Sorting Fun ~ Plants and Animals

  Cut and Paste Plant and Animal Picture Sort

Since Spring is here we have been talking a lot about plants.  I saw the idea for this activity on Productive Parenting and have been thinking about doing this with Emily for awhile.  I wanted to print out some pictures of different plants and animals and finally got a chance to get it together.  She loved working on this activity and I am looking forward to making some other ones for her!

First, I printed out the Plant and Animal Pictures (click to download the one I made) and then Emily got to work cutting each one out.  As she was working on it we talked about each picture.  She was very excited to see the strawberry plant, since she can’t wait for ours to grow and the cat since she loves Aunt Jayme and Uncle Jonathan’s cat JayJ.

 

Emily glued the pictures onto a piece of construction paper that I labeled for her.

Emily’s finished project. 

She did all the cutting, gluing and sorting all by herself.  Now I can’t wait to put together another cut and sort activity for her :0)

Cooking with Kids ~ Matzo Ball Soup

Emily loves helping me make Matzo Ball Soup almost as much as she loves eating it!! I actually do most of the preparation for this soup, since it involves peeling and chopping veggies. However Emily enjoys helping me make the matzo balls for this soup. Her favorite part is using the food processor to turn the matzo into matzo meal.

Matzo Ball Soup

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken broth

• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced

• 1 rib celery, sliced

• ½ onion, peeled and chopped

• ¼ cup fresh chopped parsley

• 1 cup matzo meal

• ¼ cup chicken broth

• 4 eggs, separated

• ¼ canola oil

• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan combine the stock, carrots, celery, onion and parsley. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender

2. In a mixing bowl, combine the matzo meal, ¼ cup stock, 4 egg yolks, canola oil and salt and pepper. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy but not stiff. Fold the egg whites into the matzo meal mixture. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. Shape the matzo mixture into 2 inch balls while occasionally dipping your hands in cold water. Carefully add the balls to the simmering soup as you form them. Cover the soup and cook for 30 minutes. Serve hot and enjoy!!

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Once Emily finishes all the veggies and matzo balls I give her a straw to suck up the broth with. It is amazing how much she loves this part of having soup!!

I am linking this up to:

Muffin Tin Monday ~ Leftovers

We always have a fridge full of leftovers so we were all set for Muffin Tin Monday today since the theme was LEFTOVERS! 

Emily’s Leftover Lunch

Top Row: Meatballs and spaghetti (from the baby shower we went to yesterday) Cucumbers that I found at the bottom of the veggie bin, yippee that they were still usable!)

Bottom Row: Matzo Ball Soup (made a few days ago because I needed to use up some leftover celery and Matzo)

Emily loved using a straw (half that was leftover from a project) to suck the broth out of the muffin tin cups. 

Having Fun Learning

Our Week Having Fun Learning together!

We started the week with Aunt Patty’s Bridal Shower which we hosted at our house.  Both girls were so well behaved and had such a great time.  Emily enjoyed herself so much she asked me “When can I have a Bridal Shower?”  multiple times throughout the week.  It always made me smile how cute is that :0)  We also went to music, which both girls are now participating in.  Daddy was home during the week to do a special project in the backyard which we are all looking forward to being able to use as the weather gets nicer.

Emily 38 months old

Emily and Daddy made some yummy coleslaw.  Emily loved dumping the ingredients in and mixing everything together!

 

Aunt Jennifer came over and did some tissue paper art with Emily.  They turned it into a game seeing who could get the tissue into the “sneaky spot” (the corners) first.  It was so cute to hear them both giggling as they were working on this project together.

 

 

Emily helped Daddy build our new raised vegetable garden beds.  Now I can’t wait to fill them up with lots of yummy vegetables and herbs!!

We went to Sarah’s house to work on some activities with our friends.

Working on patterns with the big felt board.  Emily did much better with this that the last time we did patterns.  I am excited to try some more activities to practice patterns now.  The felt board was a big hit!!

Sarah made these pintables for the girls to work on.  Here Emily is matching the numbers with the correct number of hearts.

 

Emily is working on tracing shapes.  Emily identified the shape and then traced them.

 

I made this roll and color printable for the girls to work on.  It was great practice counting and identifying numerals.

 

Emily LOVES this duck game.  This is also great practice counting and 1-1 correspondence, plus it is cute and really simple so it is perfect for a 3 year old to be able to play without much frustration.

 

Emily made a parade with her little people and then was so excited to lay in the middle of it. 

I printed out this bunny letter activity and then put  lowercase letter tiles in a tray and Emily picked a tile and then found the matching uppercase letter on the bunny.  Then she used the bingo marker to stamp it.  She loved this and did all 26 letters and then wanted another one!  She also decided that she wanted to cut it out too.

 

We made homemade butter, the girls each took turns shaking the heavy cream until it got really thick.  The mommies helped too :0)

Emily loved having the homemade butter on crackers!

 

We made the letter Rr for Rabbit.

Sarah made some great letter search printables.  Here Emily was pointing out the R

And then she covered it with the bingo dauber.

 

For our stART project we read Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms and made a Hand Print Blossom Tree.  Emily has been pointing out blossoms everywhere we go it is so cute how excited she get when she sees them.

Tiny TOTSchool

Juliette is 9 months old.  Right now she is learning all about the world around her by exploring everything she can.  She loves climbing, crawling and cruising around the house and touching EVERYTHING!   She also had her first library class this Friday.  She enjoyed seeing all the other children and listening to different songs and fingerplays.  I loved the one on one time with her too.

Juliette had fun investigating all of Aunt Patty’s Bridal Shower presents. 

Juliette and Braeden are interacting so much more.  They make each other smile and they look for each other when they are on the floor together.   

  Juliette’s favorite spot is under the dining room table!  She climbs over this bar and slides onto the pillow I put down.  She is so fast it is almost impossible to get a good picture!  I can’t believe how big she is getting :0)

Our favorite books from this week:

• Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms ~ Julia Rawlinson
• Go Dog Go ~ P.D. Eastman
• Splish, Splash, Spring ~ Jan Carr
• Ten in the Bed ~ Penny Dale

 

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking these buttons!!

Roll and Color Activity

I first saw the idea for a Roll and Color coloring page on Making Learning Fun.  Emily and I had a great time playing this coloring game while practicing counting and numeral recognition.  The other day Emily wanted a Frog one (since she loves anything and everything green and frogs).  When I couldn’t find one on the site, I decided to make my own.

Here is how we played our roll and color game:

• I printed a Frog Roll and Color coloring page for Emily and one for myself.
• Emily rolled the die, counted the dots and then found that numeral on her coloring page.  Then she colored that section in.  Next, it was my turn (I had fun coloring too, if you like to color you will love this game!!).
• If you roll a number that you have already colored you miss your turn (Emily did really well with this and did not get upset that she didn’t get to go)
• The winner is the first to finish coloring all the numbered spots on the coloring page.

This is just one way that we have played this game, but their are so many more possibilities!

If you think of something else or try something else leave a comment and let us know.  I would love to hear your ideas :0)

stART ~ Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms

Welcome to  stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too.  All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures so that everyone can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.

I added a stART tab in my navigation bar to make it easier to search for past stART projects.  Be sure to check it out!!  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.

 

This week we have been enjoying Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms, by Julia Rawlinson.  This is fun story about a fox that is having fun enjoying all the sights and sounds of springtime, until he discovers some unexpected snow.  He decides that he must warn all the animals to get ready for the snow.  Finally, Fletcher gets a wonderful springtime surprise, the snow is actually beautiful  blossoms falling from the trees.  This book is beautifully written and illustrated and we are both so glad that we found this book during our recent trip to the library.

After reading this book together, I pointed out the tree in front of our house that has beautiful pink blossoms.  Emily keeps asking me when they are going to fall down like in Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms.  I can’t wait till she gets to see it snowing pink blossoms in front of our house!  She has also been noticing all of the beautiful trees as we are driving.  She actually points to them and yells “Mommy look and the beautiful blossoms!”  so for our project I knew that Emily would love making her own springtime tree full of beautiful blossoms!

Emily’s Springtime Blossoms 

First I painted her hand and arm with brown paint to make the trunk and branches of her tree.  She loves having her hands painted and giggled the whole time.

While we waited for the tree trunk and branches to dry Emily painted half of a piece of paper with blue water color (I made this by putting water and food coloring into a muffin tin and it worked so well and was so inexpensive too!)

Then she painted the other half green, her favorite color :0)

While we waited for these to dry we went outside to enjoy the beautiful weather!

When we came back in I cut out Emily’s hand and arm print tree and she glued it onto the green and blue paper.

Emily glued pieces of pink and white tissue paper to the branches of her tree.  Notice our blossoms through the window in the background of the picture, Emily kept checking it outside while she was working on her project!

Emily’s Handprint Springtime Blossoms

 

        

Muffin Tin Monday ~ Rainbow

This was the final week in the Muffin Tin Monday Color Series so the theme was Rainbow.  Emily was very excited for her new muffin tins and lots of yummy rainbow colored food!

Red Strawberries, Yellow Matzo with Butter, Orange Frozen Mangos, Green Broccoli, Blue Sprinkled Rice Pudding and Purple Jelly Beans. 

In the center is a piece of hero that had a rainbow look to it too :0)