Embroidery for toddlers

Kitten always asks to sew (usually she takes an accessory box from my sewing machine and plays with tools and doll clothes pretending to sew them) and I thought she might enjoy some real sewing. I stretched some burlap on a small embroidery hoop, threaded a big blunt yarn needle with a piece of yarn and tied a big knot on the end.

Surprisingly she understood the concept pretty well and enjoyed it. Here is what she made.

Apparently she thought she was sewing a hat :)

Baking together - Cream cheese Pudding

This recipe is adored by my whole family. I so much miss Russian farmer's cheese, which of course you can buy here but it is prohibitively expensive and is not sold everywhere. Oh, all the wonderful recipes that you can make with it! This recipe uses cream cheese but really tastes like it is made with farmer's cheese - for all my Russian readers. For the rest of you - a very easy tasty everyday dessert/snack. Is isn't really a pudding, I guess, my dictionary translated it as baked pudding, but I have never heard of such a thing. Just try it and see for yourself. Kitten could almost make it herself, it is so easy.
Ingredients:
2x 8oz packs of cream cheese - softened
3 tbsp sour cream
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
5 tbsp semolina or flour
Raisins if desired

Mix all the ingredients except raisins together.

Add raisins, mix.

Grease a 7x11 inch pan.

Pour the cream cheese mixture in it and bake in a preheated to 350F oven for 50 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted in a center comes out clean.

 

Serve with sour cream. If you try it, let me know how you liked it!

Easy dry erase board

I was very excited to find a roll of sticky back dry erase roll in Michael's for $1 (as well as a sticky back chalk board roll, which I haven't tried yet). I cut a piece of it and stuck it to our wall. It peels off easily but doesn't stick too well to the rough paint on our wall, so I added a border of yellow masking tape, which doubles as a border of "allowed to draw on" surface. No easel needed and no space taken!
It works great with an addition of dry erase crayons. Kitten's favorite part is to clean it afterwards (the included with crayons mitten does not work very well but wet paper towel works like a charm). It cleans easily off the wall too, although Kitten is pretty good about staying inside the border.

Fall Tree printing

I got this idea from Frugal Family Fun blog (love it!). I drew a bare tree on a piece of blue card stock with a marker and gave it to Kitten along with yellow, red and orange paints and a cork.

I really love the outcome (although I had to finish it a little). For some reason she thought that she needs to push as hard as possible at the cork (may be because we were using a paper punch not long before that) and it was slipping and smearing, so I corrected her several times, after which she lost interest :( I need to remember to interfere less and not to be such a control freak.

Her knitting basket

Kitten loves to do everything with me, whatever I do she wants to do as well. After she partially unraveled a couple of projects that I forgot to put away I decided to give her her own knitting basket.  I filled it with some yarn, a knitted square, row counter, cable needle, crochet hook and knitting needles. She loves playing with it pretending to knit and finally left alone my knitting!

Magic Starch

Kitten loves to play with this stuff! It is probably no news to a lot of you but I have never seen it and was as amazed as Kitten. Basically you mix 2 parts of cornstarch with 1 part of water. The resulting mixture looks like liquid but feels like solid. I also like to let Kitten play with the starch before I add water. To play I assemble spoons and cups, sometimes I add a little food coloring and just let her explore.

Last time I added a sheet of blue paper and encouraged her to dribble the mixture on it, it is quite interesting, unfrtunately when it dries it crumbles off paper, so no keepsake value here.

Cereal box marble run

I made this trial marble run following the tutorial here. It came out a bit wobbly and I should have cut the holes bigger, soetimes we had to push the marble a little bit, but we had fun with it nonetheless.

Summer Solstice

Yesterday was Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and to celebrate it we decided to make the Father Sun loaf. Next time I will probably only take a third of the recipe because it turned out HUGE (you can see how the rays are overflowing on top and bottom, I did not have any big square pans), but it was kind of appropriate for the Sun. It was delicious and we froze two thirds of it to enjoy later. Kitten especially was impressed with the loaf and kept asking for "more Sun with butter". I have to admit, I enjoyed sculpting it and did not expect it to turn out nearly as good (so humble, I know!). I can see many many bread sculptures in my future. But, to the recipe (you can use any bread recipe but this is the one I chose).

Ingredients:
1 packet (or 2 1/4 tsp) yeast
1 cup warm water or milk (I used milk)
1 tsp honey
6-9 cups flour (the recipe says 6 but I ended up using 9 to get the proper consistency, I used 2 cups whole wheat and the rest white flour)
2 tsp salt
3 cups water
1/3 cup honey (the end result was just a little sweeter than regular bread, so you may want to add some more sugar)
1/3 cup oil or melted butter (I used butter)
Optional raisins, nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, spices, garlic, etc. (I used dried cranberries, crushed walnuts, cinnamon and nutmeg).

Proof the yeast in 1 cup of milk and honey until it gets bubbly. This should take about 15 minutes. Mix water, salt, honey and oil/butter in another bowl.

Add yeast mixture to liquids and allow the child with wooden spoon to stir while you add flour one cup at a time until it is too hard to stir.

Add your spices while the dough is still pretty liquid and nuts/fruits when it is more dense.

Get your hands messy by mixing/kneading the rest in by hand. The consistency should be pretty dense and not sticky, your hands should be able to stay clean and not covered with stuck dough. Knead for a while until the dough is smooth and shiny. It took me about 20 minutes but I am sure it could have used some more kneading, my hands got tired.

Put the dough in a clean bowl with a small amount of oil in it and cover with a damp towel. Allow to rise until it doubles in size.
Punch down, make the Sun or loaves or whatever you fancy and allow to rise again. I divided the dough in halves, made a circle from one half, pinched small pieces from another half, rolled them to make facial features, adding cranberries for eyes and then pinched off bigger pieces, rolled them into balls, stuck them all the way around the sun and pulled them into rays. I did this step without Kitten's help because I wanted a specific result but next time I will allow her to shape it too.
Bake in preheated to 350F oven for 40 min or so depending on the size of the loaves.

Toothpick shaker activity

I only had to sort out thicker toothpicks and Kitten was good to go - she was very concentrated on putting more and more toothpicks in the shaker and then shaking it to check the sound. Great fine motor practice and not as easy as it may seem!

Travel Games for Toddlers

We recently made a weekend car trip 6 hours away from home and I revised my entertainment for Kitten. I thought my ideas may be helpful to those traveling with younger kids. There are tons of things you can do with a 4 year old child and older but it can be tricky to decide what to do with a toddler, an activity that would not be messy or bulky and would entertain them while sitting and not running around. I try to fit each activity in a ziplock bag, that way you don't have to fish around your bag for separate pieces while you toddler whines impatiently.
This is how I set things up in a car, this tray (from Michael's) is very convenient because it fits under the arms of the car seat and doesn't move around. The downside is that it ends up tilted, so small things slide down. Oh well, I guess you can't have it all!

OK, now to the things I carry with us. Most of them can be mixed and matched for more activities, I like things that can be multi purposed.
1. This String a Farm set. Also can play with individual pieces and make up stories and such.

2. Random combination of rubbery frogs and springs. Amazingly these 1 dollar frogs were the best investment in our travel toy collection, I remember when we traveled to Italy 6 months ago Kitten amazed me by playing literally for hours with them on the plane. She arranged and rearranged them, pulled their legs, made them jump and go places and on and on. She also likes to make them hide inside the springs. You can invent all sorts of games with them with the help of paper and pencil (make a road, draw a pond for them to live in, lily pad hopping, etc.)

3. Small magnetic book with animals. There is a matching activity on the back as well. I got it in Joann's in 1-dollar section.

4. This game fit perfectly in a small container.

5. Homemade playdough. A third of a recipe fit perfectly in the old feta cheese container and Kitten played with it the longest in a car. It isn't as messy as modeling clay, thankfully. I also included lids for stamping and to serve as plates (Kitten likes to pinch pieces off playdough and arrange them on plates), a little jar to fill, letter stamps, toothpicks (these are so versatile, you can make kabobs, hedgehogs (ours even eats toothpicks!), draw on a flat piece of playdough, etc. etc.) and tongue depressors for cutting playdough.

 This is how everything fit into a ziplock bag.

6. Different containers to practice opening/closing. These also proved very useful for filling with playdough.

7. Ornaments from 1-dollar section in Joann's. You can also get sheets of this paper and cut it in pieces for traveling.

8. Small (I think it is 5x7 inches) blackboard with chalk and sponge. Very popular with Kitten.

9. Animal matching game. Animals are from 1-dollar section in Walmart and the pictures are found in Internet. I still need to laminate them but they survived this trip. Kitten also loves to play with animals on their own.

10. Puzzle cards from Michael's. I obviously don't pay attention to letters but they are great 3 piece puzzles for toddlers. Kitten already mastered 2 piece puzzles but is still somewhat struggling with these. For your $3 you get 54 puzzles. One side is in color, the other is white and blue for more challenge. The pictures are nice and neutral, no cartoon characters.

I also carry a small crayon pack and a blank notebook. And books are a must. I usually get a selection of stories and rhymes as well as magnetic books, which I just recently discovered, thanks to Kitten's grandparents. They gave us the farm and I got several others because they are great for traveling: On the Farm, Wild Animals, Animals (this one is a bit different and I don't like it that much) and Underwater Sea. There are many magnetic pieces, that are stored in a convenient pocket. You can follow the text and place pieces accordingly or you can make up your own stories.
Do you have any advice on how to make traveling with toddlers easier? I would love to hear it as we are planning a long trip overseas this summer!

I linked here.

More cleaning fun

I finally got Kitten her own broom. She kept asking to use mine but it was obviously too big for her to maneuver. A lot of natural toy stores sell them but I was not willing to pay 25 bucks for it. And finally I found one on Amazon for $11. It is well made, all corn fiber bristles. It is still a bit long for my tall 2 year old but she enjoys swiping with it nonetheless, especially when I sing a song about a broom.

And I finally figured out how to make swiping practice a little less messy! If you try to give a dustpan and brush to a toddler and ask to clean up spilled rice, flour, etc., you are going to end up with a huge mess all over the kitchen floor. But when Kitten threw a bunch of river rocks in the kitchen, I immediately knew that it would be perfect and it was! There are not too many of them, they are easily visible and less likely to fly across the room like lighter objects. Kitten still needs to figure out how to make the stone to move into the dustpan but we will get there.

Kitchen Play

Grandma gave Kitten a gorgeous wooden kitchen for her birthday and I supplemented with some pots and pans. I intentionally did not get her a lot of play food, as I wanted her to use her imagination in best Waldorf traditions. As a result, Kitten has been constantly playing a cook. I actually did not expect her to be so into it yet, she is only 2, but she loves it. Of course, she is not coming up with imaginary stories yet but she enjoys "washing" dishes (making an adorable "shhh" sound when she turns water on), using potholders, filling pots with dry pasta, stones and pinecones, transferring "food" to plates using a spoon, feeding us and dolls and so much more! The imitation period at its peak, this is perfect timing for her. I cook quite a lot, and she is so happy to be able to do same things, even though I let her help me whenever she asks to. All sorts of skills are developing while she plays: fine and gross motor, communication, observation, problem solving and, of course, most importantly, imagination.