Cake in a Mug

Thanks to Laura for posting about making cake in a mug! We tried this on Sunday night for a special treat, and it was delicious. O was talking about her "pecial treat" all day. I couldn't believe how easy these were to make! Here's the recipe:

You need: a mug, 4 tbs of sugar, 4 tbs of flour (I used 3 tbs of white flour and 1 tbs of whole wheat flour. Next time I'll do 2 of each.), 2 tbs of cocoa, 3 tbs of milk, 3 tbs of oil, and an egg. Combine the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, and mix WELL. We didn't mix our quite well enough, and we had egg and flour streaks in our cake :) Put your mug of cake mix in the microwave, and cook it for 3 minutes. Pour it into a bowl and enjoy!

While O and I mixed up the cake, Elliott was making whipped cream to go on top. He shook and shook a jar of cream with 2 marbles, but it was still watery by the time the cake was ready. We poured it into the mini blender (that we used to make baby food when O was tiny), and it was ready in a flash :)

O had fun mixing all of the ingredients together.

Delicious, but VERY rich! Thanks, Laura for sharing this fun and yummy idea :)

We Made a Toad House!

No one has moved in yet, but O and I made a nice little toad house on Friday afternoon. It was very simple... just turn a pot on its side and put a layer of sandy soil on the bottom. Hopefully, we'll have some occupants soon!

Riding in the Kayak

Lately, we've been taking a kayak ride every afternoon (our wonderful neighbors let us borrow theirs!). O loves to drag her hand in the water as we glide along the water. I love to watch her little hand and hear the water running through her fingers :) We look for turtles, fish, and alligators. O REALLY wants to see an alligator, but I REALLY don't!

Learning to Balance

I've been planning on making O a balancing board out of leftover boards from her swingset for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Today when we were going in from playing in her sandbox, she decided to balance on the bricks. What a great idea, O! I'm sure this will now be a daily activity!

A Painting for Grandpa

Since we are into homemade gifts, I decided that O would paint her Granpa a painting on canvas for his birthday. She was thrilled! She chose blue and yellow for her colors, but then asked for green. She looked skeptical when I told her that she could mix blue and yellow to make green. She was very happy when she saw the green appear on her canvas!
She loves making handprints!
Ta-da!
She added a little red after the blue, yellow, and green paint dried to spice things up a little.
Here's her masterpiece :)

Paper Plate Food

O and I had fun making paper plate food today. For this activity you need pictures of food cut from a magazine, glue, and paper plates. O and I looked through old magazines and chose the pictures of food about a week ago, and this afternoon I cut the pictures out. O worked on cutting bits of the magazine, but she's really too little to handle scissors effectively on paper (we need to practice cutting playdoh again). She enjoyed putting the glue on the backs of the pictures using a glue stick. I had to hold the pictures still for her. She also liked patting the pictures onto the plate. After the 1st 2 plates, she was a little tired of the activity and kept leaving saying "mama do it by self." She came back and helped with the 3rd plate, but I did the 4th one by myself :)
She was proud of the finished products! She set her table (by her play kitchen) and fixed supper for dada as soon as he got home!

Making a Baby Doll Cradle

O and I made a cradle for her "niney" babies using an oatmeal box. It was simple, but it took a few days since it had to dry between each step. First, I cut the oatmeal box. Then O and I painted it with mod podge glue. She LOVED doing this!

While she was painting the box with mod podge glue, I cut out strips of construction paper (O chose the colors) that we laid them on top of the mod podge.
We let the cradle dry for a day before painting it with another layer of mod podge glue. Again, this was SO MUCH fun for O. She stayed busy picking the glue off of her hands for quite a while after we finished this project :)
Here's the finished cradle. Its the perfect size for her "nineys," and she loves to rock them in it. The cradle actually turned out to look a bit like a roll of lifesavers, but O doesn't mind. I thought about embellishing it with stickers and lace, but decided to just leave it as is.

Homemade Tortillas

O and I made homemade tortillas for lunch yesterday, and they were delicious! The recipe came from her Highlights High Five magazine (we LOVE this magazine!), and I adapted it a little. You need flour, salt, vegetable oil, vegetable oil spray, shredded cheese, and water.

1) Mix together 3 cups of flour (we used 2 cups of white flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour) and 1 teaspoon of salt

2) add 1 cup of water and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (we used olive oil, and I added a little more water since we used whole wheat flour)

3) stir until mixture forms a ball

4) make 12 balls of dough

5) flatten the dough with your hands or a rolling pin

6) spray a pan with the vegetable oil spray (we didn't have any spray, so we just used olive oil), and cook each tortilla over medium heat for 2 minutes (we cooked ours a little longer because I like them when they are a bit crispy). Turn it over, add cheese, and cook until the cheese melts.



I was excited by how easy and fun this was! O had a great time tasting the dough. She kept asking "O taste?" Pouring the flour in the bowl
Mashing the dough with her hands
Rolling the dough with her rolling pin
Eating her cheese quesadilla. They were a little greasy since we used olive oil instead of cooking spray. Next time, I'll use a bit more whole wheat flour. O had lunch a delicious lunch of cheese quesadillas, blueberries, and tomatoes while standing in her kitchen helper while I cooked all of the tortillas :)

What She's Into...

Most of our Montessori work is put away until we start back with our school, but we have a few things out that see daily use. O LOVES the lentil tray! I'm so happy to see her enjoying it so much because she ignored it for months after the initial "newness" wore off.
She also is really into washing the windows!
She gets the knobbed cylinders down every other day or so. I planned to put them away for a while, but they are so big that I didn't have anywhere to stash them. I guess that's a good thing, since she has enjoyed working with them so much lately.

A Shell Memory Game

Can you tell that I love making/playing memory games? The idea for this game came from The Write Start. When I saw her post, I knew we would definitely make this game. Its so pretty and fun! If you haven't checked out The Write Start yet, you need to!

First we washed and dried the shells. Then we put the stickers on the shells. I looked several places before finally finding the same exact stickers that were used on the inspiration post (at Target). I was pretty excited especially since all of the other sea life stickers that I'd found were flashy and tacky :) O helped stick a few of the stickers on the shells, but she was a little rough and I was afraid she would tear them.
Since she's not quite ready for a full-fledged memory game, we did a matching game instead. I put a set of shells in each basket, and she chose one from the 1st basket and then found its match in the 2nd basket. She REALLY enjoyed this!Here she is with all of her matches!

Learning to Tie-Dye

We learned to tie-dye shirts at the birthday party of a friend on Sunday, and it was so much fun! O went a little crazy squeezing the bottles too hard, so I had to help her quite a bit. This is definitely something we'll do again. I read on a blog (can't remember where) about tie-dyeing every year on Jerry Garcia's birthday, and I think that's a great idea!

Crayo-Craze Crayons

I saw this at WM the other day and thought it would be a great coloring tool for O. She inspected it for quite a while. Then she colored with it a bit. She was disappointed that she couldn't make "tadoos" on her skin with it (and I was relieved). I hope she'll enjoy coloring with it more next time. I think its a great idea and very convenient. Also, the crayons are unbreakable, and there's no paper for her to peel off, which is nice. Although, I think peeling off the paper is her favorite thing about crayons :) I really want to get crayon rocks for her, but I think I'll wait until Christmas. Although, I need to go ahead and buy them since they are on sale! Here she is trying to trace her hand. She LOVES to trace her hand and our hands!

My Little Babywearer

O is practicing attachment parenting at a young age :) My mom shortened her sling, so it is easier for her to carry her babies in it. She loves wearing them in the "sing, ike O!" What a good little mama she is! She also nurses her babies frequently and loves to change their diapers (cloth, of course!). Next I've got to teach her to do EC with her dolls. I'm sure she'll LOVE that!

Edit to Add: I'm VERY sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to this post with more details about making the sling! The sling is about 11 inches wide and 21 inches long. It's reversible, so you need to cut 2 pieces of cloth with these dimensions. At each end cut the cloth with a curve instead of a straight line. You sew the 2 ends together (after sewing the 2 pieces back to back and turning them), and the curve forms the pocket for the baby. You can see the seam at the bottom of the picture. I know those are terrible directions, but I'm no sewer (although I'm trying to learn!).

Muffin Tin Monday

We missed last week, so O was very excited to see her muffin "tin" today. She had grape tomatoes, goldfish crackers and raisins (I'll be so glad to see the last of these goldfish. We only buy them for special occasions, and we had LOTS leftover from O's birthday party), banana peppers and prunes (the girl LOVES prunes and begs for more!), blueberries, and organic peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread (O's new "fave-it" sandwich!).

Btw- I want to make sure readers know that I am not promoting goldfish colors by making a felt set of these goldfish. We do not let O eat these because we avoid dyes, preservatives, and pretty much anything artificial as much as possible. However, I really think they are cute, but just for play food not real food :)

ChasingCheerios@gmail.com

Stephanie at Montessori Free Fall had a great idea that I'm copying (I hope she doesn't mind!). Lots of people have been asking questions on the blog, and I try to answer everything in the comments section. However, I don't always see the comments (they are sometimes sent to my junk mail), so I may miss a few. Also, I don't know if you remember to check back in the comments section to see if I've answered your question. So... I've created a Chasing Cheerios email address. If you have any questions about anything at all, then you can just email me and I'll email you back with the answer :) Hopefully, that will make it easier on the readers and me! Thanks, Stephanie, for this great idea!