Cooking with…children?? And a Surprising Lunch Creation

Cooking with my children is not my forte. Well, cooking in general is not my forte! It takes me so much time to plan out meals and prepare for them only to:

 

* have plans rearranged so we can’t stick with our meal plan (this happens a lot in our busy life and schedules with a husband in full-time ministry)

* have the meal not be liked by the kids

* have the meal not be liked by me or my husband

* a gigantic mess…and a husband stating that I just need to clean as I go, which I can’t seem to do otherwise something will get burned!

* end up frustrated in the kitchen while I cook (often with something spilled all over the floor or glass shattered everywhere…or both!)

 

So the idea of cooking in the kitchen with my kids “helping” is even more difficult for me. Since my natural tendency is to get frustrated in the kitchen, adding children into the cooking mix just makes it more likely that I am going to become frustrated with them and not be the mom I want to be.

 

As I write this out, it is making me realize that I think we need to begin cooking more together. In addition to all the normal lessons that cooking can provide children (math, science, reading, home economics), I think that cooking together will be able to help JayBird learn to cooperate and follow directions better (which is the main source of my frustration when he is helping me cook) and will help me learn more patience and self-control! I will have to be purposeful about creating some menu ideas that JayBird and JellyBean can help me with.

 

The Homeschool Village is discussing cooking with your children this week. As you have gathered, this is not something I regularly do or encourage with my children, but coincidentally, JayBird made his own lunch creation this week. I walked in on him creating a, um, delicious (??) butter and grape sandwich (grapes were his second choice as we were out of bananas). He was quite proud of himself and ate the WHOLE thing…and thoroughly enjoyed it! The recipe? Well…I think you can easily figure that one out on your own! :-)

What’s In The Bible? 3

Woohoo! I don’t enter a whole lot of contests, but this would be a fun and beneficial one to win! A Few Short Cuts is offering a give away for the video What’s In The Bible? 3. I’d love to have this for my kids! JayBird learns so quickly and remembers so much, that I already find myself looking for more to read, do, and see with him to enhance our Bible learning together. What a great addition this would be to our resources and video library, which right now only consists of Signing Time DVDs (thanks Mimi!), a couple of Veggie Tales DVDs (thanks Aunt Lisa and Aunt Laura!), and a couple of Praise Baby DVDs (thanks Freecycle!) As you can see, we just don’t put our money into videos. Though What’s In The Bible looks like a video series I would be happy to spend money on. But hey, if I can win won of their videos, even better! Check out A Few Short Cuts giveaway and video review with the link above and enter for your chance to win! (Oh, and yes, I get an entry for blogging this…thanks for reading!!)

Learning Room…or Play Room?

As I have mentioned before, JayBird and JellyBean really love the new learning room. They often bring toys from their bedroom into there, which is not what I intended, but is fine by me so long as we tidy up at the end. They also enjoy using the Tot School toys for open ended play fun. I try not to interrupt them during these times they are playing nicely together. Even if I have an activity or preschool oriented thing for them to do, I don't interrupt the sweet, and sometimes rare (but getting more common) times. I certainly won’t squelch their desire to play and have fun together…and maybe even learn a little something along the way (counting? colors? cooperation?)

Happy 4th of July!

Here is what we did in honor of the 4th of July!!

* Learned about the parts of the American flag and counted each stripe and star.
 

* Found what was missing on a flag printout and therefore added the stars back in using our fingers dipped in white paint.
 
Jelly Bean looks so enthused, doesn’t she?  We tried to get her to dip her finger in the paint, but she would have nothing to do with that. She still doesn’t like to get messy..except when eating, but even then she wants to use a million napkins.

* Made firework art. It was Jaybird that remembered about the smiley face fireworks he has seen. So of course he had to add that!  :-)

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* After firework art, JayBird had the idea of making a firework out of Tinker Toys. Love his creativity!

* Made an American flag cake! Mmmm!!

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Into my readers' hearts:
~ What did you do to celebrate and learn about Independence Day?
~ I found myself having a difficult time trying to share what this holiday is about with my preschooler. How do you share this day's significance with your preschooler?

Thank you God for making me!

We have almost completed our first full week of Heart of Dakota’s little Hands to Heaven. But for us, an HOD week will really be a week and half or so in most cases since we are going at half speed and adding in other activities. This week we sprinkled in some 4th of July activities.

We have been learning about God’s creation this week…how God created everything from nothing. And that He made you and me! Other activities included:

Learning to count by two’s (up to 10)

Learning about patterns…stripes, polka dots, plaid, checkers, floral…

He learned these patterns through Mom and Dad’s clothes then went into his own closet to find similar patterns. Here he is below being goofy as always!


Drawing his own patterns
 

We did some activities and songs with the letter ‘A’, which was largely taped to our floor. For JayBird, these are just fun activities as he knows all his letters and letter sounds. We have yet to see if these might be a benefit to JellyBean at her young age (not quite 2 years old yet). Certainly it at least exposes her to a world of letters. She played with JayBird making stuffed animals dance on the letter ‘A’, tracing the letter ‘A’, and having races on the letter ‘A’. Through all this, she has become quite good at saying the ‘A’ sound (“ah”). We’ll see if she catches on to ‘B’ and its sound later…or if she just thinks that all letters taped onto our floor sound like the letter ‘A’. lol
 

We acted out the creation of Adam and Eve. JayBird decided that he would play the part of God (hmm…), I would be Adam, and JellyBean would be Eve. JayBird, as God, pretended to pick up dust from the earth and blow it into the air forming Adam(me). He then pretended to take a rib from Adam (me) to form Eve (JellyBean). Even JellyBean enjoyed acting with us…but then she thought she needed a rib taken out of her too. LOL

Here is JayBird shouting “Thank you God for making me!”