Preschool Cooking

Our local bookstore, Cooperfields, hosted a cooking competition for kids.  Each bought a cookbook and choose a recipe to make and enter.  I picked out the cookbook Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes for Preschoolers for Thomas.  This cookbook is awesome for non and early readers.  Each recipe is four pages long, with the first 2 page spread for the adult helpers and the second 2 page spread in pictorial form for the preschooler.  Thomas literally made several recipes with independently.  He loves the book and uses it in his play kitchen and even requests it for his night time story! This is a must have for any pre-reader!

For those of you interested he didn't place at the contest, but had a great time!  Here is his display:

Egg Carton Scavenger Hunt

I recently discovered Pinterest.  For those of you who have not checked this site out, it is a great way to both organize ideas that you get from the web as well as find new ideas.  I highly recommend it! I saw several people posting recently about using old egg cartons for a backyard scavenger hunt and I thought it was a great idea.

First I googled some pictures for common items in our backyard and put them into a chart I could print out and glue onto the top of an old egg carton.

Then the kids had to head out into the backyard and find all the items and place one in each "spot."

I must admit I put the "?" spot on there because I was having trouble coming up with a 12th item, but the kids loved getting to look around the yard and deciding what would go in the last spot! 

Make Your Own Snowglobe

This was a fun project that I recently did with my three year-old and then again with his preschool class.  They turned out super cute! (Note: Thomas helped with several of these photos!)

We used a baby food jar, mini-ornaments, glitter, glycerine, and an oven bake clay.  We used regular glitter, though if you have it or are heading to Micheal's anyway I would suggest getting the larger sized glitter, it floats better.

Work the clay then make a mound on the cap of the jar.  This allows the figurine to be seen  past the lid.  Be sure to stay a little bit back from the rim so that the jar will close correctly.

Choose which figure(s) you want to use and then place them in the clay to make an imprint before baking the clay.  Be sure to remove the figurines before baking, you are just providing an imprint for them to be glued.

Bake according to the package directions.

While waiting for the top to bake, prep the figurines.

Fill the baby food jar about 3/4 of the way full with water.

Add a couple of eyedroppers full of glycerin.

Add the glitter.  Careful, too much and you'll have a blizzard!

Whent he tops are out of the oven put the top on, add more water if necessary, then glue the top down.  You can also glue a ribbon around the lid to give it a more festive look.

Shake and Enjoy!

Healthy Halloween Treats

I love Halloween, all holidays really!  With kids I think I love the lead up to Halloween the best; decorating, reading Halloween stories, watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and of course Halloween treats!  In that vein I wanted to make some fun and spooky treats that were also healthy.  Here are the 3 favorite that we discovered:

Vampire Apples

 

Sliced Apples (reddish look especially realistic)

Slivered Almonds

Slice your apples

Cut out a "mouth" in the center

Make fangs with the slivered Almonds

Carrot Eyeballs

 

Sliced Carrots

Cream Cheese

Raisins (or black olives)

 

Slice your carrots (about 1/4 of an inch)

Spread cream cheese on the carrots

Add the raisins or olives for the pupil

 

 

Also fun to combine the two together!

 

 

Cracker Spiders

Large round crackers

Pretzel Sticks

Raisins

Sun/Peanut/Almond Butter

Spread the Peanut Butter on the cracker

Add 8 pretzel stick "legs" and 2 raisin "eyes

Zucchini Nuggets

We have two overproducing zucchini plants this year and while searching for new ways to prepare them I came across this great recipe on one of my favorite kid food blogs, Itty Bitty Bistro.  Following the recipe below I made about 30 "nuggets" and was able to freeze the leftovers. 

3 small to medium zucchini, grated

1/2 onion grated
2 cups coarse bread crumbs (used her idea of throwing the "butts" of my whole wheat in the food processor, in fact I used the food processor for the all the ingredients, super quick and easy!)
2 Tbsp flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup cheese
oil for frying

salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, combine zucchini, onion, crumbs, flour, eggs, cheese, salt and pepper. 

Heat up oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Form small balls in your hand of the mixture and fry up in batches.

Enjoy! And check out the orginal recipe here.

Wheels on the Bus iphone app

Wheels on the Bus by Duck Duck Moose

I love using my iphone for many reasons, not the least of which is its ability to distract my kids!  This great little app sings the wheels on the bus song to the kids as they are able to manipulate the pictures on the screen.  You can set song to be sung in several different languages, just the music, or record you or your child's voice.  All for only 99 cents!

Photo Scavenger Hunt

My son loves using my camera!  He is always asking me if he can take pictures of his trains and then wants me to show them to him.  With this in mind, and a need to decide on some new plants for our front yard, we headed out for a photo scavenger hunt.  He was on the lookout for fun  grasses and flowers for our house.  You could also "hunt" for animals and bugs, or certain colors, whatever you think might interest your little one.  You can easily adapt this for older kids too, make up a picture list or written list and time them or have them compete against a friend or sibling.