The Most Important Recipe I Own

**Note - I originally wrote this for Deviantly Domesticated back in August of last year. Be sure to check out the site and sign up to get your free ebook!**

1 C flour
…1/2 C salt
2 tsp cream of tarter
2 tbls baby oil
1 C water
(I also mix in a little vanilla to make it smell nice and keep it from molding)
food coloring

Stir constantly over medium heat. When right consistency, remove and knead. Fold in color when right consistency.

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Usually my day starts out with two children in my face, sometimes jumping on me telling me “It’s morning time mom! Time to get up!” Sometimes it’s very refreshing; other times I just want to curl up and go back to bed. Today started like usual, followed by my normal facebook update check and a trip to the gym. My son kept saying to me all morning “Mom, I want to do something special today. Can we make playdough?”

I have been teaching both of my children (Ethan, 4, and Cadie, 2) how to cook a lot lately, so this sounded like a good recipe for the day. I measure out each ingredient for them and let them dump it in a big bowl (usually cutting each part in half so they both get a turn). They each have a wooden spoon and they mix it around into sludge, then I pour it into our special “playdough pot” and heat it up on low heat on the stove. Their eyes get wider and wider as they watch it transform from a gooey mess into a pliable dough. I set it out on the table and start adding the food coloring. Today the consensus was to make orange and purple, so we also practiced figuring out with color combinations would produce the desired colors. Finally, the playdough is done. We break out the rolling pins, cookie cutters, “car squishers” and “noodle makers” and the fun begins. I love listening to their little imaginations go crazy with experimentation. “Mom, look! I make a snake!” or “yummy!” (from my 2 year old. We’re still working on that part.)

I guess this is kind of not only a food recipe I wanted to share, but a recipe for a fun day. Now if you will excuse me, I have a dinosaur to go make.


PS - This post has been linked up!

School Activities: Garden Recording

This one is an activity we are planning on doing weekly throughout the summer to record the growth of our garden. We planted probably our biggest garden yet this year, and to help keep the kids interested I wanted to show them how it changes over time. The first thing we do is measure the tallest of each plant, since we have multiples of most of them. To be scientifically accurate you are supposed to measure either each plant or the same plant every single week, but with a four and two year old I'm not worried about it too much...

Don't you just want to measure this cute little guy?

Fresh spinach!

The peas are coming along quite nicely.

Strawberry flowers are blooming. We are expecting our first fruits probably late next week!

As we measured each plant, I had the kids record how many inches tall they were. The four year old wrote all of his own numbers (notice he wrote I I I I  for the watermelon - told me 1+1+1+1=4!). The two year old mostly played in the dirt while I wrote the measurements, but she helped out a little bit.

After that I wanted them each to pick one thing they each noticed about the garden. My son said "The plants are growing big and strong" and my daughter said "the garden has plants." I'm hoping they remember things next time like flowers. They each drew a picture of the garden. Ethan's shows dirt, water, and that the plants are in lines. Little Miss's shows a ladybug.

I have altered the printout next time so I can add their names and the date to each one. I three-hole-punched their papers and put them in our school notebook for safe keeping. It took quite awhile (especially since it was 90 degrees outside and I about passed out from the heat) but they enjoyed it, and now that we have done it once I think it will go much quicker next time.

Summer School Activity - Writing a Recipe

Today's activity is brought to you by the cutest boy in the world. Here he is showing off the final product of our school time today: a delicious loaf of pear bread.

Here is an easy way to incorporate baking and cooking into your school work for the day:

Materials:
Computer/Printer
White paper/cardstock
Extra paper/cardstock in color of your choice
Scissors (for adult)
Glue sticks

Prep Work: I Googled images of each of the ingredients in our recipe. I tried to stick to non-brand pictures for most of it, except for the baking powder because I didn't want it to get mixed up with baking soda. I copied each image and pasted it into a Word Document. I also wrote out the words for each of the ingredients in Comic Sans MS (I find this to be the closest font to the way they teach kids how to write). I cut out each image and word individually. Total prep time: 20 minutes.


Directions for kids:
My two year old had all of the pictures of ingredients in front of her. I had her find each ingredient as I read it from the main recipe. She then pasted each one on the extra colored cardstock.

As Little Miss found each ingredient, I had my four year-old find the word that matched it. He definitely can't read them, but he is working on using sounds he hears me say to figure out which word matches.

After he found each word, he pasted it next to the picture of the ingredient. (I should also note that ahead of time I had him copy the words "Pear Bread" on the top and explained that this is how we know what we are making.)

It took up both sides of the paper, but it is three-hole punched and is now in our school notebook for safekeeping.

After we wrote the recipe, I had the kiddos call out the ingredients and I found them in our supplies. Then together we baked some pear bread. We were able to make 2 smaller loaves with this recipe, one with raisins and one without. It can also make one big loaf if that is what you prefer.

Here is the finished product. Go ahead, be jealous of my breakfast for the next few days...

Modifications for different ages and abilities:
-For kids that are learning their letter sounds - only print out the first letter of each ingredient instead of the whole word.
-For kids that can already read - add the amount of each ingredient and cut out separately, then have the child find both the word and the amount to use.
-For kids that are learning how to add fractions - add amounts that, when summed together, make the total amount of each ingredient. For example: The recipe calls for 1 2/3 cups of sugar. Instead write 1/3 5 times and have them figure out the amount of 1/3 cups needed to make the total.

Pear Bread Recipe: (You didn't think I would leave that out, did you?)
-3 cups pureed pears (also works with zucchini instead!)
-1 2/3 cups sugar
-2/3 cups vegetable oil
-2 tsp. vanilla
-3 cups of flour
-4 eggs
-1 tsp. salt
-1 tbs. cinnamon
-1/2 tsp. baking powder
-Optional: 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottoms of 2 loaf pans. Mix fruit, sugar, oil, vanilla, and eggs. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pans. Bake 50-60 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Loosen sides of loaves and remove from pans. Cool completely before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temp up to 4 days, refrigerate up to 10 days. Also freezes really nicely.

PS - This party has been linked up!

Summer School Activities - Water Fun

Yesterday we got to go to the library and have a bit of fun in some water games that had been set up. I could really see each of these as a fun game to do at home too!

The favorite game was picking up marbles in a wading pool using only your toes. For little guys they gave one minute to try to get ten marbles. Talk about your fine motor skills!

Even little Miss had fun trying this one and even got a few out!

The next game was trying to bounce a ping-pong ball into a cup of water. The more I think about it, though, the more it reminds me of college for some reason...

Another game was to eat an Otter Pop as fast as you could, shooting for under 1 minute. Talk about brain freeze! But both boys were able to smoke the older kids in this game.

Super easy - try to fill the pitcher with water using a sponge. Dip the sponge in the water and wring it out in the pitcher, trying to fill it up in one minute. They LOVED this game!

 And finally, take  a piece of jello, put it on your forehead, and try to wiggle it down into your mouth. Not easy at all, and it makes your face a bit sticky, but they liked this one too.

All of these can be done for super cheap or even free and they were a great way to stay cool in the hot weather.

Fly Swatter Game

Here is a fun one I learned from my Spanish teacher in high school: The Fly Swatter Game.

Materials:
-Dry Erase Board
-Dry Erase Markers
-Fly Swatter

I divided the board in half to have shapes on one side (for my 2 YO) and sight words on the other side (for my 4 YO).

After that I just let them take turns with the fly swatter. I would call out a word or shape and the kids would swat the answer with the fly swatter. Easy and simple and they LOVED it!

Here are some fun variations:
-Choose to do synonyms/antonyms/rhyming words
-Vocab words from another language
-Have the whole board covered and children each have a swatter and compete to see who can swat the answer first (that's what we did in Spanish class. I ruled.)

Thanks for checking out this fun activity!

This project has been linked up to these parties.

Summer School Activity - Magazine Letters

Materials:
-Old magazines
-cardstock or other paper
-glue sticks
-scissors

This one was inspired by this post by Molequish. I love her idea, but I don't think we are quite there yet for our four year old. I gave each kid an old magazine (given to me by a friend, but I also found out local libraries give them away for free sometimes). My four year old was asked to find each letter, one at a time, cut it out, and glue it on a piece of cardstock in order. The two year old simply got to cut to her heart's content, as it was her first time using her "big girl" scissors. Her collage ended up consisting of several models with shredded legs.

It took about 2 hours over 3 tries for the four year old to finish his, but he really did a great job, and I am so proud of him. This one's going in a special place for sure.

And of course, no project would be quite the same without Daddy coming in and showing kids how to make alien people by splicing different body parts together....

Here are some modifications for different ages and skill levels:

-Learning to cut - let them cut whatever they want. Show the process of cutting and gluing
-Visuals - cut out pictures, or any letters they find that they think will look nice
-Alphabet - cut out and glue alphabet in order
-Words - cut out words they can read
-Sentences - cut out words and make new sentences out of them
-Story book - cut out words and/or pictures to make a story book

Summer School

Well, summer is here. School is out, sports start up in a couple of weeks, and my fingers and toes have officially swollen to the size of sausages. I'm trying to both have a fun summer with my kids, yet still take it easy this year. After all, this preggo girl can only take so much before the heart starts pounding a little too hard and I feel like I'm going to pass out.

As much fun as summer is, it can be really hard to not have something planned at some point in the day to keep a small amount of structure. I decided to put my teacher hat on and start planning some "school" activities for my kids. I am trying to make them free or as cheap as possible, while still engaging and (hopefully) teaching my kids something. My 4 year old son is very motivated to learn to read, so I am hoping we can get him reading pretty well by the end of summer.

As we plan and do these school activities I am hoping to write blog posts about them. They are so much fun and have saved our days from chaos, and I want to share them with the world. Knowing me, though, this will last about two weeks and I'll give up eventually....


**Note - SAD DAY! My computer isn't reading the SD card from my camera for some reason! I have pictures of the first two days and I can't upload them right now! I promise as soon as I can I will add them...**