November 2013

Month

Mon
11 ^th

Fun Food Art

Posted by Pinparent — 6 Comments

Meal times are a stressful time in our house. My daughter is not the most cooperative eater and it is often a high point of anxiety for myself and my husband. She goes in phases. Sometimes she will surprise me & eat well for 3 days in a row. I get hopeful and think maybe we have had a breakthrough and then she will go into the next 3 days without touching anything on her plate again.
We try to make meal time as entertaining as possible for our finicky daughter. She is a busy little girl and is not a fan of having to sit still for a meal. We often do meal time dinner theater, where we read to her as she eats. She has a favorite selection of books reserved just for mealtime.
When possible, I serve her food in muffin or bite sized form, which she shows a preference to. We make her dips and sauces because she enjoys dipping her food. Unfortunately lately, she has realized that she can keep dipping the same piece of food without actually biting it and she just licks off the sauce. “What did your daughter have for dinner, tonight?”… “Ketchup, why what did yours eat?”

I am always trying different ideas to make meals more appealing to her.
In my Pinterest travels, I have often come across different example of toddler food art. The meals contain different healthy foods arranged to form pictures of animals, cars, cartoons, etc on the plate. This always looked interesting to me. The meals looked cute, but would cute be enough to win over our daughter. Let’s find out.

For snacktime we went with owl. The owl’s head was formed using wheat bread with peanut butter. I used american cheese, raisins and Cheerios for the eyes and a raisin for the nose. The body is made with a half of a graham cracker. The wings are formed using a heel of wheat bread and banana & the feet were slivers of carrot.

Mommy gave this to Miss Mai . She laughed and pointed and said “bird, bird” and then very promptly looked up at me and said “phant, phant, phant” “Ok honey, an elephant it is.

I told you she was picky.

I recut and rearranged some of the pieces and added a fruit roll up for the tail.

The elephant is served.

The verdict…

She did like the fun shape of her snack but all our little snacker was interested in was the fruit roll up tail.

The moral…

The shape of your snack has no impact on whether they will eat their meal or not but it will sure make them smile.

Bearing that in mind, this was still a fun project & I wanted to give it one more try.

Thanksgiving is nearing, so I thought a turkey would be a suitable choice.

The turkey’s body & head are again made of bread, but this time I toasted the bread. The turkey’s wattle is made from a red pepper and the feathers are fish sticks with pieces of cheese & green pepper.

My daughter likes fish sticks and peppers, so this one worked much better for her.

Like I said before, this was a fun project. Mai did enjoy the funny appearance of her food & I enjoyed creating them. I will continue to practice this interesting art form.

Up next…Chick Pea french fries

Sun
10 ^th

What’s Your Favorite Children’s Book?

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

Like most parents, my husband & I don’t always see eye to eye in our opinions on how to raise our daughter. There are differences in opinions on meal choices, routines & even what she wears. One thing we both have agreed on from the start, was that we wanted to make sure that we read to her & encouraged her to read at an early age.

Our daughter loves books and we read to her everyday. It is interesting to me that even at such a young age, she has certain book preferences, some that are even surprising.

I found this list on Pinterest of the top ten children’s books…

It got me thinking about Mai’s favorite books. Did any of these books make the cut?

Not really. Which books did?

HERE ARE MAI’S TOP TEN

1. As an infant, it wasn’t Eric Carle’s ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ that we read to Mai while rocking her to sleep it was Carle’s ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’

2.While all of Mai’s friends were grabbing for ‘Goodnight Moon’, it was the

‘Goodnight Gorilla’ that Mai would reach for.

3.And it wasn’t Dr Seuss’s ‘Green Eggs & Ham’ that Mai chose for her mealtime story, it was the Dr’s

‘One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish’

4. ‘ I Like It When’

This is an adorable board book. Mai loved this one & used to act out the actions as we read them. My favorite was “I like it when you hug me tight.” Mommy would receive a wonderful hug complete with an “awwwwwww” from my darling girl.

5 .‘If You Give A Mouse A Cookie’

This was a favorite of our munchkin. She also liked the similar tale ‘If You Give A Moose A Muffin’

6. ‘Owl Moon’

A lovely book with beautiful illustrations. The story of a father and daughter that go owling. My daughter loved the illustrations in this one. She would squeal and point out all the snowy animals.

7. ‘The Berenstain Bears He Bear She Bear’

Great book that shows the reader that they can do or be anything they want to be and it doesn’t matter if they are a he or she.

8. ‘Ten Little Ladybugs’

This is a cute book to teach counting with..as the ladybugs disappear one by one & reappear home at the end

9. ‘The Napping House’

This is a cute and silly tale with a repetitive style about a house where everyone is napping on top of one another. .a dozing dog on a dreaming boy on a snoring granny.

10. OK! So, I guess one of these did make the cut after all…

‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs’

Story of a town that rains food.

Do you see your favorite’s here? Please share your toddler’s favorites.

Up next…Fun Food Art

Treasure Hunt Bottles

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

A few weeks ago, we had to bring our daughter to the emergency room. She had what was called nursemaids elbow, a common toddler injury, which is basically a dislocated elbow. With a quick movement the doctor snapped Mai’s elbow back in place & within seconds, she was back to her happy, smiley, mischievous self. I was relieved. It is a nerve wracking couple of hours.

While we were there, a very nice nurse brought us a cylinder like toy, filled with sand and different assorted shapes and objects. She gave this to Mai to play with as we waited for her x-rays. The toy worked in distracting our little miss from her injuries. I thought this was a wonderful idea, but in all the stress and anxiety of the situation, it was quickly forgotten, until yesterday when I saw a pin for a treasure hunt game.

This reminded me of the cylinder and all of its’ random objects. I thought this should be easy enough to recreate and would have to be more fun to play with, without a big ouchie.

What you will need…

An old soda bottle 20 oz or 32 will do

rice or sand

food coloring

assorted plastic toys small enough to fit into a bottle top

I originally made this with a 2 liter bottle, but found that it was too heavy for Mai to play with, so we transferred it to a 20 oz bottle. This worked much better for her little hands.

Directions:

Peel the soda label of the bottle. Clean the bottle & let it dry thoroughly

Pour rice & food coloring into a ziplock bag & shake

Pour rice onto paper plate to dry

Insert mini toys into bottle. I went with assorted insects, bugs, butterflies and reptiles. I bought these at the Dollar Store.
Use a funnel & fill the bottle 3/4 of the way with rice.

Seal top using super glue.

Shake the bottle to mix up the toys

Let your toddler shake & play & point out all of the objects

With all the left over rice we had, we also made a sensory box.

The verdict: She loved the bottles. She was shaking it up and pointing to birds and butterflies and laughing. The sensory boxes are always a hit in our house. It was a fun day for Mai. It was a messy day for mommy.

Drop cloths, mommy..drop cloths. Some one hand me a broom.

Fri
01 ^st

Cool whip finger painting & more messy play

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

As any mother of a toddler knows, toddlers have a short attention span and like to keep busy constantly. They are discovering and learning something new every day, every minute, every second. It is an incredible to thing to watch. It can be uplifting, amazing, funny, heartwarming, frustrating and oh so tiring.
It can be extremely difficult finding activities that will engage & hold my daughter’s interest. She, like her father is a runner. She does not like to stay still even for short periods of time, which is the reason I think I have such a hard time getting her to eat her meals.

One thing my daughter does like is finger painting. Like most children her age she also likes to put everything in her mouth. I found this recipe for edible finger paints last year on Pinterest.

Edible Finger Paint

2 Tbs. corn starch

4 Tbs. water

food coloring as desired

Combine and mix well.

I have made these several times. Here is Mai hard at work.

The verdict…
This is a great recipe but I found that with this and with other finger paint recipes that they were too soupy.
She would pour out her paint containers within minutes, and that would be end of that.

I saw another idea for playing in shaving cream and I thought this was a great idea but I didn’t want her eating it.

The image of the shaving cream brought to mind Cool Whip. Lucky for me I always have a tub of Cool Whip handy.
I portioned out the Cool Whip into 3 containers and added food coloring and stirred until I achieved the desired color.

Mai was curious about it right of the bat. I set up her painting area by putting down a drop cloth under her chair and set a piece of poster board down for her at the kitchen table.
Let the paint fly, Mai!

She, of course, had to start off with a taste test.

It passed with flying colors, now she is ready to paint.

I gave her a cork and a paintbrush to work with. I was impressed with my little Picasso. She used the brush to paint the cork and then used the cork to stamp the paper.

Mai’s finished Mess-terpiece.

The verdict…
The Cool Whip paints worked wonderfully. The denser texture made for a better contained mess & it was much easier to mix than regular finger paints. It tastes better too.

WATER PLAY
Mai loves playing with liquid. One of my daughters favorite things to do is to take her sippy cup and pour her juice, milk, etc into anything she thinks will hold it. I have caught her taking random toys and putting them in her play pots and making soup out of them.

Here is another simple activity. Leave the splash mat out.

I used a small Rubbermaid container and filled it halfway with food colored water. We added some play cups and bath toys. She held on the the paint brush, too. She became really attached to it.

I also gave her a pump bottle filled with the same colored liquid. She loved this.

The verdict…
This one was a winner. I was able to cook a whole dinner while she enjoyed her water play. Thank you, baby.

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