Tying Shoes Aid

I found this product called Loopeez.  I thought it was great because it would make it so easy for my 5 year old to tie her own shoes, but I wasn't willing to shell out $8 plus shipping because I know how easy it is to lose little things like this.  Believe me, we lose a lot of ribbons, clips, and headbands!  We've tried multiple times with no aids and she just fumbles....too much for her little hands to hold so I tried to make a mock Loopeez.  It was very simple and she tied them herself the first try!  (She already had the prerequisite skill of tying simple overhand knots).

From a large piece of felt, I cut two pieces, each about 1 inch by 2 inches (not exact measurements, but something like that).  Then I cut two vertical slits about an inch apart so it looks like the ones on the website.  Then it was time to test it out!

The first step is for the child to knot their laces.

Next, they put the felt piece over their laces.  Make a loop with the first lace, then thread it through the hole.

Repeat with the second lace.

Tie both laces in a knot.  Leave the felt there.  If we had pink, we would have used pink, but at the time we only had black, brown, and yellow felt in the house.  We're going to purchase a really cute color for our little Fancy Nancy!

Pull the loops to the appropriate length.

Finished product!  She was so proud she tied her shoes and it only took one try for her to get it!

Tofu Challenge

As I was prepping dinner this morning, I realized I like tofu.  It's not that I crave it, really enjoy it, or am opposed to eating meat.  I like it for the same reason I like frozen vegetables.  It's a cheap, healthy convenience food.  Here are some reasons to friend tofu:
1. It's inexpensive, around $1 per pound.
2. A sealed package will keep in the fridge for a month.
3. Unlike meat, it doesn't have to be defrosted, just open and eat or cook.
4.  It's low calorie, high protien.
5.  Tofu is versatile.  It takes on the flavor of what it is cooked with.  Marinated, it can taste like cheese.  Cooked, it can be crispy.  Crumbled it can replace meat.  Scrambled it can replace eggs.  Soft tofu blended with a jar of spaghetti sauce makes a great creamy tomato soup.

So this morning as a stared at two zucchini, a tub of ricotta cheese, and some spinach pondering what to make, I called on the unopened package of firm tofu in the fridge and some frozen pepper stir fry (remember I said I like frozen veggies too!).  Layer that with couple of jars of spaghetti sauce, oven ready lasagna noodles, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan, and a few spices, we now have a nice vegetarian lasagna to throw in the oven later tonight.  Using the tofu saved me from spending the time defrosting and cooking the meat.  I just crumbled it and threw it in with the cold sauce.  Done!

Are you up for the challenge?  Ready to try some tofu?

We tried Market on the Move this weekend. It's a pretty sweet deal! We paid $10 to receive all this produce! I would have liked some fruit, but for the savings I can't complain. We arrived at the site at 7:50. By 8:45 we were done. We'd paid our money, filled our box, and headed for the car. There is a membership program which is $100 annually which allows you to go to one site per weekend to pick up produce for the year...I'm pondering this idea.

When we got home, we went right to prepping the veggies. We sliced and several of the peppers. We blanched and froze the green beans. The girls even helped! They were very enthusiastic at first, but their enthusiasm dwindled after the first bowl...ha ha ha! When they were all blanched and bagged, there were two full gallon ziplocks which is great because the girls love green beans! As for the chiles, we will likely be sharing them after we freeze a few bags full.

Rice Sensory Bin

When we went to a training a few weeks ago, I was so impressed with their multi-colored rice sensory bin so we made one at home. It's much simpler to make than one would expect. You only need three ingredients: white distilled vinegar or rubbing alcohol, food coloring, and rice. You'll also need one ziplock bag for every color you want to make. First, put the vinegar and food coloring in a ziplock. It should be about 2-3 tbsp vinegar. The amount of color will depend on the intensity of color you want. Mix those well, then add the rice and shake. We originally made pastel colors, but wanted more rice so I added some naturally black rice from the pantry.


The rice is naturally appealing to the kids. They cannot wait to get their hands in it! Hello Kitty went surfing in it. Other animal toys can hide in it. I also gave the kids a funnel and some "shakers" (old spice containers) which they used to pretend they were cooking.


See how quiet they were...okay for the first 5 minutes! ; )

Cloud Dough

I found this recipe for "cloud dough" on Play Create Explore. Having never played with Moon Dough, I don't know how similar it is, but the girls certainly enjoyed playing with it. It is dry, yet builds like wet sand. It is simply made by mixing 8 parts white flour with 1 part baby oil and it smells great! I have no idea how long it will keep...I guess we will find out! I stored it in a large tupperware bin, but I have mind to make a larger batch one day for a sensory bin.

Valentine's Collage

With almost 30 kids in my girls' preschool class, they came home with a lot of Valentines! To consolidate the mess, we made a collage. We glued the valentine cards onto old school printer paper, but you could use any large paper surface (boxes, packing paper, etc). They love their new work of art and now they can enjoy their Valentines without the paper mess!

Tater Tots

Theme of the day: Potatoes!

Activity #1: Who doesn't love a good game of hot potato?!

Activity #2: Potato Stamps!


Activity #3: Growing our own potato plants in water so we can see the root system.



Activity #4: Make oven fries for dinner!

Other potato activities:

1. Potato Maze (This looks really cool! I just don't know if my kids will leave the box alone long enough for it to work!)

2. Potato Beads

3. Potato Battery

4. Visit the official home of the Idaho Potato.

Inexpensive Jello play

We played with Jello today instead of playdough. The basic qualities of Jello are a different than playdough, but the kids still enjoyed it. To do Jello play less expensively, purchase plain gelatin. It takes 4 packets to make a FULL batch (9 by 13 pan) of cubes. The cubes can be stacked, looked through, and eventually mushed up. Various themes could be ocean (blue), slime (green), etc. We used yellow today because it's the color we had left of the 4 pack of food coloring. To color it, I just put food coloring in the cold water. The basic recipe is 1 cup cold water sprinkled with 4 gelatin packets, then mix in 3 cups boiling water, pour into a container and refrigerate for a few hours. Happy playing!

Candy Cane Cookies

I'm not a fan of putting crushed up candy on cookies. I think it ruins them, but this time of year I struggle not to eat all the goodies and I don't like peppermint so I thought it might be a weight management tool ; ) And they actually did turn out cute and tasty according to the kids!

First we gathered candy canes. We had enough around that we did not need to purchase any. We sorted them by flavor (fruity vs mint), then put them in freezer ziplock bags. The thicker the bag the less chance of it puncturing. Next I showed the kids now to gently hammer the pieces through the bag. Gently is the operative word.

You could give each child their own bag to hammer, but we wanted to practice turn taking so we used only one bag at a time.


The recipe was simple. You can either make your own roll out cookies or buy the pre-made dough. After rolling out the dough and before putting the cookies in the oven, sprinkle the broken candies on them. Here they are!

Free Sprouts Deals

I signed up for the e-mail newsletter at Sprouts. It's kind of neat because each month they e-mail us a coupon for a free item. Last month we got muesli breakfast breads. A few months before we got lip balm. One time we got lemonade. This month we got "pho" soup base and sour cream. The sour cream we turned into veggie dip by mixing it with ranch dressing powdered mix. I wasn't sure what to do with the "pho" soup base. I was going to use it as broth in split pea soup until I smelled it and realized the flavor wasn't going to blend well. It had more of a gypsy stew smell to it (cinnamon, clove, pepper, etc) so I concocted this simple recipe. You can use fresh ingredients, frozen, or canned, your choice. It was fairly inexpensive too. Pretty much all the ingredients are on sale this time of year. As a bonus, we cooked it in the crockpot so I put the cut ingredients in a bowl, then had the kids spoon or pour them into the crockpot. There's no risk of burns because we "cook" cold, then I put it in the warmer after.

1 box "pho" soup base
1/2 onion chopped*
1 red bell pepper chopped*
1 sweet potato or yam diced
1.5 cups or 1 can kidney beans (although I think garbanzo would be good too)
spinach (about a cup)
1 cup diced ham

Put all items in a crockpot, turn to high for about 4-5 hours and dinner is done! We made some cornbread and everyone enjoyed! Okay, one person in particular under the age of 5 only ate the sweet potatoes and cornbread ; )

*instead of cutting pepper and onion, you can sub frozen "bell pepper stir fry". I've found it at Frys, but not Walmart.

Windy Day Fun

So this past week has been the best for weather since I think May! It's finally cool enough to go out at any time of the day without frying. Plus there has been a bit of a breeze. To have fun with that, we made grocery sack kites and windsocks. Both are simple and take about 5 minutes to make. The kids enjoyed hanging the windsocks inside the house as well as outside.

Directions for the kites are here! Thanks Michelle!

It doesn't have to be a windy day, nor do you need a lot of room to fly these kites...huge plus with little impatient people ; )



To make the windsocks, cut construction paper in half to make two long pieces. You only need one long piece per child. Allow kids to glue streamers from one long side. When the glue dries, roll the construction paper then staple the two short edges together. Finally, use a pencil to push holes through 2 sides of the windsock. Thread some yarn or ribbon through and it's done!

Toy Swap Tuesday

or whatever day of the week you want to do your toy swap! I do mine just between the toys my kids already have, but you could also swap out with a good neighbor or friend.

To get the kids involved, I have them pick up one basket of toys that they are ready to trade in for a "new" one. They aren't too interested until I say things like "Wow! Cool! Look at this!" or "Oh, look, Little Pet Shop!", then they get a hustling! Once they bring me the old toys, I give them a basket of new toys. I usually keep 4 blue baskets on the shelf. 2 are new toys and 2 are "old" toys, then the next swap, they can get two more "new". If I swap everything, sometimes people get mad that their Barbies are in the garage ; ) Swapping toys every couple of months keeps the kids happy and the living room cleaner!

Here's the storage in the garage:

Here are the happy kiddos playing with their "new" toys:
You can see the blue basket just behind the "new" toys. If I can get the camera to upload, I'll add a picture of how nice the shelving unit looks after!

Indoor Obstacle Course

Trying to beat the heat, we made an indoor obstacle course. We used benches, stools, couch cushions, a cooler, and some pillows. Someone was a cow jumping over the moon...listen for her mooing!

Making Human Cookies

We call this activity "making cookies". Basically we go through all the steps of making cookies on a big scale. The ball is the rolling pin. We "chop" the cookies with light karate chops. "Sprinkles" are tickles, and "eating" refers to pretending to nibble on the cookie. The activity is good for both tactile perception and sequencing because they have to remember the order of events.

This Place is a Zoo!

My 4 year old has great ideas. She found a rope in the backyard and started linking it between different things in the yard to create a "zoo". The zoo has created a few hours of entertainment because we take turns being different animals in the cage, a zookeeper, or a visitor to the zoo. Plus it can be reconfigured at any time. This is the set-up yesterday. Today we moved the ropes around and made it have more "cages".


Here are my baby pony and my baby zebra. You can tell which is which because the zebras like popsicles...well, at least they do at our zoo!

I call it French Toast Sticks....and they eat it.

Maybe I'm a frugal mama, but I don't like to throw out the crusts from the bread. So when I make cookie cutter shaped sandwiches, I save the crust and either use them in meatloaf or I make "french toast sticks".


My kids don't notice and have fun dipping their french toast sticks in syrup. What kid doesn't love syrup?!

Owls

Looking through Oriental Trading magazine can be inspiration for kid crafts. Most of the crafts are simple and use basic supplies. Many can be replicated at the same or less cost. This craft was listed as 42 cents per item. I think we did it in less than 5 cents, but I'm just estimating so don't quote me on that!

First, we opened up a plain brown lunch sack. We filled it with about 2 pages of old newspaper, then folded the top into a triangle and folded it down. I tried gluing it, but didn't want to wait so I just taped it. Then I cut out the eyes, wings, beak, and feet for the kids to glue on. Older kids could cut these out themselves. We put two google eyes on as well.
I thought they were done, but one child wanted feathers on hers. So we got the glue back out (after the other things had dried), put glue on it, and let her glue the feathers on. She was so proud she took it for "show and share" at school the next day!

Ocean in a Bag

My 4 year old found a book with ocean crafts in it. She turned to one page and said "Can we make this today?" I looked at what we needed: ziplock bag, blue hair gel, Styrofoam, beads or shells. Oooh, cool, yea, we can make that and we'll use up that hair gel that's been sitting the the medicine cabinet for 4 year now! It was simple and she loves it!

First you take the hair gel and pour it into the bag. The bag needs to be full enough that when you lay it flat, a layer about 1/2 an inch thick of gel is in all parts of the bag. (We were a little short on gel, but she didn't seem to mind.) To make it easier I put the bag in a mug. While she poured the gel, I cut fish shapes out of Styrofoam. I didn't have any meat trays, but she was happy with egg crate lids so we have white fish with red and blue patterns on them.


When the bag is full of gel, you place the "fish" and the "bubbles" (beads) inside, release the extra air, and seal the bag. As a safety precaution, I also duct taped the top of the bag and made a rule that they can only play with it in the kitchen. Happy girl and her ocean in a bag!
A variation I thought of is to use homemade fingerpaints instead of hair gel. I think it'd be much cheaper considering it'd only use water, food coloring, and a few tablespoons of cornstarch. I might try that next time, but for now this worked and it cleaned out the medicine cabinet.

Watermelon Popsicles

So I'm not even sure where I remember hearing this idea. If it's your idea, I apologize and please take credit for it! Anyways, it's very simple and healthy. Even my kiddo who does not like watermelon was willing to at least try it, because let's face it, every food is better when it's on a stick, right?

This is so simple. Simply cut the watermelon into slices or wedges (removing the rind), then put it on a popsicle stick. Put the watermelon pops in the freezer for about an hour.
Finished product!

Dress Shirt Doll Stroller Cover

Doesn't she look happy with her "new" stroller?
It's actually a stroller she got for her birthday (or Christmas?) a couple years ago, but the cover had torn. We tried duct tape, but it was met with disapproval and eventually torn off.

I was trying to figure out how to fix it (with minimal work!) so I went digging through our box of stuff to donate to Goodwill and found an old dress shirt of my husbands. I cut the back out (all the way along the side up to the neck, but not including the arms), then I turned it upside down. I took the double layered upper back and folded it over to make an edge to hold the bottom on. Then I hemmed up the sides to fit the width of the stroller. To make the "ties", I made long tubes of fabric, sewed up the sides, and turned them right side out (anyone else remember sewing your own "scrunchies" in the 90s?). Finally, I turned the top part down, and sewed the loops on the inside of the fold. I did not trim the length so it actually just falls behind the stroller. The bottom (of the shirt) was already hemmed, so why make more work, right? Because the shirt had a pleat in the back, I didn't have to do any pleating on the edges to make a "seat". The pleat makes a natural "seat" because it hugs around the baby doll like a hammock.


So here's the new stroller cover, complete with baby. Green Baby (yes, that's her name) seems to seem content. Wouldn't you say?