Parents Corner
Cooking Claire
What I love about this blog is that it’s a realistic cooking blog ,items get used more than once, results aren’t always perfect and as a mom of two young kids Claire keeps the menu tasty without being unfriendly to kids !
Pop over and see why Cooking Claire is my pick for this weeks
Sunday Spotlight !
Thanks for sharing !
I am going to start breaking my blog roll up into categories , there are so many just outstanding blogs and I don’t want other moms and readers to miss out just because they are lost in the long list. Here are the categories:
Family Blogs
Adult Crafts
Kids Crafts and Learning
Product Review Blogs
Recipes and Cooking
Other
All you need to do to be included is email me a link to your blog, with the category of choice. Even if you have been included in previous blog rolls please send me an email with your category choice. Thanks! Our new blog roll will be up next weekend.
allie@notimeforflashcards.com
If you are concerned about red food dye ( which I wasn’t when I wrote this obviously but now restrict as much as possible ) use this Natural Color
- Gather your ingredients. I cheat when it comes to baking so, a cake mix and it’s ingredients, some rope licorice ( I used pull and peel twizzlers) , icing , the above mentioned red and pink food coloring, and a few extra bowls.
- Make the cake mix, separate it into two bowls one red and one pink. If I did this again I would make the pink lighter so there was more contrast.
- Fill the muffin cups with the red first , then at the pink, I used a toothpick to swirl it a little.
- Bake and let cool.
- While they cool add a little more pink food coloring to the white icing.
- Ice the cupcakes when cool.
- Start creating with the licorice, write names, messages or just hearts! The licorice is really easy to work with!
- Have a treat!
Crafts don’t always go smoothly, paint and glue are eaten daily and yes tantrums happen, usually him but sometimes me too! I try to roll with it, sometimes we take a break half way through crafts we just walk away and go back when the time is right. Here he kept pulling up the newspaper I had taped down with painters tape and putting the tape in his mouth. Not to mention the green paint everywhere, including up his nose!
I can’t remember what craft he was supposed to be making here but as you can see he wasn’t doing it. Instead he was carefully placing the chalk onto his beloved John Deere tractor. A perfect example of why I try not to do crafts when time is limited.
I have framed this picture for family because it is my son in a nutshell, he celebrates his “exploration” with abandon. He knew I was too far away from him to stop him from pouring the lentils everywhere. He was right. I found lentils in my kitchen for months, usually with my feet. They hurt.
This was a post that never made it up. I was going to do a post about an airplane “Busy Bag” and all the fun things in it to keep him busy. It never got posted, he wouldn’t take it off his head and I gave up.
Does this look like a kid who is having fun? It was probably past time for me to give up and grab our coats.
As you can see we are not perfect, far far from it! I try to keep my expectations appropriate but I mess up , miss the mark and have bad days. Sometimes it’s better to abandon the craft , run outside and come in for a nap. So if a craft tanks, or a pretty art project gets ruined , so what?! Try to follow your child’s interests and know that messes will be made and the goal isn’t a perfect project, it’s an interested and engaged child.
