Cooking Play Date!

My friend and I wanted to sign our girls up for a cooking class, run through the city. But, it turned out to be a little pricey so we decided to create our own cooking experience for the girls!

Kylie is 3.5 and such a doll. She and Maddie had a blast cooking for us!

I had everything prepped and set up for them but they did all the mixing, spreading, sprinking and eating. :)

They made mini pizzas...

a pitcher of lemonade...

and scooped watermelon with melon ballers (because I just have to incorporate fine motor skills activities; Ha!).

The lemonade was a little tart. :)

Kylie's sister, Ashlyn, thought the girls were very entertaining. :)

And for dessert, they made a big batch of cupcakes!

They loved frosting and decorating them (with pounds of sprinkles and mini M&Ms).

What a fun day! We can't wait to do it again and try new recipes!

Back in the groove...

Summertime is always so much fun. Mike gets his nine weeks off, we sleep in, we leisurely plan activities, we eat out more...

And more. And more.

I got really lazy in the food/cooking/grocery shopping area this summer. Incredibly lazy.

I can't blame the weather (it's been a very mild summer) or being too busy (tutoring is always pretty light through these months).

It was just easy. And fun.

But, with summer winding down (and my guilt at an all-time high), I've picked back up with menu planning.

And I guess, since I've been separated from it for so long, it's actually been really fun!

We've been trying out some new recipes (like the grilled buffalo turkey burgers stuffed with bleu cheese!) and making a much better effort to have Maddie helping, or even making dinner for all of us (like her biscuit pizzas last night).

Do you menu plan? I know that it totally saves us money, provides so much structure that I need (so that I don't just run out to pick food up) and I actually really love cooking with Mike and Maddie (because they both always help). I think it's also fun because it forces us to try new recipes.

Once I planned and shopped and just generally got back into it, I felt more productive and even gave the house a really good cleaning. It feels good to be back in the groove (even if I'm getting SO sad about Mike going back to work!).

Homemade Strawberry Jam!

What a great summer afternoon activity!

After buying a huge flat of strawberries a couple of days ago, I decided to try our hands at making strawberry jam.

I enlisted the help of my tiny sous chef and followed the directions from HERE.

It was so easy, so fun and turned out so tasty!

I rinsed the strawberries and cut off their tops and then Maddie used the potato masher to smoosh 'em real good (those were her words).

While I was boiling the pectin, she took all the lids off the jars.

We used a small measuring cup to pour in the jam.

As we were pouring it in, Maddie asked if there was any corn syrup in the gelatin (she has a corn allergy). I told her no and she squealed. Ha!

Finally, she put all the lids back on!

Our batch made 8 jars of jam, which we'll freeze, share and eat ourselves. :)

What a successful, exciting (and easy!) adventure!

Sweet Sunday

It's been a beautiful weekend. The weather is sunny and perfectly warm, which fuels Maddie's obsession interest in bubbles.

So this afternoon, the two of us went outside (Daddy was helping Grandma with her newly-purchased home!) to blow some bubbles, smell flowers and play round after round of Red Light, Green Light (it never gets old).

And finally, I enticed her to come inside by agreeing to make brownies for Daddy. She's quite the sous chef. :)

Happy {Almost} St. Patrick's Day!

It's almost St. Patrick's Day and Maddie and I have had fun learning about the holiday (lots and lots of books, thanks to the library and Nana's generosity!).

I made her a new sensory tub using white and green rice. I hid green pompons, green pebbles, green buttons, tiny green pears, green erasers...
You get the point.
I also gave her some little green cups (aka: shot glasses that were at the dollar store) to dig, pour and scoop.
This, as always, has been a HUGE hit.

I picked up some green plastic coins at Big Lots (a store that I always forget about but really has some cool little treasures!). I hid them throughout the family room and Maddie had to find the "leprechaun gold."
Very popular. In fact, after hiding the gold countless times, it was declared that the leprechaun had left the building and took all the gold with him.
After all, this leprechaun can only hide the gold so many times before one loses it's mind.

You may look at this and think, "Good grief. How boring, messy and pointless."
Right?
Because, that's what I (initially) thought.
However.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Give a child a dropper (purchased from the local teacher supply store for a quarter), some small glasses filled with water and a bottle of food coloring and you have an hour-long color-creating, imagination-evoking adventure.

Seriously, she went at this long enough for me to play along with her, fold a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher... Ect.
She transferred the water, mixed water with food coloring, stirred, made yummy green "soups" and cured her dolly's sickness with green medicine.

I'd picked up this frame months ago (with Christmas intentions) but brought it out so that she could decorate it with shamrocks (she loooooooves shamrocks).
Initially I just put green paint in the tray, but she requested pink and yellow as well.

She worked hard on this and it turned out... cute. Cute in a funky, half-painted, showered in shamrocks kind of way cute.

But, the greatest part of our celebration for St. Patrick's Day?
Leprechaun lemonade.
Hands down.

Squeeze a drop of green food coloring into a glass of lemonade (or, watered down lemonade, in Maddie's case). Set the toddler to stirring and watch in amazement as regular old lemonade becomes leprechaun lemonade!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A Valentine Play Date!

We had a very fun, very crafty and very Valentine-y play date this week!

The night before, I cut hearts out of Model Magic. Some were big and some were small. The big ones would become magnets and the small ones got a hole poked through the top so that they could be worn as necklaces.

Each child had a tray, ready to go.

I also made each of Maddie's friends a name game strip, using big, chunky heart stickers from Wal-Mart. I wrote the letters on the hearts and on the strip. They had to peel, match, and spell.

I also made a batch of red, glittery, strawberry-scented play dough.

Yum!

Each child got a bag of play dough and a few foam stamps to press into the dough.

And then...

Our friends arrived!

This is, possibly, one of my all-time favorite pictures! Toddler teamwork of two adorable girls!

Maddie loves Emma and I feel so blessed to be a part of their lives!

Between playing with dolls and playing outside, they painted their hearts...

And decorated cookies with gobs of frosting and mounds of sprinkles.

Shake those sprinkles, Miss Maddie!

When everyone had left, Maddie donned her Fancy Nancy dress (she loves it Mandi!) and went to work on her name game!

Thank you to our sweet friends that joined us for so much fun!

And,

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tot School Time!

I'm gonna say this one up front:

We had no plan in Tot School this week.

None.

We had a play date every day this week, plus Maddie's princess class, gymnastics class and ballet class (yeah, when princess class ends, we will not be re-enrolling; I think that I somehow, accidently, over-scheduled my toddler).

So, we kind of went with the flow and during our normal Tot School time, I would ask her what she wanted to do and then we'd do it. There was a lot of playing doctor, reading Valentine books (pretty sure I have Dora's Valentine entirely memorized) and tending to her baby dolls.

But, here are the other things we did get to this week...

She asked if she could stamp and was thrilled when I gave her the whole basket of stamps plus four stamp pads. She made all sorts of underwater scenes, number lines (with a crazy version of how numbers "are supposed to go") and Mickey Mouse parties (not sure what they were, but she was really into it!).

She dropped buttons through the lid of a coffee cup (the opening is teeny tiny and she really had to focus!). We turned it into a practical life activity by having her unscrew the lid when she'd finished and pour the buttons back in the little bowl.

We decorated (and ate) a ridiculous amount of Valentine cookies...

And made cotton ball art.

Uhh... What?!

Ha! Maddie told me one day that she just wanted to "make a cotton ball collage."

And, she did! She loves using the glue bottle and thinks cotton balls are just the softest things ever.

We made Valentine presents for Grandma and Nana.

I bought these glass votives at the Dollar Tree and she painted glue inside (I'd watered the glue down)...

And then shook and rolled red glitter inside.

For my inspiration, and better directions, visit My Montessori Journey.

One morning, she asked if she could sort dogs and cats.

I keep all our tiny manipulatives in these Lego-like boxes from Ikea. She told me that they look "delicious" like that. We often get a box out and work with them (there are tiny pieces of fruit, bells, flowers, marbles... Each in their own delicious box.).

She also asked if she could use the dropper. I gave her some coffee filters and together we "made colors." She wanted red and blue because then she could make purple (and she came up with that! I was so excited! Ha!).

The plan was to use the beautiful coffee filters to cut out hearts, but the silly things refuse to dry! I think she super saturated them!

She used glitter heart stickers (they're really thick and foam and glittery; We love them) to make patterns. I'd outlined hearts on strips, using a black marker, and she made up patterns (with some help from me).

And, when she asked to make a princess with a pink crown, yellow eyes and long brown hair, that's exactly what we did.

And so, that's our jumbled, random week. We'll be back to our regular organized selves next week... I hope!

Check out the happenings of other tots by visiting Carisa's blog!

Sweet Days

Maddie, Maddie, Maddie.

Oh Maddie.

She can be so, so sweet and she can be so, so... Stubborn.

The last few days have definitely tested my patience and I've been pulling all sorts of tools out of my ever-developing parenting toolbox.

But, I'm always reminded of how blessed I am to be doing this job and I can say whole-heartedly that I absolutely love spending my days with her, tantrums and all (and today, she threw the biggest tantrum I have ever witnessed, all in the middle of Target).

So, I'm reflecting back on our week so that I can record all those really sweet moments. :)

Isn't this shirt too cute? Mike's friend Ryan gave it to her for Christmas. I think this is the mascot of the upcoming winter Olympics (well, according to what it says on the back of the shirt, that's exactly what it is). Anyway, she loves it and thinks the little critter is adorable.

Oh, and see how she's holding a recorder? She asked if she could bring just one thing to the market with us. Thinking that she'd choose something along the line of a doll or book, I was a tad concerned when she chose the recorder.

And yes, she played that thing throughout the market. I've never seen checkers bag our groceries and get us out of there quite that fast. Ha!

Although, I had stuffed the end with a little wad of Kleenex, which drastically reduced the noise.

Grandma got her this PowerWheels for Christmas and Maddie is in the process of learning how to drive. It gets driven straight into walls, tables, and people but, we're learning.

Oh, and yes she usually does wear a helmet. She'd just gotten onto it in this picture.

This was just one of those sweet moments. I got a gift card for Starbucks and while no one in our house drinks coffee, Maddie does drink milk! Ha!

We took our gift card and enjoyed big cups of milk together. She thought she was so grown up and even danced to the Latin music that was playing (which was quite the scene, since everyone else in there was a business person working on their laptop!).

Oh my goodness, I'm so excited about this! So, making dinner is always a little tricky for me, since I don't get home until 5ish and Maddie goes to bed at 6:15. The evenings were turning into harried events and we were eating out take-out a lot.

Well.

I've been getting so much better with meal planning, and my next goal was to find things that we, Maddie and I, could make during the day and then bake when I got home.

So together, we made lasagna (this picture was taken before it was baked) and then refrigerated it. It turned out so good (says Mike) and made for such a peaceful evening!

Also, my little helper and I made the Pioneer Woman's French Breakfast Puffs. These were SO fun to make together and I got to put my new Kitchen Aid stand-up mixer to good use (love that thing! Thank you Michael for a wonderful Christmas present!).

After mixing and baking, we rolled the muffins in melted butter and then again in cinnamon sugar. Maddie was totally okay with getting her fingers dirty and it was just a fun time (well, and they were delicious!).

So, good and bad, it's all worth it. When she wrapped me in a bear hug tonight and said, "I love you so much silly Mama!" I think I melted a little. :)

Tot School Time!

I hesitate to even write a Tot School post because in reality, we hardly did Tot School this week. It was Christmas week, Daddy is off, my mind has been elsewhere and we just were busy. While we did have lots of new trays, on average, we spent about ten minutes a day actually using them together. And, amidst the hustle of me getting ready for Christmas festivities, Maddie often decided to just sit and do them herself.

And so, some activities were done a little differently than planned, others were finished in twenty seconds and some were completed with the help of Maddie's fabulous aunts, Annie and Megan.

For this one, I filled a bowl with dyed rice and put out five small, glass bird beads. Maddie first buried the beads in the "sand." Then, she had to use the slotted spoon to sift through the rice and find the birds. She had to be very careful to scoop the rice and to move the spoon oh-so-carefully, thus sifting out the rice and leaving only a bird.

She liked the concept of this, and used the spoon. Occasionally. Because apparently, it is WAY more fun to find the birds using not the spoon, but your fingers.

This tray used a pill container I'd picked up a while back at the Dollar Tree and some small snowman beads (she loves all things tiny!). It's such a simple opening-closing activity (she opens the lid, hides the bead, shuts the lid, repeats) but it's great fine motor development. I think that she, on her own, did this tray every single day.

I'm posting this tray, even though she never did it. She got it out, with great intentions, but for one reason or another, never worked on it.

But if she had... It's a spooning and transfer activity with teeny-tiny jingle bells and a tablespoon. I think I'll leave it out another week or so and see if it gets any love.

This was a cutting practice page from HERE. She was immediately excited and set to work...

And work she did. However, it was really tough for her and about halfway through she said, "Mama, it okay if I just tear it?" Ha! Yes, it's okay. :)

When she was done, she was sitting amidst a pile of cut/torn paper and was actually quite proud of herself.

This was a patterning tray, where she made a candy cane. We talked about how the shepherd held a cane, the night he saw baby Jesus, and how it was shaped just like this.

Annie sat with her and Maddie had a ball using the glue stick and placing the white strips on. I think it turned out cute!

She also made a (kinda funky, in my opinion) shape Santa...

We added cotton ball and googly eye embellishments. Maybe we lost some shapes along the way...? I don't know, but when we finished, Maddie said, "That not really look like Santa."

She made up new rules to the snowman button game that she, just last week, didn't care to play. However, when you make "button soup" and stir it up with a "hot wooden stick," things are more exciting.

She stamped out a J page...

And was introduced to a letter recognition page, using her magnetic color chips.

Here's what she finished before declaring, "I'm so done, Mama."

And of course, we decorated cupcakes...

And designed cookies. Didn't we do a fabulous job?! Ha!

But most of all, we focused on our family and enjoyed the time spent with one another.

An eclectic Tot School, but fun nonetheless. Hop over to Carisa's blog to see how other tots celebrated their way through the week!