Do you have any picky eaters at your house?

Do you have kids who would rather eat fruit snacks than any fruit or vegetable you give them?

My kids are complete opposites with regards to food. My 18 month old daughter will eat basically anything and my 4 yr old son is very selective with what he will put in his mouth. I am also a very particular eater and like to eat the same thing again and again… so I see where he gets it from.

I am currently 15+ weeks pregnant with my third child and am trying to make sure that I am eating enough fruits and vegetables and foods that are good for me. My husband and son are attempting to eat healthier too.

Last week we went on a rainbow grocery store hunt and created a rainbow eating activity. Today I want to share another simple activity we’ve been having fun with as we’ve been teaching my son about making good food choices when he eats!

We used some large drawing paper and markers to create a giant version of the USDA’s Choose My Plate graphic. I love the plate image and the reminders to fill your plate at least half full with fruits and veggies.

Directions for the Choosing a Healthy Plate activity:

1. Brainstorm and draw pictures of the food that you ate during the day… or during just one meal. My son doesn’t eat that much on some days, so our pictures represent the food he ate throughout the day.

2. Color in the pictures.

3. Cut out the images and place them near the giant plate. Laminate them if you plan to use them again and again.

4.  Talk to your child about each food group. We talk about them during the day when we are eating and then also review them when we do this activity at the end of the day.

5. Have your child place the different foods on the plate and check to see how they did with eating vegetables and fruits or any other goals you may have set together (ie. eating more whole grains, etc.).

This is a fabulous visual exercise to help kids see what their diet is lacking and a simple way to encourage them to eat healthier and be responsible for themselves.

Not only is this activity a great way to teach kids about healthy eating, it is a great activity to build language vocabulary and introduce them to new words. I also love the opportunity it provides for social conversation, question asking, and turn taking.

Do you have any fun ways that you help your kids take responsibility for their own health?

What are your kid’s favorite fruits and veggies?

What are your creative strategies when dealing with picky eaters at your house?

Here are some great ideas for teaching your children about healthy eating:

• My Plate for Kids
• Learning and Playing with Food
• What To Have for Lunch: A Collection of Meal Ideas

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All you need to do is get a knife and begin cutting.  If my oldest were just a bit more comfortable with fractions and cutting, I’d let her do the cutting as a way to reinforce her knowledge.  Alas, I did the cutting today.

Questions to ask:

• Which piece is bigger?
• How many halves make up a whole cookie?
• Would you rather have a sixth?  or a fourth?
• Which size has the most m&ms?  Can you guess without counting?  How did you know it had more?
• If we eat 1/4th of the cookie, how much is left?
  

Thanks Panera for the yummy cookies and learning fun!  Check out their new pumpkin spice latte – yummy!

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Looking for other math activities to help your kids learn?  Here are a bunch of our previous posts:

• Long Division Made Easy – for those of us who forget how to do long division, reading this post is a must before our kids start that lesson in school.
• Our favorite collection of free online math games – for summer school!  So your kids don’t forget all the concepts they learned over the year!
• Looking for something more basic?  Check out our Lego Math activities or our Play with Math and Play Doh.  Both are huge hits with our crew.

A terrarium is a great way for children to explore gardening and create a home for some of their small plastic treasures.

My son struggles with allergies that keep him inside a lot in the spring.  However, he loves to work with dirt and plants.

So I decided that we could create a small closed terrarium garden in our kitchen that he could work on and dig in. Beyond being a wonderful place to dig, it quickly turned into a place for him to play with his miniature Star Wars characters.

Here is how to build one for yourself.

Terranium Supplies:

• A glass container with a lid or a placed up cycled plastic salad container with lid and without holes ( While glass is ideal, we used the plastic container option for safety reasons.)

• Filtered charcoal ( It can be found at nurseries or pet stores.)

• Small pebbles

• Moss and small plants

• Potting soil or compost soil

• Small ceramic or plastic treasures to decorate with

Directions to make your own Terranium :

1. Place the charcoal on the bottom of the container.
2. Place small pebbles on next.
3. Potting soil goes on the pile next.
4. Moss and other small plants can be placed around the terrarium. Leave space between the plants for your small treasures to stand. The plants will like having the space too.

The terrarium should stay closed most of the time to allow the water cycle to take place, but playing or rearranging the toy treasures has been totally fine at my house.

Gardening is great fun for kids and it can even allow for imaginative play with Star Wars characters!  Here are some other fun gardening ideas for you and your child.  Remember, dirt washes off so have fun with it!

• Plant Learning Activities – 16 great plant learning activities for your child
• How to Garden with Kids – great ideas for kids and gardening
• Gardening with Preschoolers – A collection of posts about gardening

Now that I have two daughters who are old enough to play with dolls I thought it would be fun to introduce them to some of the many paper dolls that are available to be printed online these days.  Two of my favorite sites for finding free printable dolls are a collection of Helen Page dolls and from  Practical Pages, a post with dolls and outfits that kids can color themselves to illustrate many different historical eras and countries.

I was not, however, excited about all time the intricate cutting and folding this would entail.  (My girls are not old enough to do the cutting themselves yet).

So the other day when I was at the craft store and spotted some removeable spray adhesive I thought I just might have the answer to my problem.  Instead of using the little foldable tabs to attach the dresses, I just lightly sprayed each dress with a little adhesive so that they stick to the dolls, but can be easily peeled on and off.  It was so much easier!

It was easier for my two-year old to put the dresses on and off this way and also easier for me!

Not only did I not have to cut the tabs, but I didn’t have to cut away the white space around each doll.  It made hats a little nicer as I didn’t have to make that tricky slit down the middle.

The trick also works nicely for storing the paper dolls.  I just stick everything onto a piece of scrapbook paper to save for later.

Want more activities with dolls and girly things?

• Labeling our Dolls
• Homemade Doll Bed
• All Things Girly

Dirt Cake?  What’s that?!

Dirt Cake can be made in various ways but typically involves a chocolate treat made to look like dirt but it is completely edible – and yummy!

There are some great recipes for Dirt Cake out there.  Here’s a fun recipe for Edible Dirt Pudding by another great Quirky Momma!

However, while these recipes are super fun, I was looking for something that my 3 year old could make quickly and entirely on her own.   I used the basic idea from other recipes and just simplified it.

We used chocolate instant pudding, chocolate sandwich cookies, and gummy worms.  How can you go wrong with a combination like that?

We started with removing the filling from the sandwich cookies.  I don’t think this was really necessary but the chocolate cookies would become our dirt and it seemed like white flakes in the dirt would look like fertilizer (not appetizing!) .  So we ended up with a plate of cookies that looked like this.

I’m not sure what my little girl did with all of the white filling from the cookies.  I guess she cleaned everything up quickly.

Next she put the chocolate cookies in a zip top bag and started crushing them.  As you can tell from her face, she really got into this part!

Next, she made the chocolate pudding according to the package directions.  This involved combining some cold milk and the pudding mix then mixing them together until smooth.  It is super easy but she felt like such a big girl as she mixed it and saw the pudding forming instantly in the bowl!

Once the pudding was blended, she filled some clear cups about 2/3 full of pudding.

Then she sprinkled the cookie crumbles on top of the pudding and inserted a couple of gummy worms to make it more interesting.

Not only did my little girl have fun making these, but she also learned about ingredients for recipes, measuring, pouring, mixing, scooping, and more!  Plus she had a certain satisfaction in having made dessert for the family all by herself!

 Here are some more sweet ideas from the Quirky Mommas:

• Easy Cake Recipe
• A is for Apple Pie
• Rainbow Cookies

Rory and I had nothing planned today so we decided to make our own finger paint!

I chose to make our own paints because I know Rory is getting her molars now and so everything is in her mouth.  I did just a basic flour, salt and water mixture so that if she decided to have a mid morning snack it would be OK.  The recipe made a lot, so next time we are going to need to have a play date so we don’t waste any paint!

We had so much fun painting, we put out a big strip of my old pattern making paper and went to town.  I didn’t think that she would use the paint brushes, but she actually used them a lot!

I got the recipe from this old school craft binder I found at a yard sale, called “A Guide to Children’s Creative Play.”  It was well worth the quarter!

I mixed the flour and water in a saucepan and cooked over low heat until it was nice and smooth.

I mixed in the salt and allowed the paint to cool.

I then divided it into 6 small cups and used food coloring to make the colors.

Getting down and dirty with the paint!  Put your hands in!

We got her feet involved too!

She loves painting and was so good at it! We used so much paper but it was well worth it because now daddy has more art work for his office!

And believe it or not…She didn’t eat any paint!

Doesn’t finger painting look like fun?  After you try this recipe, take a look at these other fun finger painting projects…

• Egg Dye Fingerpaint
• Sunscreen Fingerpaint
• Foaming Bubbles

Growing potatoes with kids can be a revelation.

I run a weekly School Gardening Club with a group of eight and nine-year olds. They’re a great group and enthusiastic about getting their hands dirty and doing lots of practical work. They’ve been growing lots of plants from seed, both flowers and vegetables, and are now proficient planters. Hand them a packet of seeds and they’ll set to with a production line of activity, potting, planting and watering.

But potatoes – they turned out to be more mysterious.

Earlier on in the school the children had a go at growing beans in plastic containers and they’ve had lots more experience with seeds through the gardening club. They know what sees look like, and they know the seeds first send out roots that go downwards in the soil and then shoots with leaves that grow up. Or do they?

They were really keen to try potatoes. All the produce from the school garden is shared out between the club members (and any extras gifted to the teaching staff) and the thought of home-grown chips, fries and mashed potato was popular. We’d chosen two varieties of potatoes to grow and when the seed potatoes were pulled out of the bag for the kids to plant there were puzzled looks. ‘But – that just looks like an ordinary potato!’, said one.   Ahh, that’s because it is an ordinary potato and it’s not going to grow quite how you expect!

Growing potatoes with children

You can plant potatoes, depending on the variety and where in the world you are, between February and the end of May, for harvesting between May and October. Choose between small salad potatoes and big baking potatoes or try something a little different such as red Rooster or Purple Majesty.

We always chit our potatoes to get them started. This means sitting the seed potatoes in the daylight until the eyes begin to sprout leaves. This was the first surprise for the kids, who are used to every seed sending out roots first. And no other plant has been started by sitting them in an egg box on the window sill.

Then the potatoes are placed in soil near the bottom of a deep container. You can of course plant them straight out in the soil in your yard but we like to grow ours in containers – a big bucket or trash can is ideal – which makes them easier to earth up. And that’s the next thing that the kids didn’t expect, because once the potatoes start growing you need to bury all the leaves in lots more soil, completely covering the plant and encouraging it to grow up and up and up some more. Growing in a container also makes it easier to gather all the potatoes which will grow off the plants tall shoots as you can just tip over the bucket when you’re ready to harvest and pick out your crop.

Watching science in action

To help the children better understand what’s going on with the potato plants, why not use one of the seed potatoes for a science observation experiment? Take a tall plastic bottle and make some drainage holes in the bottom. Use this as your potato planter, placing your potato at the bottom and filling the bottle with more soil as the potato grows. Using this clear plastic container gives you  a window under the ground, so your children can observe close-up how the potato grows a new crop. Just be aware that the potatoes in this container are for the science experiment only – being exposed to the daylight can cause green patches to appear on the potatoes making them inedible.

Lessons learned

The lesson I took from growing these potatoes with the kids was that you really can’t beat hands-on ways to learn. It was a reminder that things we take for granted can be amazing for others and adapting an activity to make it more child-friendly can open up lots of interesting investigations and discovery.

What about you: what are you growing with your kids this year?

Need some inspiration for a green thumb?  Check out these ideas from some Quirky Mommas:

• How to Garden with Kids
• Interacting with the Environment
• Gardening with Preschoolers

1. Go Catch some bugs.
2. Watch a butterfly hatch from a chrysalis.
3. Make and enjoy fresh kid-made limeade.
4. Paint with fizzing sidewalk paint.
5. Dream of winter by making snowglobes – love the solar system one!
6. Take a mini-road trip to a new destination.
7. Make homemade bouncy balls.  Great fun if you bring them to the splash pad!
8. Make a fire, create and roast campfire food with these yummy smore cones.
9. Freeze some fun toys in ice and be an excavator and chip them free.
10. Jump rope - create a fun durable rope from marker lids.
11. Play I-Spy outside!  Great way to notice the little details in the world around you!
12. Clean out the trash cans… and then make noise with them!  My kids love trashcan drumming.
13. With a balloon and a CD fly a CD hover craft.
14. Play with your food – eat a pretend Lorax!
15. Watch ants change colors and learn about how they digest food with a fun outdoor experiment.
16. Kool-aide Slurppies.  Nothing says summer time better than slurppies by the pool.
17. Visit a farmers market together and make veggie smoothies (or a dessert smoothie) with the produce.
18. Fill a dry kiddie pool with a variety of items for a giant sensory tub activity.
19. Watch pill bugs race.   See if you can collect a whole “family” of bugs.
20. Make and eat some homemade kid-made butter.
21. Add some fun to your slip-n-slide, with shaving cream!
22. Use damaged pool noodles for art, a sword fight, or to create a marble run.
23. Play outdoor bingo - go on a hunt for the items on your card.  Whoever finds things in a row first wins.
24. Experience and explore gravity by playing with pulleys
25. Decorate rocks for your garden – with melted crayons!
26. Have a lazy boardgame afternoon.  Here are some of our suggested best board games.
27. Pick a flower, with your favorite color of paint make flower prints.
28. Explore the colors of the rainbow with ice.
29. Play with glow sticks – put them inside balloons, dump the contents into jars of water, paint with them, etc.
30. Create with your recycle bin – make art and toys out of trash.
31. Have a lemonade stand with the kids – put smiles on your neighbors faces.
32. Decorate some tin cans and create some DIY windchimes.  Compare the sounds of different sizes/shapes of cans.
33. Collect your summer memories into a keepsake jar.
34. Create art sculptures with tin foil.
35. Decorate your yard with balloon people OR make a bunch and hand them out at the park – put smiles on the kids faces.
36. Get muddy and make some dirt soup with the kids!
37. Paint with water outside – I love mess-free art!
38. Foam – a messy project, great to incorporate with washing the car! Make foam and then use the flakes to wash the car.
39. Make a water xylophone with the kids to make music with.
40. Freeze bananas (or grapes, strawberries, etc. Dip them in chocolate or yogurt for a fun summer treat.
41. Play with giant bubbles – the bigger the better.
42. Take your kids fishing.  Don’t have a pole?  Go pretend fishing.
43. Explore your shadow – trace them, chase them, make them dance!
44. Have a tea party – outside.  Bring your friends and stuffed animals.
45. Make a splashpad at your own house with a DIY PVC pipe sprinkler system.
46. Have fun decorating the garden with some paving stones.
47. Water the yard – the slow way, with homemade watering cans.
48. Explore scents outside with a water table experiment.
49. Play and mold sculptures with Rice Crispie Treats
50. collect items for a bird nest - that the birds can use to decorate their nests with.

A couple of the ideas came from the pinning party last night – we had a blast – so many great ideas were shared.  As always, by linking up you are giving us permission to grab a photo from your site to feature you… and we’ll add you to our weekly newsletter. Thanks for so many great ideas!!
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Last week I shared a simple spelling activity that we created using a pink party blower and some bottle caps.

This week I have another party blower activity that packs a punch! We used a party blower, a few Superhero friends, and some recycled materials to help us learn about action words!

My son loves Spiderman and the rest of the Superhero squad right now, so I decided to include them in this week’s activity. As we talked about them we reviewed several action words like protect, create, and change.

Materials Needed for Action Words Game:

• recycled materials (we used paper towel rolls, cereal boxes, and pasta boxes)
• double stick tape
• party blower
• Superhero images (we just printed these off via Google images)
• markers
• scissors

How to create the Action Words Game:

1. Choose your Superhero images and print them off.
2. Cut them to fit your boxes/materials.
3. Stick them onto your recycled materials.
4. Have your child tell you about each Superhero and talk about action words that you could use to describe each hero.
5. Write the action words on the boxes (older kids could do this themselves).
6. Set them up on the floor or on a table so that they are easy accessible for your child.

How to play the Action Words Game:

1. Set up the materials on a table/counter and give your child a party blower.
2. Describe one of the action words using simple hints or synonyms.
3. Once your child guesses the correct word, have them look for it and then use the party blower to try and hit the word and knock down the box/paper towel roll.
4. You can also play by telling your child to knock down the action word that starts with ___ letter or ____ sound.

As you play your child will notice that by hitting the words that are lower it is hard to knock down the boxes and they will notice that it is easier to knock down the boxes when they hit the words on top. Encourage them to problem solve and explore how to use the party blower to knock down the boxes (blowing faster/slower/at a certain spot/turning the box sideways… it is fun to see what they come up with!)

This activity was a great subtle way for me to teach my son some new action vocabulary words and their synonyms. He also liked taking turns describing the words so that I could knock down the boxes. Having him come up with hints/clues for me was another great activity because by being the “teacher” he ended up learning even more!

As mentioned in my post last week, blowing activities are great for helping kids improve breath control. Breath control issues can sometimes cause kids to have unclear speech. Blowing is also helpful with strengthening and controlling the muscles of the lips, which are used to produce sounds such as ‘p’ in pop and ‘b’ in bat.

Do you have any other favorite learning games that used recycled materials?

Here are a few recycled materials games that we’ve tried or have on our “must try” list:

Velcro ball game reusing gloves via Creative Connections for Kids

Magazine Hockey game via Toddler Approved

Jar Lid Letter Game via No Time for Flashcards

How else have you used party blowers for learning, exploring, or creating?

He had exhausted all of his toys.

It was time for a new sensory bin or some kind of different and unique activity.

I sent him out for a walk with his grandparents who happened to be visiting and promised him something new when he came home.  I scrambled around picking up pieces of felt, foam stickers, and anything else that happened to be in our craft bins.  Nothing was inspiring me until I spotted an old pompom from a college football game we attended (go Rutgers!).

I grabbed an empty plastic bin, the pompom, some scissors, and spools of any kind of ribbon and lace I could find.

First, I cut the pompom strings off of the handle and placed them in the plastic bin.  I then cut two pieces of every different type of ribbon and lace I had, being sure to vary their lengths.

I then mixed everything together, trying to separate the pairs from each other and hide the ribbons and lace in the pompom strings.

When my son came home, I presented him with his new matching game.  I told him that he was to dig through the red and white strings to find the other pieces of ribbon and lace.  When he found a piece, he was to set it aside then continue digging for more.  Once he made a match, he was to shout out a silly word and do a little dance (he made up that part of the game).

The goal was to find all or as many matches as he could.

He had a good time with this activity, but of course, it wasn’t long until all of the contents were spilled out onto the play mat and other objects hidden in the strings.

I recently revised this game to meet the needs of my child (and only you will know best what works for yours).  It seemed that the two different colored strings that served as the base in the bin were causing my son to get frustrated.

When the Easter grass went on sale following the holiday, I purchased a few packs of the same color on clearance.  I then got to play the game as I sorted all of the pairs and made sure the matches still existed.  I then mixed the pairs into the purple Easter grass to hide them again.  My son was much happier with this version because the game was simpler and provided more opportunities for success.

The fun that follows this activity, besides digging, finding a piece of ribbon or lace, making a match, and doing a silly dance, also includes talking about the different colors, textures, lengths, and widths of the ribbons and lace that are hidden inside.

To extend this activity even further, you can compare and contrast the pairs, measure the lengths and widths with a ruler, sort them by size or color, and even make abstract designs with them.  Chances are the grass and ribbons will end up spread out on your table or floor, so just be prepared for that in advance so clean up is easier.

This was a fun, inexpensive activity that I was able to pull together using objects I already had on hand.  It was a new type of sensory bin and really helped work on my son’s concentration, fine motor, and matching skills.

The possibilities are endless with this type of activity.

I would love to see what your kids do with it!

For more matching game ideas that you can make, take a look at these from the Quirky Mommas:

• Matching Game with Textures
• File Folder Games
• Make Your Own Animal Matching Game