Droopy Girl

(Addie, not me!)

Addie was feeling a little under the weather the other day. Nothing serious, just that rotten cold that everyone has, or has had. A book, a shawl, a cuddle, and she was perfectly content. I was rather enjoying my cuddly little heater, too, on a damp and chilly day.

Beautification

Ilona was painting her nails! Very exciting, that box with all those different colours. Well, exciting to Nora and Ella, that is. Dominic was dubious. Nail polish looks like it might be sticky, and Dominic is most decidedly not a fan of the sticky. Perhaps if I'd had some orange polish in there he might have been enticed, but I am not a fan of orange. So, no polish for Dominic.

Ella and Nora chose their colours. Nora chose colours to match her ensemble, don't you know, so her nails alternate pink and purple. Pink, purple, pink, purple. (Did you know that making patterns is a pre-math skill? We're more than just pretty faces fingers in these parts.) Ella chose purple. Purple all the way!!!

Pretty fingers require much admiration.

"See, Ilona?"

"See, Ella?"

"See, Nora?"

Much, much admiration.

Menu Monday

Monday: Lentil soup and baking soda biscuits

Tuesday: Chickpea-spinach soup
Neutral response on this one. No one gagged on it, but no one came back for seconds, either.

Wednesday: Caribbean chicken curry, beet salad
Dominic particularly enjoy the curry, having three helpings. The others ate a single helping without comment, but didn't want seconds.

Thursday: Navy bean stew, pita
Not a hit. (I'm not surprised. It was a new recipe for my family, and none of us was tremendously fond of it either. We found it bland, however, which isn't necessarily something a toddler would object to. But no, no one much enjoyed it, adults or toddlers. This recipe will not be making it into my permanent card file!)

Friday: Pasta and veggies with peanut sauce

Boy and Dog

Dries is by far the child most comfortable with the dogs. (Even when they sport the dreaded camera Doggie Demon Eyes.)

Happily, they are equally comfortable with him.

It's nice to cuddle up with a warm body on a chilly day!

Puffy Painting

The Internet, source of All Good Things Crafty, last week gave me a recipe for home-made puffy paint. Of course, we had to try it out!!! (You can, too, if you follow that link for the recipe.)

Nora and Addie, the only two children here that day, enjoyed the activity a LOT.

You've already received your artwork, but I thought you might like to see the process.

Crafting is fun.  Even though it does require a LOT of serious concentration!!!    :-)

Purpleocity

We made playdough last week. PURPLE playdough. We liked it, a lot. It was PURPLE!

It was soft and squooshy.

It was good for poking,

and PINCHING

and patting,

and more pinching. I also had a picture of Nora holding up a most excellent SNAKE of playdough, which I seem, so sadly, to have lost somewhere between my camera and the computer. Boo.

However, while the girls enjoyed the playdough most heartily, Dries declined. He would far rather colour, thank you.

Colour and colour and colour some more.

Because crayons, they are so very interesting!

Puzzlement

A dozen or so puzzles,

five children

and you have

a ton of Concentration

lots of focus

a goodly dollop of Fine-Motor Control

and not a little excitement!

It all makes for a happy hour

or so of diligent effort, fun, and satisfaction in a job well done!

Menu Monday

Monday: Black bean couscous salad, cooked carrot sticks

Tuesday: Thank you for the day off!
 
Wednesday: Moroccan Three-bean soup, baking soda biscuits

Thursday: Meatloaf, garden salsa, tofu fingers in ketchup

Friday: fish-spinach curry in pitas

Princes and Princesses

Our theme for the month is fairy tales, and I already sent these home (well, all except Dries's, for he opted to feed his to Daisy, who was only too willing to comply), but I thought you'd like to see them modelling their creations. Aren't they so cute?

Treatz!

Whenever I am in the kitchen, everyone gathers round to see what wonderfulness I might be concocting. And there is always wonderfulness. Always! See them all chomping down on that yummy wonderfulness? Know what it is? Three guesses...

Not apples, no. Nor bananas. Not cookies nor even bread.

Nope. The food item that they begged to be fed, and ate with great enthusiasm was slices

of peeled

raw

uncooked

rutabaga.

You never know until you try! (I'm talking to myself, not the kids...)

All By Myself!

I consistently encourage the children to do things for themselves. Of course, some children need less encouragement in this than others... Here, Ms. Doooo It! attempts to dress herself for outdoors.

Neckwarmer? Check.
Hat? Check-ish.
Snowsuit? Weeeellll...

The profile shot gives you a better idea of just what went wrong.

Yup. Upside down.

Full marks for initiative!

But, I'm afraid, not so many for execution...

Fine by me. Every attempt is one step closer to success! She'll be getting into that thing on her own in no time!

Menu Monday

Monday: Tomato gazpacho, homemade oatmeal bread
We ended up eating Thursday's broccoli-cheddar soup with the bread. Dominic took one spoonful and declared, "I like this!", everyone else accepted his opinion, and it was devoured in short order. (Thank you, Dominic. I love it when peer pressure goes my way!) 

Tuesday: Marinated winter vegetable salad
I thought this would be a hit. I love the stuff, but it was received with middling enthusiasm. No outright refusals, but no great enthusiasm, either.
 
Wednesday: Black bean-couscous salad
They all liked this.
 
Thursday:  Broccoli-cheddar soup, beet-carrot salad
Having had the soup on Monday, we had peanut butter pinwheels today. (To make: spread pb on whole-wheat tortilla, roll, and slice.) They loooooove these things. Can't make them fast enough. Also "cold corn", aka frozen niblets. A tip: when your child refuses fresh or cooked veggies, they will very often eat the frozen kind. I have no idea what the appeal is, particularly in January -- brr -- but it's true.
 
Friday: Sri Lankan chicken curry, with grilled cheese sandwiches as backup in case curry is too much for their delicate palates...

Picture Info

I don't know if you've noticed this, but there's a new picture feature in the blog these days. (Nothing I did. Just a cool Blogger innovation.)

I'm sure you know that if you click on any picture, you'll get to see the full-size version of it. (If, that is, I uploaded a full-size version. Often I shrink them a bit, or a lot, before I upload.) That's not new.

Now, though, if you click on any of the pictures in a post, you'll see not only that particular picture, in a larger format, but under that picture you'll see thumbnails of all the other pictures in the post. Click on any of those, and you get the big version. This allows you to see all the pictures at a glance, and quickly choose the ones you'd like to see more closely.

Very cool.

Backyard Snow

This is not the back yard, no. This is the front.
(Where Ella lovingly shoves her mitten into Daisy's eyeball pats Daisy on the head.)

This is the back yard!

Dries discovers a trakker! Dumpuck gakker!

Dries loves his dumpuck gakker.

Ella is delighted to discover she can play peek-a-boo with the tree and the poles. Fun! (Not that she is playing peek with anyone, you understand. It's just fun to stick your head behind a branch, I guess.)

Nora wins today's prize for "BIGGEST CHEESY GRIN". Happy girl.

More Happy Nora-ness.

Just hanging out around the table. Dries is digging in the sensory bin full of husks and seeds left over from September.

Reading Buddies

I swear to you, Addie was smiling, right up until the moment the shutter clicked... They 'read' those two books for the better part of ten minutes. They'd each read their own, then they'd trade, then Ella would read one book to Addie, then the other ... and then they'd start over and do all that reading again. Addie never did read one to Ella, but I figure that's just a matter of time.

A budding engineer?

It's not obvious in the picture exactly what's happening here, but if you look veeery closely at the base of that fork, you might be able to see that it's wedged into a clear straw. He was soooo proud of his innovation. He'd made the fork stand up, don't you know. Very exciting! And funny! So very funny!

Menu Monday

Monday: Soyloaf  (soybeans, chickpeas, cottage cheese, eggs, bread crumbs, carrots, tomatoes)

Tuesday: Butter chicken, baked beans, carrot salad

Wednesday: black bean enchilada bake (beans, cheese, vegetables, sauce, layered between tortillas and baked)

Thursday: macaroni and cheese (home-made),  sweet garden salsa

Friday: Lentil sauce on penne with roasted vegetables

Toddler Science

I bought a couple of new board books over the Christmas break, books which we've owned before but which have been loved to death and needed replacing.

"Red is Best" by Kathy Stinson, and "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.

It was when I was reading The Snowy Day that I discovered a hole in the children's understanding. The little boy in the story puts a snowball in his pocket to save it for the morning, but when he checks, it's gone!

"Where did it go?" I ask.

Blink, blink, blink.

I point to the picture. "His pocket looks kind of wet..." I hint. Nope. Still not a clue.

Well, we need to Find Out then, don't we??

Out we go and scoop up a small tin bowl of snow. We look at it. It's white and it's cold and it's crunchy under our poking fingers. Then we sit it on the table.

Every ten minutes or so, we return to the table to look again. Well, look at that. It's not so white any more. It's getting sort of clear. And there's not so much snow in the bowl ... but there is some water. Isn't that weird?

Over the course of the next hour, we checked in at intervals as the snow shrunk. When we were down to the last little dribs of snow, I had them pick up the snow and hold it in their palms. Right there, before their very eyes, the snow turned into water!!!!

Who knew?

"So where did all the other snow go? Where's the rest of the snow in the bowl? What happened to it?"

They peer into the bowl. They look at their wet hands. They look at me, blankly. Damned if they know. Hm. I wait. It's Nora who made the connection.

"It's water! It gone at water!"

Yes, indeed. The snow all gone at water.

Hee.

I'm back!

I'm sorry for the long absence. What with Christmas and my concerns regarding Stephen's health, I've had trouble focussing on non-essentials. Sadly, this wee blog counts as a non-essential.

However, Christmas is over! It sounds like you all had good ones. We're halfway to the solution for Stephen's issues; hopefully that'll be resolved within the month. You can keep your fingers crossed for us!

It's good to see your kids again. This post will be a quick summary of the things I'm supposed to be telling you here. Next post will have pictures!

This week's menu:
Yesterday they had meatloaf. (Soy loaf for Ella.) It was a hit, everyone had multiple helpings.
Today they'll be having Southwest Bean Salad and leftover chicken vegetable soup.
Tomorrow it's veggie burgers.

This month's theme is Fairy Tales. We've made crowns, so we can be kings and queens, princesses and princes. This week's story is Rapunzel, which I'm telling to them rather than reading. I will tell it at least once a day, so by the end of the week, they should recall the basic story, and should be able to chant "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair!" along with me. That's the goal, anyway. :-)

(In my version the story ends happily when the prince removes Rapunzel from the tower. I don't go into the extended version where the witch discovers them, blinds the prince and sends Rapunzel into the wilderness to bear his twins alone before their reunion and eventual happy ending. Too grim (Grimm?) for toddlers -- and too long!)

If I can get sufficient wooden spoons from the dollar store, we'll also be making puppets in the standard fairy tale characters: king, queen, prince, princess, witch, fairy.

Also: Does anyone have an old-style card table they could lend me for a couple of weeks? I have an idea for making a castle with one...