisin pupils and the beak is a cashew. My son loved this snack and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the cuteness factor against the ease factor.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter N

Well, we are quickly makin git through our alphabet crafts and this week we move on to letter N.

Letter N Feel free to download our letter N wot owrk with.

Some words that start with N: Night, Nest, Need, Nap, Nose, Nickel, Noel, Note and Nanny

For our crafts we focused on Numbers and Noodles.

For our first craft, I wrote out the number 1-20 on small pieces of construction paper and then my son glued them onto the letter N. As he glued each one, we repeated the number by saying Number 1, Number 2, etc.

For our next craft, be prepared for a bit of a mess but a lot of fun! I cooked noodles until al dente then stuck them in the refrigerator to cool. Once they were cool, we poured out paint in to a paper plate and used the noodles as a paintbrush. It was fun and going well until he discovered that he could slam them down hard and paint would splatter! Nonetheless, this was fun for both of us!

Foods that start with the letter N: Nestle, Noodles, Nectatines, Nuts & Nachos.

We made Butterscotch Nests (they are not just for Easter anymore).

To make the nests, melt a bag of butterscotch chips and 1/2 cup peanut butter in microwave. Once melted, add a can of chow mein noodles and mix well trying not to break all of the noodles. Scoop out the noodles on to wax paper and used your hands to form nest shapes. We then used M & M's as our bird eggs since I did not have jellybeans, which is the typical egg on these.

Neil Armstrong's Birthday!

Today is Neil Armstrong's birthday so I thought it would be great to share some activities with your kids about the moon. It is hard for young kids today to understand the excitement of the first man to walk on the moon so maybe a history lesson should be where we start.
Important Facts:

• In 1966, aboard Gemini 8, Neil Armstrong became the first man to perform the first manned docking of two spacecrafts with pilot David Scott.
• Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins remained in orbit in the Command Module. Armstrong is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
• His quote as soon as his left boot touched the moon's surface "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" is one of the most famous quotes of all time.
• 450 million people around the world heard that quote as it was aired live from space.
• 15 minutes after Armstrong stepped onto the moon's surface, Buzz Aldrin joined him.
• While preparing for liftoff from the moon's surface, they discovered that in their bulky spacesuits they had accidentally broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine. They proceeded to use part of a pen to fire the engine. Neil Armstrong still has that pen on display.
• The footprints that were left on the moon during that first space walk in 1969 are still on the surface of the moon. This is possible because there is no wind or rain on the surface of the moon so footprints last there forever.

The set up for craters

The craters

For some activities we did a few different things. First we discovered how craters are formed. This idea comes from Universe Today. We put a small layer of flour in the bottom of a cake pan and then covered it with cocoa. We were then supposed to drop marbles on the surface to act as space rocks but since we had no marbles we used out bear sorters/counters. Be forewarned, this is messy when things drop in the flour/cocoa but my son had a lot of fun doing it.

Top view of star ball

Side view of star ball

The next thing we did was make Star Balls. We took card stock and cut out 7 identical circles. We then took 6 of the circles and folded them in half and cut a slit horizontally to the fold that extended about halfway through the semi circle. Take the one remaining circle and fit it into the slits of the other six circles.

A game to play is called "Man  in the Moon". All but one child stands in a line on one side of the yard. The one single person is the Man in the Moon. He chants:

"I am the Man in the Moon.
I will catch you soon,
If you are (name a clothing color or the first letter of a name)."

Once the chant is said everyone that fits the description tries to run to the other end of the yard. If they are caught they must then assist the Man  in tagging the other players. You continue the game until everyone has been tagged.

For dinner, we made Moon Crater Pizzas. I took English muffins and sliced them in half.

We then talked about how the English muffins look like the craters we made earlier. Once that discussion was over, we spread some pizza sauce on the English muffins and covered that with pepperonis.

I had taken some time earlier to cut some of the pepperoni into halves (for the half moon), the rest were left whole to represent the full moon. Next we sprinkled on the cheese and baked it.

Hope you had fun celebrating Neil Armstrong's birthday with us.

Monday Meanderings - Back to School Fun

Well if your child has not started back to school yet, the time is quickly approaching. I did some searching for fun Back to School party ideas. I remember when I was little, my Mom would make a huge deal about the first day of school. She always took our picture and kept a school album for each of us with our back to school pictures along with our report cards. When we got home from school she would always always have a favorite snack ready for us.

Here are some websites to look at to bring some fun to back to school.

Amazing Moms has some great ideas for a party prior to the first day of school. Kind of a way to get the kids excited about the inevitable time that they will return to class. I love the real apple invitations that they suggest.

As usual, Family Fun magazine never fails to come through with fun ideas. I love the thought of the Bus Stop Bagel Bash!

I really want the teacher that wrote the information for Back to School Kinder Themes to be my child's teacher. She has some great ideas about keeping track of all the new students that teachers get each year.

An Easy Snack

We made S'mores Pops! They are delicious and lots of fun to make with kids.

Supplies:
Large Marshmallows
Sucker sticks
Melted Chocolate
Crushed Graham Crackers

Dip the sucker sticks in the melted chocolate and then stick one in a flat side of each marshmallow. Once all of the marshmallows have sticks in them, let them sit for a few minutes to set up. Now dip the marshmallows in the melted chocolate and then sprinkle all of the sides with the crushed graham crackers. Sit them on wax paper to set up. It is a bit hot and humid around here so I actually ended up sitting ours in the refrigerator to finish setting up.

Those are very addictive! Enjoy.

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter F

A new week means a new letter. We are moving on with the letter F this week.

F

Some words that start with the letter F are:
Fashion, Fork, Flat, Fly, Fast, Feather, Frog, Fish, Flower, Fry, France, Foot, Flour, Fall, Farm, Five

For our presentation this week we focused on Flower, Feathers, Frogs and Fish.

Our first picture we used Foam Flower Stickers to decorate the F page. We also went outside and picked some Fresh Flowers to decorate the dinner table. Sorry for the sideways picture but my son kept turning the page around because he liked it best that way.

For the next activity we glued some Feathers onto the letter F and then we used the left over feathers as a sensory toy and tickled each others face and arms with them.

For the last craft, we used fish stickers to decorate the page but my son was not impressed with using stickers again, he wanted to get dirty. In order to let him get dirty, we then also put green fingerprints on the F and once dried, I used a black pen to turn the fingerprints into frogs. I think they turned out very cute.

(Close up of the cute frog fingerprints)

You can print out the letter F and put it in a clear sheet protector/report cover or laminate it and give the child a dry erase marker to practice writing the letter F.


You can write the letter F on a chalkboard and give the kid a small amount of water with a paint brush. They can dip the brush in the water and use it to erase/trace your letter.

Find the letter F. Give a child a marker and an old magazine or newspaper. Ask them to go through a few pages and circle the letter F.

Lacing Cards - Print out the letter F and laminate it. Punch a hole every inch or so and let the child lace yarn or a shoestring.

Paint Bag - Squirt some tempura paint of shaving cream in a zipper style bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible. For safety and cleanliness sake, tape the bag closed also. Now put the bag on the desk and allow the child to trace the F.

All crafts that are easy to save, please hold onto those and put them all in a Alphabet Binder for the child. To make the binders I will put the pictures in sheet protectors and then put them in a 3 ring binder.
 
As for our snack I wanted something to fun and the only F food that kept popping into my head was Fish. Fish may be tasty, but it did not meet my fun criteria so we made Fairy Wands instead.
 
 

 
I used pretzel braids, white candy coating and colored sugars.
 
We melted the candy coating in the microwave and then dipped the pretzels in the coating and let the excess drip off some before sprinkling colored sugar on the candy. Then set the wand on wax paper to harden. The colored sugar can be expensive so be sure that you keep a dish under the pretzels to catch any excess when sprinkling it.

Ideas to Help Children Maintain a Healthy Weight

Picture compliments of MyPyramid.gov

You've probably read about it or heard about it on the news, reports state that childhood obesity has continued to climb over the last two decades. Type 2 diabetes, which has always been an adult disease has now also become prevalent in childhood. No longer can Type 2 diabetes be called Adult Onset Diabetes. Children are experiencing heart disease caused by high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Asthma and sleep apnea are on the rise. Children are getting more and more unhealthy, it is time for us to take action. As parents, it is our responsibility to offer our children as healthy a lifestyle as we can.

What can you do?

Help your child maintain a healthy weight by balancing the calories your child consumes with the calories that your child uses through physical activity and normal growth. Children and teens should not be placed on a weight reduction diet without the consultation of a health care provider.

Developing healthy eating habits

This is easiest done by example. If you are eating fast food several times a week then so is your child.

• Look for ways to make your favorite meals a little healthier.
• Provide plenty of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. It is not enough to just buy them, have them cleaned and ready to make it the easiest thing to grab when food is needed.
• Include low-fat or non-fat milk and dairy products in your home. Reports state that the only people that should be consuming full fat milk products are children under the age of two. They need the additional fat but anyone over two does not need the additional fat.
• Choose lean meats, poultry, fish, lentils, and beans for protein. Prepare these foods with little to know additional oil. It does no good to by healthy fish and then batter and fry it to serve your family.
• Serve reasonably sized portions. Do not use restaurants as an example of a healthy portion of food. Most restaurant portions are enough to feed two to three adults.
• Encourage your family to drink lots of water. If they do not like "plain" water, slice up some fresh fruit to serve in it. Water is delicious with lemons, limes, oranges and a variety of other fruits.
• Limit sugar sweetened beverages, this includes sodas and juices.
• Limit the consumption of sugar and saturated fats.
• Remove calorie rich or salty temptations from your home. Everything can be enjoyed in moderation but these items should be an occasional treat not the norm.

You do not have to buy 100 calorie packs of snacks. These are all heavily processed and not very filling so you usually will eat several of them when hunger strikes, instead give these 100 calories or less snacks a try:

• 1 medium sized apple
• 1 medium sized banana
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 cup grapes (also delicious served frozen)
• 1 cup carrots, broccoli or bell peppers with 2 tbsp hummus
• 10 cashews or 10 almonds
• 3 ounces low-fat cottage cheese and 3 whole-wheat crackers
• 2 large graham cracker squares with 1 teaspoon peanut butter
• 1 small baked potato with 1/2 cup salsa and 2 tablespoons of fat-free sour cream

Help Kids Stay Active

Children and teens should participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity most days of the week, preferably every day. Some examples of moderate intensity physical activities:

• Brisk Walking - buy pedometers for the family and challenge one another to see who takes the most steps
• Playing tag in the back yard
• Jumping rope
• Playing soccer
• Swimming
• Dancing
• Skating
• Bicycling
• Relay races in the back yard

As you can see, no special equipment is needed other than your determination. Many reports are talking about how parents will soon be outliving their children if the childhood obesity epidemic continues. This is the time for you to stand up and take control. Lead your children to a healthier life and join them on the journey. No one should be sitting on the sidelines watching life play out in front of them. Get out there!

Special July 4th Desserts

On the July calendar for tomorrow I suggested making a special dessert so I thought I would give you a few ideas today so you can hit the grocery store on the way home.

First up is Family Fun Magazine with the Uncle Sam Ice Cream. This is adorable and only requires 6 ingredients! Not only does it look yummy but could be quite creative as well.

Next up are some very cute cookies from The Decorated Cookie. I like the mini versions, no need to give the kids gigantic cookies! It would be very cute to set up the cookies in the shape of a full flag.

Another project from The Decorated Cookie involves using special markers to write on food. I have these markers (I purchased them at Michael's) and I have to admit, they are a lot of fun. You can write on food with them or draw pictures. I think it would be cute if some of the cookies just said "BOOM" on them.

Last but not least is this Patriotic Trifle from Taste of Home. It looks beautiful and delicious.

I hope this will at least give you a starting point to get in the kitchen and have some fun with your kids. As always, we wish you the best! Have a safe and fun Independence Day!

Tuesday Teachings - The Letter C

This week are moving on to the letter C. I thought of lots of cute things that start with a letter C: cats, collage, continents, cleaning etc., but these are the things we Crafted (another C).

You can print out the letter C by going to to the shared file page.

Our first craft was for Cars. We rolled the wheels of some of our little cars in some watered down tempura paints and then we rolled them across the letter C page. My son had a lot of fun with this and I actually had to supply him with several pages of paper to "drive" on as he thought that was one of the coolest things he had ever done. I will give you a tip about this though, the cars that have "tread" on the wheels make the best and most realistic tire marks but they also soak up the most paint and take the longest to dry out.

Out next craft was Caterpillars. We pulled out the stamp pad with multiple colors to it and stamped his finger on the C page. Once that ink had tried, which did not take long, I went back and drew in the details. I always love the finger/hand/foot print crafts we do as they seem so personal.

The next C word we discussed was Circles. We used our Do A Dot Art Markers for the circles on our page but you could just as easily make smaller circles by using a pencil eraser or any other round items you find around the house.

You can print out the letter C and put it in a clear sheet protector/report cover or laminate it and give the child a dry erase marker to practice writing the letter C.


You can write the letter C on a chalkboard and give the kid a small amount of water with a paint brush. They can dip the brush in the water and use it to erase/trace your letter.

Find the letter C. Give a child a marker and an old magazine or newspaper. Ask them to go through a few pages and circle the letter C.

Lacing Cards - Print out the letter C and laminate it. Punch a hole every inch or so and let the child lace yarn or a shoestring.

Paint Bag - Squirt some tempura paint of shaving cream in a zipper style bag. Seal the bag, squeezing out as much air as possible. For safety and cleanliness sake, tape the bag closed also. Now put the bag on the desk and allow the child to trace the C.

All crafts that are easy to save, please hold onto those and put them all in a Alphabet Binder for the child. To make the binders I will put the pictures in sheet protectors and then put them in a 3 ring binder.

Food Suggestions for the letter C:
Corn, Cookies, Crabs, Chicken, Candy, Cheese, Cream Cheese, Cottage Cheese. Cauliflower, Cupcakes, Carrots and Chow Mein Noodles

For our letter C food, we decided to make Cookies. Now just like many of you, I am a working mom which means there is not always a lot of "extra" time in my days. As a result you will notice that these cookies have a distinct square shape to them, that is because they are break and bake cookies. There is never any shame in taking a little help to get your to do list completed.

Make it a great day!