On our orange day of rainbow week it was a great excuse to do some carrot muffin making. It is another recipe from the Baby Led Weaning book.
Recipe
150g Self raising flour
2 medium carrots (grated)
60g melted butter
2 eggs (beaten)
some milk (3-4 tablespoons)
opt - grated 2 oranges, juice of 1
Mix the melted butter, the beaten eggs and the grated carrot in a bowl. Luath advises you to check to make sure that all the carrots are out of the food processor bowl (I do not like grating so I prefer to use the food processor to grate them and do some extra dish washing).
OK got all the carrots out of here
Sift the flour into another bowl. - can add raisins, spices at this stage if wished. Add carrot mix to flour and gently fold in (or not if you have a little helper!). Add some milk until you have a "dropping" consistency
Divide into muffin cases/holes. We use mini muffin silicone cases in mini muffin trays. Recipe made 24 mini muffins. Luath loved putting the cases into the holes. She enjoyed this so much that I gave her another tray and she played at this while I finished off.
Bake at 190 for 10-15 minutes. Leave to cool a few minutes in the tray and then cool.
Depending on how sweet you like food these will either be a savoury or a sweet treat.
Shared with happy whimsical hearts see what else kids are baking and cooking this week
I thought Luath's mouthing and eating objects was tailing off but today I discovered that it is very much still a part of how Luath explores the world.
I set up some red art. I dabbed some paint onto paper. Set out a brush, crayons, pen and pencil. Luath rubbed the crayon on the paper
and then tried to eat the crayon. Luath wasn't interested in doing any art work, she just wanted to put the crayon in her mouth so we went out for a walk instead!
Later that day I set out some red dyed rice to play with. I had in my mind that I would give rice each day dyed in that day's colour and so by the end of the week we would have some rainbow rice for a sensory bin. It started off great, Luath using spatula, scoops, hands to explore
but she then started to spoon it into her mouth. I thought perhaps after a taste she would decided it wasn't worth eating but she decided it was. Even me tipping quite a bit of rice on the floor didn't distract her.
Rice is boxed away and we will retry in a few more weeks.
We try to follow a daily and weekly rhythm, nothing structured in such a way that we can't alter it. When Luath was about 5 months old I thought I would give each day a colour to try and help her identify with each day and that on a certain colour day we tend to do a certain thing. I have been a bit lax lately with this so decided to make a real effort this week. Luath's understanding level has taken a huge leap in the last two weeks so I feel it is a perfect time to reconnect with our daily colours.
Daily Colours
Ways this week that I plan to add our daily colours (we don't do all these things every day every week, just more of them this week) For that day's colour:
start the day with a coloured nappy
wear at least one piece of clothing in the colour
use a bib with coloured trim
eat with coloured tableware and use the drink mats I knitted muths ago
craft with that colour
play with that colour
look for objects that colour
One of the main things we will do is have one meal that the fruit and vegetables are of the day's colour. We eat at least our 5-a-day, but some weeks I think we need a push to make sure we eat a balanced rainbow and we need to broaden our selection. Some resource links I found.
I found some great pictures of fruit and vegetables per colour group here which made into A4 pages, put into plastic pockets and into a file.
I had a few ideas of ways we could record what colours we ate over a week and for now have decided to use coloured paper shapes in a jar. I punched star shapes (just because that is the biggest shape stamp I have) out of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and white - I have purple paper somewhere, and I am debating about a brownish colour. Over the week each time we eat a fruit/vegetable we will add that colour star to a jar. I am not concerned for the time being re portion size.
Daily Rhythm chart
We have a very simple daily chart, day of the week within that day's colour and a clipart of any specific activity happening that day. I haven't broken the day down into exactly what we do nor at the moment have set times/days for play/craft activities. We have been a bit lax at using this too so I will aim to restart using this too.
While Luath and I sat on the beach today it real hit home to me how much nature has to offer as a basic learning tool. I know I already knew but it got me thinking about why so much "structured" learning is indoor and book based, maybe there should be more of a pre nursery age push for more nature led learning. Daddy and I are big book lovers and Luath looks like she will be a book fan too. I am amazed how much she takes in from books, so I am far from knocking books off our daily activities. Already I am aiming to make more of our time outdoors but I am now thinking about all the "school" we could do using nature - even on horrible days we could take some of the outdoors in.
What we learnt from stones today in only a few minutes
such a variety from one very small area
1. Colours - OK there aren't too many of the primary colours among our stones, but there were shades of white, black, orange, red, green, grey, brown, blue
2. Shapes - pretty much any shape you wanted was there for the finding
In the lead up to Earth Day we had a bird theme week so Two Little Dicky Birds was the perfect rhyme. A few resource links I found. At Bookbugs they add in verses i.e. two little tadpoles swimming in a lake, but we stuck to the birds. We also sang "three craws sat upon a wa", a Scottish song,( lyrics here).
Learning Basket
We have quite a few books featuring birds, especially ducks. Luath's favourites were the two simple board books and Edward the Emu - Luath hand is reaching for one of the board books in the photo.
She enjoyed us playing together with the puzzles. They are all aimed at older children but Luath still can get something from them. Activity File
We sang the rhyme often. Luath can add in Paul but has yet to master Peter.
We built a wall for the birds. It started off looking quite normal and Luath did place blocks on each other. She then started handing me the brick so I placed them on in the order she handed them to me.
Luath played with an animal keyboard, you can play tunes as different animals including a bird.
I made a treasure tub using recycled items and some bath ducks
.Other things this week
I had made an act of green to pick up litter and one day we came home with quite a bundle
Luath found a laptop I bought months ago in a charity shop (daddy had been keen to buy one, I wasn't, but when this one had been sitting in the shop for over a week I decided that for £2.50 I would give it a go). It is for older children, Luath initially really just liked switching it on, but one day she sat and repeated some of the words. O is for owl, so that worked well for this week.
We went to see the dentist and childsmile nurse. Childsmile is a scheme in Scotland to try and get children used to the dentist and promote tooth care from 3 months old. So that the dentist could check Luath's teeth, I had to lie on the chair with Luath resting on me and then tickle her. We will go back when she is two and she gets to play with the chair and some other dental equipment at that appointment.
My parents came over for a few days visit. Luath loves their visits. They all enjoyed being silly and playing. My mum was doing some "school" with her, working on blue and red - nothing serious, just fun with some wooden blocks, it held Luath's interest for a long time.
Luath and my dad off for an adventure
The biggest thing we did this week was to go see daddy in a play. Our village resurrected their drama club(dormant for 30 years!) They put on two plays, daddy was in the first one, Luath sat and watched for almost the whole 40minutes of daddy's play (she became disinterested when daddy left the stage for a few minutes). I sneaked in the next night to see the second play while Luath stayed at home and had a hoot with her grandparents - seemingly at one point Luath, my dad and the dog were all lying on the floor on their backs waving their legs in the earth (if only my mum had taken a photo).
Find out what others were up to this week at 1+1+1=1
This week's 7days7ways to add a little more to our outdoor time:
(I didn't take many photos this week)
Day1. Look for monsters in the loch
OK not really a monster, it's the dog swimming
Day 2. Plant some potatoes.
Day 3. Splashing in puddles - we had a slow walk to the bus, stopping for some splashing in shallow puddles
Day 4. Investigate daisies - we had time before a dental appointment to have a wander in a small patch of grass and spent time looking and touching daisies
Day 5. Kick leaves - both grandma and grandad had fun showing Luath how to kick leaves (a tough skill for her)
Day 6. Tulips and daffodils - after Bookbugs we went to see the flowers, smelling, touching and talking about the tulips and daffodils. We also checked out the leaves. There was some loose petals that were fun to throw in the air.
Day 7. Moss and ferns - Luath picked up a few different types of moss and was interested in touching fern fronds. We do the same walk often and we always see something new, often Luath led.
Round and Round the garden play rhymes for young children
There are three books that Luath often returns to and we don't rotate them off the living room shelf. This is one of the books. We have an older version but only the cover and the author seem to have changed. Each page has a picture and a fingerplay rhyme with the actions on the bottom of the page. Most are rhymes that I know but there were a few new ones. Luath enjoys joining in with the rhymes and actions. The second rhyme is Five Fat Sausages and she can't wait for me to turn the page so she can clap and say bang.
5-a-day books
(I started doing this after reading this post from almost a year ago on the Imagination Tree blog about selecting five books to read everyday for a week and why it is important.) This week's books are all from our bird theme.
Find the bird
Again we have an older version. A board book with a simple rhyming text, a short sentence per page. The idea is that you are to find the bird on each page. Luath hasn't done that, she just liked listening to the story and saying "car" when it came to that part of the book
Duck is dirty
Board book with short simple text. Duck goes for a walk, it is raining, windy, falls in mud and finally splashes into the pond. Some of the pages start with "Uh-oh", already a favourite phrase for Luath. I like the illustrations.
Edward the Emu
A friend brought this over from Australia for Luath as it is one of her son's favourite books. Picture book with rhyming text. "Edward the Emu is sick of the zoo, there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do, compared to the seals that live next door, being an emu is frankly a bore". He goes off to be a seal, then a lion, a snake and finally an emu again, changing each time as someone says they prefer the next creature to what Edward is being. Daddy isn't too keen on the book, he doesn't like Edward's attitude! I think it is funny and Luath enjoys hearing the story.
Yellow bird, black spider
Picture book, with real images of objects mixed with illustrations (Would be a fun theme to copy for art work) Short text. Yellow bird does things differently and black spider keeps asking why he doesn't fly (instead of sailing) build a nest (instead of staying at a hotel). Funny ending (I did see it coming).
Zachary Quack Minimonster
From the Hairy Maclary series. I picked this up because we are big Hairy Maclary fans. It is written in the same style, repetitive rhyming text. We usually keep this book in the car as Luath enjoys the text, and the pictures have great detail and things to spy, including some other Hairy Maclary characters.
Our first treasure tub was quite successful so I decided to do another one. I combined this week’s theme of birds and tried to mostly use things that were to be binned or recycled in the lead up to Earth Day I didn’t spend much time setting this up or thinking about it so it isn’t anything stunning.
Contents:
Some scrunched paper ( from Luath’s new storage unit flat packs)
Thin strips of cardboard (again from Luath’s new storage unit flat packs), coiled and made into nests
Some images of birds and eggs (cut from packaging of a to make Easter felt basket)
Some kitchen roll inner pieces (binoculars from our soft toy bird spotting)
A Cd that came with a magazine ( have been saving to either craft or use outdoors)
Luath’s bath ducks
It took her a couple of days to get into the last tub, so far she has been most interest in the egg and bird images.
I stumbled across this site a week or so ago and decided to add an act (a promise to do something).
My act of green:
Pick up and recycle litter seen while out walking
To be the "somebody else" that will pick the litter up
I tried to think of something that would be easy to do, that was ongoing and that Luath could over time join in with.
We always pick up and cut up any of the plastic drink can holders we find as they are so dangerous to wildlife. Luath even picked one up and handed it to me over the weekend. We live in a beautiful location and mostly there is no litter on our woodland walks but the tide in the sea loch can wash up a number of things.
It isn’t easy to carry more home when I already have Luath and the dog, but today I made the extra effort to carry a little more than usual home.
Quite a bundle, all but two from the shore. Four plastic drink bottles. One very squashed and cut plastic ball pit ball. One mini Frisbee. One flower hair tie. One wooden toy tool box(?!). One buoy (this has been about for a while, I previously moved it higher than the tide line in case someone claimed it but nobody has).
The bottles are in the recycling. The buoy is added to our display around our oil storage tank (the tank is so ugly that I am trying to beautify that area). The tool box just needs a clean and will be great for outside play/collecting treasures. The mini Frisbee will be cleaned and put with some other outdoor toys in the shed. The ball pit ball binned. I am undecided re the hair tie, whether to bin or to cut the tie and use it in Luath’s outdoor section.
In the lead up to Earth Day this week’s theme is birds. We have been looking at real birds but today we did some pretend bird spotting.
First I took some photos of the bird soft toys/puppets/wash mitts that we have. I made them into a spotter sheet.
I made a pair of binoculars. These were very basic as I knew they would be chewed and taken apart. I used two small pieces from a kitchen roll tube, made small holes with a golf tee and tied them together with an bag tie wrap.
Next we set up the bird hide. I was going to use our wooden clothes horse style play frames and drape them with sheets but it was quicker and easier to use the pop up house – it could do with a bit of camouflage!
Then we went spotting for birds. We get quite a variety of visitors to our living room – owl, duck, parrot, kookaburra, kiwi and more.
I only got photos of the set up as we were too busy looking out for the birds. Luath thought it was funny when I looked through the binoculars, especially at her, she wasn’t quite so keen to look through them. She did take them apart very quickly once I gave them to her. The hide wasn’t used but she loved looking for the birds.
This is a play activity that we will be able to do on many different occasions and we will be able to expand as Luath grows older. It will be easy to adapt to using other toys for different spotting – on safari, trains etc We could change the location, in a different room, over a few rooms or in the garden. I am quite excited about the thought of spotting a tiger lurking among our bushes and a monkey in a tree. Oh I have just thought, I am going to put one of Luath’s birds on the bird table tomorrow, that’ll give her a surprise.
shared with Tuesday tots, see what else tots have been doing
Have also seen it as two little birds sitting on a hill. (Birds are named Jack and Jill)
The visual trick that can be done while saying the rhyme
The teacher resources galore have a power point presentation, a read with me sheet, sequencing page, puppets, mini book and tracing. (The birds are not quite to my liking)
Littlesheep learning has some ideas based on the rhyme i.e. making a wall, wall rubbing, looking at birds, numbers one and two
