Coloring Page: Feeding the Chickens

This one makes me think of our back yard!

Simple Valentines Day Hat

We made these super easy heart hats for a Valentines Day get-together on Tuesday. I cut the hearts out of scrapbook paper (a little sturdier than construction paper) and the girls decorated.

If you cut them the right size and your paper is sturdy, they will fit very well, but I didn't have all the kids in front of me to check head sizes; so some slipped down and became necklaces :-)

 Thanks, Kathy for the directions on this!

Carrot Hearts

The girls helped me peel the carrots (more fun when you buy the kind with the greens on)

and we followed the directions over at Sophistimom for making little heart-shaped snacks!

Mine didn't turn out as well as hers, but they were still fun to eat!

  

Pasta Magnets

 

 When we were at the Asian grocery store the other day I spotted this fun bag of floral  pasta that I just had to buy because I knew it would be good for something or other.

Today I remembered that I also had some alphabet noodles I had picked up on clearance at HEB. Since we were having a neighbor girl over to play this afternoon, it seemed the perfect time to plan a project.

To dye the pasta, I squeezed a healthy amount of food coloring into containers with the pasta and then added a few splashes of rubbing alcohol.  I stirred, and then let them soak for about 10 minutes and then poured onto a paper towel to dry (took about 20 minutes to dry completely)

The easiest way to make the magnets was to peel the backing off of adhesive-backed magnet sheets and arrange the pieces of pasta on the stickiness (it held them just fine).

But for those who wanted a white background, I let them use a small amount of Elmer's clear glue (administered with a toothpick)

I really liked the rows of colorful flowers- would have been a good project for teaching patterns as well!

A Visit to the Asian Supermarket

I've always been fascinated with ethnic grocery stores.  The interesting sights, smells, and sounds make me feel like I'm Alice in Wonderland.  The other day, I took M and G on their first ethnic food adventure- an Asian grocery store in North Austin.  

To see some pictures of our time there, and 10 suggestions for fun things to do with kids at an Asian grocery store, see my guest post at Free Fun in Austin.

I let each girl choose a new food to try from the snack aisle.  G's choice cracked me up- dried squid.  hmmmm, I have to say, I'm definitely not used to such a fishy smell in my snacks.  It didn't become one of our favorites, but I was proud of both girls for giving it a try!

Rose Boba Milk

 
Here's a fun way to make drinking milk more appealing to your kids- add Boba, that is, pearl tapioca.  Boba tea (a sweet drink with tapioca balls at the bottom) is a popular drink in many Asian countries.  I made my boba with rosewater for a unique taste and red food dye to make it even prettier.

To make the Boba:

1.  Use a ratio of 8 to 1, water to tapioca pearls.  Add a generous splashing of rose water and food dye (depending on taste)
2.  Boil water
3.  Add tapioca, and boil for 15 minutes with cover on the pot.
4.  Turn the heat off and soak for another 15 minutes
5.  Rinse the pearls and drain off the water
6.  Store in sugar syrup until ready to use.

I added some silk flowers I happened to have around to the stem of a pretty cup to make it seem extra special.  You might want to warn your kids ahead of time though that the Boba are not going to be as sweet as they might be hoping.  I think mine were a little disappointed to find out they weren't candy!

Coloring Page: Skating at the Pond

Heart-Shaped Foods II

1. Melon Heart Kabobs
2. Hot Dog Hearts
3. Cinnamon Rolls
4.  Heart-shaped egg

Fishing for Letters Hangman

A while back I saw this cute idea to fish for refrigerator letters in the bathtub and ever since have wanted to try  the same concept but adding the hangman twist.  A brand new package of refrigerator magnets means we still have the whole alphabet (two days from now, six of them will likely be hiding with the dust bunnies under my refrigerator); so today seemed the day to jump on it.

Our bathroom is pretty tight; so I didn't actually want to do it in the bathtub, but it actually turned out well to use two small tubs.  We separated out the letters into vowels and consonants to make it a little easier to catch the vowels.

For the fishing pole we used a ruler, a string, and a clothespin with a magnet in its "beak."

 It had been a while since I'd played hangman; so I made the mistake of thinking that shorter words are easier (of course, the longer the word the more likely it is to have any particular letter that is guessed).  Adding the fishing for letters twist makes it even harder for the guesser to win; so I'm afraid I beat them soundly every round we played (even after I added ridiculous levels of detail like shoelaces).  M and G didn't seem to mind defeat- they wanted to play over and over (well, M wanted to play; G wanted to dance her fingers in the water with the letters)

For the final round, M picked the word and let me fish for the letters.  I was very proud of her for doing it exactly right.  It seemed like it stretched her mental muscles in a new way which is always good.

Learning Laboratory

Snowflake Pancakes

I won't say I was exactly disappointed to come home to seventy degree weather after visiting snowy New York last week, but it did put me in the mood to try some new snowflake crafts.

We started yesterday morning.  In fact, we were almost late for church because the girls and I got completely carried away making these snowflake pancakes.  (sadly, we barely had time to eat them!)

 I found a mostly-empty squirt bottle of ketchup in the back of my refrigerator (yes, I do believe I could find just about anything in there).  After pouring the remaining ketchup into another bottle and scrubbing it out, I used a funnel to fill the empty squirt bottle with pancake batter.    Now I had a writing instrument for drawing whatever I liked!

It was a little tricky to draw pretty snowflakes for two reasons:

1.  Snowflakes really only look believable if they are symmetrical- a little tricky when drawing with batter
2.  I used a recipe for crepe batter instead of the traditional pancake batter with baking powder, etc.  I thought the snowflakes might be prettier if the pancakes were flat, but crepe batter is very thin and runny.  If you're not careful, you'll end up with a simple little pool of batter instead of a snowflake.

The girls enjoyed watching the snowflakes being drawn on the griddle, but they especially enjoyed sprinkling them with powdered sugar afterward.  "Snowy" snowflakes are the prettiest and the tastiest!