Muffin Tin Monday: Favorite Foods



Today's theme is favorite foods. Usually Buzz and Boo eat identical lunches, but since they have different favorites and since I only have one muffin tin, they each got their own plate with muffin cups filled with their faves.

Buzz had pizza, broccoli, animal crackers, pears and a cookie

Boo had pizza, pineapple, goldfish, carrots and a cookie

Buzz ate all of his and then reminded me that we have cheesecake left over in the fridge and since that's another one of his favorites, he thought he should have a piece of that as well :)

Winter Book Basket

Our book basket is filled with winter books right now:

The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming

The Hat by Jan Brett

The Mitten by Jan Brett

The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett

The Trouble With Trolls by Jan Brett

The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel

No Two Snowflakes by Sheree Fitch

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright

Snow by Roy McKibe

Snow by Uri Shulevitz

Snow by Cynthia Rylant

Snow Day! by Barbara M. Joosse

The Snow Show by Carolyn Fisher

There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow by Lucille Colandro

The Twelve Days of Winter: A School Counting Book by Deborah Lee Rose

When Winter Comes by Nancy Van Laan

Buzz and Boo love Jan Brett's books, so those were the most popular (The Trouble With Trolls technically takes place in early spring, but it's a favorite, so I threw it in anyway). Buzz also loved both The First Day of Winter and The Twelve Days of Winter and insisted that they be sung instead of read.

Winter Playdough

To go along with our winter unit I made homemade playdough. Boo loves to play with playdough and was super excited to play with some with sparkles in it (I left the dough white and added white gliiter so that it looked like sparkly snow). I used the recipe from My Montessori Journey. The recipe made enough for each of my kids to have a good sized ball to play with.

Muffin Tin Monday: Big and Little, Short and Tall



Twice a month we go to baby storytime at the library for Bean (Buzz and Boo have a great time too) and afterward we head over to my friend Meghan's house for lunch and some play time. I packed a light lunch for Buzz and Boo to eat there and once we got home they ate their muffin tin (minus the tin) snack.

I decided to focus on the little part of the theme, little foods for a little snack

Top row: little star shaped peanut butter sandwiches, little bites of pear

Bottom row: mini chocolate chips and a (regular size) cookie, little pieces of string cheese

Happy Muffin Tin Monday!

6 Months

Bean is six months old! She is sitting up independently for short periods of time, has started eating baby food and has her first two teeth coming in! Halfway to being one year old, such a sweet girl :)

Winter Sensory Tub

I created a sensory tub to go along with our winter unit

We have:

white rice

irredescent basket filler (Dollar store)

cotton balls

light blue and dark blue flat sided marbles (Michael's)

silver ball thingys (Michael's)

foam letters spelling out WINTER

I gave each of the kids a small bowl and clear plastic tongs and they were off!

The tub was definitely a hit, which is good because I already have one in the works for Valentine's Day.

Winter Fun

For the next two weeks our theme for school is winter! We've got a book basket full of winter books, winter printables printed, laminated, cut and ready to go, and some fun winter activities to go along with it all!

The printables we are using are from Musings of Me and Confessions of a Homeschooler. For Five in a Row we'll be rowing Katy and the Big Snow. I anticipate having a lot of fun with this theme and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things after the holidays, moving and just general chaos as of late. Stay tuned!

Muffin Tin Monday

There was no theme this week, here's what Buzz and Boo had:

Top row: cheese quesadilla, white grapes

Middle row: pretzel sticks, peanut butter (for dipping)

Bottom row: goldfish, no-bake cookie

Bean had carrots :)

Fun with Money

We spent the last week learning about money. With Boo I focused on identifying the different coins and knowing their values. Buzz reviewed these and also worked on some simple money math. We used these printables. They both loved playing "Pet Shop" with these cards.

We had a few money books in our book basket:
Benny's Pennies by Pat Brisson
The Go-Around Dollar by  Barbara Johnston Adams
If You Made a Million by David M. Schwartz
Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday by Judith Viorst

To wrap up our money study we added a fun twist to our normal family movie night. Ruben made a time card for each of the kids and they used it while they "worked" cleaning up the living room, the school room, the playroom and their bedroom. Then they each got paid $2 in change for their work. We printed off movie tickets and set up a concession stand. Buzz and Boo both used their money to buy their movie ticket ($.25), pizza ($.25/slice), drinks, cookies and candy. They had a blast!

Muffin Tin Monday: Food Picks, Skewers and Kebabs

Or the theme at our house: Mommy was sick all weekend and didn't even bother to check what the theme is supposed to be and wanted to skip this week until Buzz realized that today is Monday and he and Boo insisted on eating their lunch in a muffin tin so Mommy let them choose whatever they wanted and they were happy :)

Bottom row: PB sandwiches (heart for Boo and cross for Buzz) and peas (plus cross shaped fruit leather for Buzz because he loves it)

Middle row: Peanut butter balls and pretzels

Top row: Ice cream with sprinkles and applesauce

Happy Mufffin Tin Monday!

New Year's Eve

I heard about a fun activity to do as a family over on the FIAR message board: New Year's Eve Bags. We decided to give it a try! Basically it's a way to count down to midnight (although my kids didn't stay up that late, we celebrated a pretend midnight around 7:30).

I used one paper lunch bag for each hour that we counted down (we started at 2:00) and attached a paper clock face telling which hour to open each bag. On the back of each bag I attached a rhyme that gave a clue to the activity we would be doing that hour.

So the kids would look at each bag to find the one that said the correct hour, read the clue and try to guess what the activity would be. Inside the bag was something we would be using for the activity. I borrowed some of the rhymes from the lovely FIAR ladies, tweaked to fit my needs, and made some up myself. And, yes, they are corny but that's ok :)

2:00 Shuffle the cards and deal them out. Game time is what this hour's about!
In the bag: Uno (a new game for them)
Activity: Play card games

3:00 2011 is almost here. Time to reflect and think back on the year
In the bag: 2010 questionnaire
Activity: Answer questions such as favorite memory of the year and what you are most thankful for this year. We sealed these in an envelope to be opened next New Year's Eve.

4:00 Bowling, golf, sword fighting too! Grab a controller, you know what to do!
In the bag: Wii controller
Activity: Play Wii

5:00 Crust and sauce, add some cheese. Let's make a dinner that's sure to please. While we're at it, it wouldn't hurt to mix up something for dessert
In the bag: Can of tomato paste (to make sauce) and bottle of hot fudge.

Activity: Make homemade mini pizzas and blondies for dessert

6:00 Has this been fun? Has this been groovy? Let's change into jammies and watch a movie!
In the bag: DVD
Activity: Watch The Tale of Despereaux and enjoy blondie sundaes

Final Bag (when the movie was over) It's almost midnight, almost a new year! Let's make some noise! Let's shout and cheer!
In the bag: Noise makers
Activity: Count down to "midnight", blow noise makers and throw balloons in the air while shouting "Happy New Year"!

We had a lot of fun and we might have to make this a New Year's Eve tradition!