Making Mini Pizzas

O, E, and I made mini pizzas last week using whole wheat sandwich thins, spaghetti sauce, and veggies.

To make the pizzas, we spread the one piece of the sandwich thin with olive oil and broiled it for a couple of minutes. Then O spread the spaghetti sauce on her pizza and added her veggies, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and cheese. We baked them at 350 until they were done (I didn't time it), and we all really enjoyed our yummy lunch.

E was so excited that I let her eat pizza, too. We used the leftover spaghetti sauce to make chicken parmesan...yum!

Fingerpainting Fun using Textured Trays

O and E had a great time fingerpainting this weekend using our textured fingerpainting trays. I squirted fingerpaint into the tray, and O squished it and spread it all around.


E was a little hesitant, and when she finally put her hand in the paint, she immediately tasted it. It must not have tasted very good because she only tasted it once. She seemed a little disturbed by having blue hands at first, but she relaxed after a couple of minutes.

After they spread the paint in the tray, we put a piece of white cardstock on the tray and pressed to make a print. This was a messy and fun activity that we'll be doing again soon.


The fingerpainting trays came from the Let's Explore shop (which is no longer open).

Dropping Popsicle Sticks Into a Container

Here's another one of E's favorite activities! This cup has a top with a small opening that is the perfect size for popsicle sticks. However, E is not ready to put the sticks in a small opening. I took the lid off, and she had a great time dropping the sticks in the cup. They make a pleasing "ting" when they hit the bottom. She LOVED this activity, and she kept putting the cup to her mouth to take a drink :)

She liked putting the lid back on the cup and then taking it off to dump the sticks out. What fun!

"On the Go" Nature Collage

O, E, and I had a great time taking nature walk to make an "on the go" nature collage last week. We took a glue stick and a rectangle cut from a cereal box outside with us. We glued various items to the rectangle as we found them.

This was a simple and fun activity that I'm sure we'll do again soon. Thanks to my friend, Rebecca, for this fun idea!!!

Guhguh's Famous Carrot Cake

My mom (with help from O) made a delicious carrot cake for E's 1st birthday party. After my mom decorated it with white icing, I put pictures from the different phases of E's first year around the edge of the cake with a #1 candle in the middle. O decorated the cake with blue icing and candy. We were pleased with the end result, and next year we'll let E help us decorate her cake.



Since my mom is locally famous for this delicious carrot cake, I thought I would share the recipe.


3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Canola oil
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup plain flour
3 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
6 tsp cinnamon
6 eggs
5 cups shredded carrots

Preheat oven to 350. Add sugar and canola oil together in a large mixing bowl. Add dry ingredients one at a time. Mix well by hand. Beat eggs with a whisk in a separate bowl adn add them to the mixture. Gently mix in the carrots. Divide the mixture into 3 9 inch layer pans, which have been sparayed heavily with BAker's Joy nonstick spray. Put in the oven and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Let the layers cool on cooling racks for 10 minutes. Gently remove from pans. Let layers cool a little more before icing.

Icing

1 large package low fat cream cheese (8 ounces)
1 stick of butter
1 box confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts

Enjoy!

Changes

I will miss my ballerina princess enjoying her Montessori homeschool because she's now attending a REAL Montessori school! She started school last Tuesday, and she loves it. I miss her so much, but I know that she is having a great time and is learning so much. Her class and all of the materials are amazing. Her teachers are great, and she loves them. I'm so happy that she is spending more time with other kids and has more opportunities for making friends.

This is how I amused myself after E, Elliott, and I got home from dropping O off at her first day of school :)


O refuses to tell me what she does at school if I ask her, but if I don't ask her, she'll gradually share details. She loves to wash dishes, and she was very excited about cleaning a mirror and shining shoes. She also said she did the spindle box, and she came home with several sheets from the metal insets.


This blog will be changing a little...although, not that much since I really haven't done much Montessori work with O in a few months (we had to move the Montessori shelf out to the garage since the baby was pulling up on it, and it's on casters and top heavy...also, we just don't do much "school" work in the summer since we spend most of our time outside on the beach and in the lake). I'll be posting about all of the various activities (mostly Montessori inspired) that I do with E, the art, nature, and cooking activities that I do with O in the afternoons, product reviews (about 4 coming up fairly soon along with a couple of giveaways), and handmade gifts (I'm WAY behind on this...I still haven't posted about a couple of handmade gifts from last Christmas).

Thanks for reading!

Happy 1st Birthday, E!

E's 1st birthday was last week...I can't believe that my baby is one! She started walking 2 days after that, so the past week has been a busy one with lots of changes (in more ways than one...more on that in another post). We are adjusting to our new normal and finding new rhythmn to our days. I apologize to the people who have emailed and commented with questions...I am weeks and weeks behind in responding, but I hope to catch up soon.

Here is E's birthday ring. I printed wallet sized pictures from 4 different phases of her first year and cut them out to use the birthday ring and her birthday cake. I love how it turned out!

I bought the birthday ring from The Wooden Wagon (before O's first birthday).

A Pretty Bouquet

O recently spent the day with her grandmother, and when I picked her up, she was SO excited that she had picked a bouquet of flowers for me. I loved how they put the flowers in a jelly jar with a shell tied around it for decoration. So simple and pretty.

All About Red

I've recently started taking down the bags (one at a time) from O's color hunt game to teach E her colors. She LOVES exploring the objects in the bags, and I think she may know the color red (although, she hasn't said the word red yet).

I love how she put the bag on her arm to wear it like a pocketbook.

She was especially enthralled with the red hairband. (I had to watch her very closely because she was very tempted to put it in her mouth). She was very persistant in trying to put it on her wrist to wear like a bracelet.

Her persistance paid off, and she eventually got the hairband on her wrist. I love to watch her when she is so focused on a task. I love that she persisted until she accomplished her goal and never became frustrated.


Btw, you may notice that E wears a lot of tie-dyed shirts...our craft activity during our beach trip was tie dying shirts. I took lots of E's stained and plain night shirts and play shirts and made them beautiful. I love tie-dye!

Volcano Fun

A few weeks ago, O told me that she loved volcanoes. I asked if she remembered making a sand volcano last summer, and she didn't. So, we made another one!

First, she filled a water bottle 3/4 full with lake water. Then we built a sand volcano up around it. She put blue food coloring in the water (blue is her favorite color).

Then she put 2 tablespoons of baking soda in the bottle.

I poured in the vinegar, and we watched our volcano explode!

We made it explode several times before O started experimenting with putting sand in the bottle, etc. This was such a fun activity!

Putting Objects in a Large Container

E is REALLY into putting objects into containers and then taking them out again. Since this is her area of interest, I've been focusing on this for most of her activities. When I saw this large container at my mom's house, I knew it would be perfect for E. (the container came from Sam's Club and held pretzels). For the first couple of weeks that we had the container, we just put various objects in it and rolled it around on the floor and shook it. This was a lot of fun, but not as much fun as it could be...

So, I asked Elliott to cut a square hole in the side (I try to avoid cutting things with large knives, if at all possible, since my finger incident). After he cut the hole, I covered the sharp, plastic edges with duct tape. I gave E a basket of toys and showed her how to drop them in and then take them out of the hole.

I love that this container is large enough for her to use a variety of toys and objects that are not chokable.