Food Activities
Infant activities are tough to come by but this was a hit and will be used again in our house for sure. When introducing your tiniest artist to colors and textures a great and safe way to do it is to use purees. No ingredients to worry about just plain veggie or fruit purees that they have already been eating . I don’t plan on packing this one away as a keepsake and would suggest taking a picture and not saving the creation! When my son was a toddler we did yogurt painting but my daughter is still too young for yogurt but toddlers love it!
- Gather your materials. I am using a plain white piece of construction paper so there is plenty of contrast. The puree I am using is sweet potato, thick, bright orange and easy to make. All I did was bake a sweet potato then puree it with a hand blender. Please be sure you are only using purees that you have previously introduced to your child and know they will not have adverse reactions to.
- Tape your paper down to a high chair tray or table.
- Add a small spoonful of puree on the paper. Let your baby explore.
While my daughter played I focused on using the words squishy, orange and wet. There is no specific right way of doing this but narrating their exploration ( and their play) is great for verbal development .
You might feel silly at first but before you know it you’ll be talking to them about everything and teaching them about a lot too! - When your baby does this
it’s time to take the activity away and move on to something else like singing, reading and our favorite dancing!
Remember with infants you must be extra vigilant and never leave an infant unsupervised with any activity. This is not an activity to occupy them so a caregiver can get something done, this is for caregiver and infant to explore together.
Great Book For Babies
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Despite the warning to never play with your food I say PLAY! And learn of course. These are some of our favorite kid friendly crafts and activities with food we have done over the years. Yogurt painting below was a perfect introduction to finger painting for my son and years after first posting we still play grocery store in our kitchen!
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I am so blessed , after giving birth I have had so many wonderful friends offer help and guest posts for No Time For Flash Cards. This one is from a dear friend Amanda from ohAmanda and Impress Your Kids , she is sure to impress you with this cute and tasty edible activity!
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Is this the yummiest, cutest and most fun thing you have ever seen?! I saw this idea in a magazine and knew I had to try it. Well, after the panda-monium and panda-venture in the kitchen, I knew I had to share it with you! It’s an easy fun snack (or a full meal when coupled with some stir-fry) that introduces kids to new tastes and flavors, helps them with handling a knife and opens up conversations about pandas, other countries and cooking!
All you need is 1.5 cups of uncooked sticky/sushi rice, some celery stalks and a can of pitted black olives.
Cook the sticky rice according to directions. (We actually made ours with long-grain white rice by adding 3tb of rice vinegar, 1tb of sugar, 1.5tsp of salt after it was cooked)
While you’re waiting for it to cook, set aside a few whole olives for your panda’s ears. Then, give kids a butter knife and let them work on slicing the olives around its’ equator. My 4 year old could get about 3 cuts total on the olive.
My almost 2 year old? Well, he tried!
Then take a 1/4c or 1/2c measuring cup and firmly pack rice into it. Turn them over on a plate or waxed paper and carefully remove to leave a mound of rice!
Use your whole olives as the panda’s ears. Then take your slices and use as eyes, an tiny down nose and an upturned smile! Cut a few pieces of celery to resemble bamboo and you’ve got your own panda playmates!
My kids loved eating their pandas for dinner (along with soy sauce, broccoli and chicken). While they ate I read them two panda books that I just happened to have in our stash:
Panda Cake
This is the cutest story about a Mama Panda who is making a special panda cake “that only pandas can make”! She sends her two sons to the market to buy the ingredients. The oldest panda decides to steal the ingredients from his animal friends (cherries from the birds, eggs from the duck, etc.) and then runs off to the fair to spend Mama’s money. While he’s gone, the animals visit Mama and demand their food back. But it’s too late—the panda cake has been baked. So, they all sit down to tea and cake! The animals are happy but when the young panda returns home, he’s sad to see his cake eaten up! This book has sweet illustrations and a fun cadence. It looks like it is out of print but I found it at the thrift store a few weeks ago and couldn’t pass it up!
Panda in the Park by Anna Milbourne
This was my daughter’s very first book. It’s an Usborne Look-Through book and tells the story of a panda playing hide-and-seek with his animal friends. It’s perfect for toddlers because of the bright colors, the bold questions and the fun holes and layers on the pages. It’s still one of my favorite books to read!
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Amanda is a former Children’s Pastor turned stay-at-home mom. She blogs her crafty parenting endeavors at Impress Your Kids and her daily life at ohAmanda. She is also a 2010 Disney Mom, a bibliophile and long time lover of purple!
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In the spirit of full disclosure these were actually made for my husband’s office, it’s his birthday today ( yay he’s older than me again) and he needed to take in treats. So I hit two birds with one stone and decided to make them mother’s day themed and make them with my little man. Kids love to help cook and bake and my main tips for a peaceful experience are, expect a mess, don’t worry about perfection and eat a healthy lunch before making them so when the sugar hits their belly it’s not as dramatic! We had fun writing out the letters and making shapes with the candy.
- Gather your materials. You will need your favorite cupcake mix and icing or recipes. Also to make the flowers and letter designs some rope licorice, and pink round candies.
- Mix your cake – I have no pictures of this because I had everything laid out in bowls, the oil, water and eggs and my son was so helpful he through them all in. I usually pre crack the eggs into a bowl and let him dump them in when I am making something that egg shells are hard to fish out of.
- Bake and cool your cupcakes.
- While they cool tear the rope licorice apart into single strands.
- Cut into smaller pieces you can make into petals
- When cupcakes are cool ice .
- Make letters to spell out MOM on one cupcake each or.. put it on a single cupcake.
- Make petals ( it’s easier to make them before adding it to the icing ) by pressing the ends tightly together.
- Add to the cupcake
- Add a candy middle.
Have fun however you make them . Oh and a tip that worked great for us this time. If you have a mini cupcake pan, put a few spoonfuls in that and let your child have a little cupcake before decorating the larger ones. This totally satisfied my son and made me feel better about how much sugar he consumed. I also had a mini one ( ok 2)and was able to leave the big ones alone !
Mama Books That Make Me Cry
Here are my top 3 books that require kleenex:
A Mama for Owen
Love You Forever
by Robert Munsch is perhaps the classic tear jerking picture book. I read this for years and years to children and had no problem getting choked up, it never bothered me, then I gave birth and I can’t read it without sobbing. The premise is simple, a mom sings this simple song to her son as he grows ” I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as you’re living , my baby you’ll be.” until she can’t sing it anymore and it’s his turn. For days after I read this I tear up as I lay my son in bed. * Edited to add that many readers have commented that they do not like this book at all! What do you think? Leave a comment and tell us!
Hair for Mama
Contributing Writer Kim shares this tasty , easy and really fantastically educational activity with us ! I love her perspective of having two children at different levels, enjoy!
Do you remember candy bracelets? This activity puts an educational and healthier twist to that bracelet from your past. All you will need are chenille stems, loop cereal (such as Fruit Cheerios or Fruit Loops), and an egg carton or muffin tin.
This activity is perfect if you have children at different levels of development because it can be implemented in so many different ways. I have a toddler and a preschooler. Activities that they can both do at the same time score big points with me. I gave my daughter an egg carton and asked her to put the cereal in each compartment. This works great for developing motor skills.
My son was given a muffin tin and asked to sort the cereal by colors. While both of the children put the cereal in their containers, I folded the tips of the chenille stems inward to make sure the wire did not poke the children.
After my son was finished sorting, I gave him a chenille straw. I asked which colors he would like to use to make a bracelet. Out of six colors, he only wanted to use two. So I asked him to thread the cereal onto the stem in a pattern of green, green, orange, orange. Depending on your child, you can do patterns of ABAB, AABB (like we did), ABCABC, or any other pattern.
While my son was threading his cereal, I tried to show my daughter how to thread the cereal onto the stem. As soon as we got one piece of cereal on she would chomp on it and giggle. It was extremely cute and provided her with a ton of fine motor skill practice, but didn’t help me get a picture to share with you. My daughter is only 19 months old and is not ready for patterns, but simply threading the cereal onto the stem is a great activity. She also just used the chenille stem as a hockey stick to shoot the cereal onto the floor. We will just call that a hand-eye coordination building exercise. Mommy didn’t appreciate it very much and put an end to it quickly.
When my son was finished threading the cereal we talked about the pattern and how it made the string look a certain way because of the pattern. I put on a purple and a red at the very end and asked him if those two matched the rest. We talked about how those two didn’t fit in with the pattern, so he decided they needed to be taken off.
To make it a neat bracelet we simply wrapped the chenille stem around his wrist and twisted the ends together. Now you have a great snack to finish up your fun learning activity. The best thing about this snack is that it is portable and can be taken along for the fun.
My son’s preschool class does this activity on a regular basis. As you can imagine it is a big hit with the girls, but met with the same enthusiasm from the boys. I want to thank my son’s preschool teachers for providing me with a fun learning activity that is so easy to do at home. I know they aren’t the ones that originated it, but they shared it with me and I thought I would share it with you.
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
