Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: Muffin Tin Bible

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Toddler Ideas Tuesday: December 9, 2014

Welcome back to Toddler Idea Tuesdays! I hope you will join with me again in sharing the fun activities, crafts, and lessons that you are doing with your young children.

Today I wanted to share our rainbow muffin tin that we made last week.

We were learning about rainbows as our science topic with My Father's World 1st grade. Additionally, one of the Bible stories we read was the story of Noah's Ark. I figured having the children make their own rainbows for this muffin tin would be a great sorting and fine motor activity for Harold and Hannah. Of course, the older girls had fun too.

We used Fruity Ringers cereal, large marshmallows, and pipe cleaners.

I gave the children their own bowl of cereal and had them sort them.

Harold did a pretty good job.

Once they were sorted, I had the children thread them onto a pipe cleaner which had one end pushed into one half of the marshmallow.

It was actually easier for me to just bend the end of the pipe cleaner for Harold.

The older girls placed the cereal on in the order of the colors of the rainbow. I allowed Hannah and Harold to put them on in whatever order they chose.

We left enough room at the end to push the pipe cleaner into the other marshmallow.

Unfortunately, the pipe cleaner wanted to keep popping out and straightening. I decided it would work better in the muffin tin, though they didn't stand up very well. The children loved them though.

In addition to the Fruity Ringer Rainbow, the children had:

Red grape tomatoes

Orange carrot sticks

Yellow pineapple

Green broccoli

Blue Jello

Purple yogurt

In the center of the muffin tin the had a Noah's Ark shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

On my last Toddler Idea Tuesday post, there were 5 wonderful posts linked up. I will be picking one randomly selected post to share, plus the top clicked-on post.

This week's randomly selected post is:

Channon from Sunshine By Channon shared this cute decorating idea: Decking the Halls With Perler Beads.

The following post had the most clicks:

Jen from Chestnut Grove Academy shared a wonderful collection of Workbox/Learning Tray Christmas themed ideas in her Workbox Wednesday - Christmas post.

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your toddlers and preschoolers? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas board and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up. Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our toddler time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your toddler, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Sunday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen #99: A Chocolate Snake in the Garden of Eden

Time for Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen

(A weekly linky to share what you and your children have created in the kitchen.)

The linky is at the bottom.

This week we were learning about Adam and Eve with My Father's World 1st grade. It had been a while since I had made a muffin tin meal, so I decided this would be a fun subject to use for one. I had the children make their dessert, the chocolate snake, which is a recipe I found over at the DLTK Growing Together site. Then I added a Pretzel and Broccoli Apple Tree that I discovered over at the Muffin Tin Mom blog.

This is how we made the chocolate snake.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup dry milk
1/2 cup honey
1 Tbs cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts (we used pecans)
1/2 cup raisins
2 Tbs coconut

I have two children who do not like raisins. So I let my oldest daughter Krystal work with Amelia to make a separate half a batch without raisins.

First we combined the peanut butter with the dry milk. In order to get it to blend well we needed to do a fold-and-smooch more than a stir.

Then we added the remaining ingredients one at a time, stirring to combine after each addition. (Don't you love simple recipes?)

Oh, I did have to chop the pecans.

I then divided the mixture evenly and we rolled out our snakes.

For the muffin tins, I followed the directions from Muffin Tin Mom to make the tree. It is quite simple. One slice of bread will make two trees. You flatten it with a rolling pin, remove the crusts, spread peanut butter on one side, roll it up, and cut in half. Then you put peanut butter on the outside, a section at a time, to help hold the pretzel sticks in place. A broccoli floret is added for the leaves and a red Skittle is the fruit. If you would like to see step by step instructions, you will find them over at Muffin Tin Mom.

I set the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in the center of the tin and then added fruits and veggies to represent all the food God provided for them to eat. There are animal crackers and cheese flowers as well.

Do you have your children help you in the kitchen? What lessons do they learn? Do you have any kid friendly recipes to share?

I'd love to see your posts, whether you have done something this week or some time in the past. Just link up below. This is a weekly linky.

I am linking up to: