Frugal Baby Play

Today I'm feeling tired.

And a tired mummy is not a very creative mummy.

So to keep Mr T busy and stimulated, I came up with an activity that taught lots of skills, cost nothing, and kept him entertained for a VERY long time!

All I needed was a ball and a bowl.

My goal was for him to explore the sound of the ball rolling around in the bowl. Boy was I wrong! Mr T was not particularly impressed with my plan of events. He picked up the balls one at a time and threw them away, then turned the bowl upside down.

 

Mummy fail.

Until I had a brilliant idea. Why not hide the balls UNDERNEATH the bowl???

Bingo!

After showing him where the balls were and how to lift the bowl up, I stepped back and let him create his own learning.

I almost needed popcorn. The entertainment was priceless.

First, Mr T circled the bowl, pushing it around and growling when he was unable to flip it over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next he tried banging on it.

He then spent almost 5 minutes pushing the bowl backwards and forwards, enjoying the sound of the ball hitting the bowl.

 

 

And repeat. Many times.

Eventually he just sat back and gave me this look....

 

 

So before you think that you need high tech, expensive toys to keep your little one entertained....look no further than your kitchen!

 

 

What items from around the home does your little one like to play with?

Beetroot Chocolate Tea Cake

In my quest to ensure my allergy kids get their daily doses of fruit and veg, I came across the idea of using vegetables in cakes.

Sounds weird, right???

I was sceptical too.

Until I tried this recipe. It creates a moist, rich tea cake that melts in the mouth. Not that my kids noticed that. Al that they cared about was that it was chocolate, and paint. Full stop.

Beetroot and Chocolate Tea Loaf

1 cup of white flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup of unsealed butter or dairy-free margarine, melted

1/2 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

2 tsp of egg replacement

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 Tbspn white vinegar

1 drained tin of beetroot, finely chopped in food processor

1. Turn the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease the loaf tin and lightly dust with flour.
2. Sift the flour, BP, cocoa powder, BS, and salt into a bowl.
3. Melt butter or dairy alternative and pour into a separate bowl. Mix sugar, egg replacement and vanilla into the butter, whisking until it forms a creamy mixture.
4. Add white vinegar to the dry ingredients, followed by the butter mixture and the processed beetroot.
5. Gently fold together until the batter is fully mixed.
6. Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 38-40 min.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Dairy-free Alfredo Sauce

We eat a lot of pasta. Its what the kids will eat so we all eat it. Its cheap, tasty and so versatile that we can adapt it easily to an allergy-friendly dish.

 

The problem isn't pasta. Its the sauce. Cupcake has been allergic to tomatoes since she was young. When I say she's allergic to tomatoes, I mean that she is allergic to the pesticides used ON the tomatoes.

 

Needless to say, she is afraid to eat tomatoes, tomato sauce or anything resembling a tomato.

 

But dry pasta is soooooo boring.

 

Enter: dairy free alfredo sauce.

 

 

Our local green grocer currently has enormous cauliflower for only 79c each!! When I say enormous, they're bigger than my head!

 

Dairy-free Alfredo Sauce

 

Ingredients:

• 1 large cauliflower or 2 smaller cauliflowers
• 1 carton of alpro soy cream or milk alternative
• 1 tsp minced garlic or 2 garlic cloves
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Roughly chop cauliflower and place in large saucepan along with garlic, salt and pepper.
2. Fill saucepan with water to 2cm depth and boil cauliflower until soft.
3. Let cool on the stovetop.
4. When the cauliflower has cooled, place in a blender or food processer along with soy cream, and blend until silky smooth. This took me approximately 3 minutes.
5. Store in freezer-safe containers for up to 3 months in the freezer or 3-5 days in the refridgerator.

 

There you have it! Nice and easy, and tastes almost the same as alfredo sauce containing dairy - and much better for you!

Dinosaur Eggs for Dinner

Here is the recipe for dinosaur eggs that I mentioned in the post "Frugal Friday - Family Fun for Cents". I'm sure they have a more adult name, but for the purpose of getting the children to eat them, we called them dinosaur eggs.

Dinosaur Eggs

Ingredients

• 250g premium beef mince
• one onion, pureed
• 2 icecubes pureed carrot
• 2 icecubes pureed courgette
• 1/4 c breadcrumbs
• 2 Tbspn oil
• 1/2 tsp oregano, dried
• 2c flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 25g butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Water, to mix
• Bought pasta sauce

Method
Using your hands, mix mince, breadcrumbs and puree's together. Form into small balls and put aside.

Melt the butter in a microwave safe dish. Sift flour, salt and baking powder together into a seperate bowl. Add oregano and butter. Using a breadknife, mix until forms a loose crumb.

Add water and knead until forms a scone dough.

Divide the dough into the desired quantities, making sure there will be enough to wrap around a meatball. Roll into balls and flattened until at least 10-15cm diameter.

Place one teaspoon of pasta sauce and one meatball on the centre of each scone disc.

Wrap the dough around the meatball and sauce, sealing on one side of the ball.

Place on baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees celcius or until lightly browned.

Serve and enjoy!

Frugal Friday - Family Fun on for Cents!

This week, Opa took Tinkerbell to the Bach for a sleepover. It was special time away from Cupcake, who, often through her natural exuberance, tends to steal the show.

To give Cupcake a little special Mummy and Daddy time, we decided to have a fun dinosaur themed night, based on the recent release "Dino Time".

This was $1 from the local Video Ezy on weekly hire.

 



I then had a look through my time-wasting friend, Pinterest, for dinosaur themed party ideas. Nothing was really sticking out, given we had a budget of....well....nothing. So I decided to get creative!

 

I decided, that since dinosaurs are green, I would make some green jelly and sprinkle some chocolate sprinkles on the top once it had set. Cupcake called it her "Dino Jelly". Then I made some meatballs wrapped in scone (biscuit for you Americans!) mixture and named them "Dino eggs". Add some watered down lime juice, and you have......

 

 

And look at the smile on her face!

 

All these things were made with items from in the pantry and freezer, so the cost of the entire evening was $1, time and lots of love.



Baby Discovery Bottle

This week, I have been teaching Toto about the concept 'in/out'.

 

To do this, I made a simple toy with items from around the house.

 

All you need is an empty milk bottle, scissors, and items to put in the bottle.

 

 

Firstly, I showed Toto where the toys were. Then I let him explore.

 

 

Following that, I showed him how to put the toys into the hole in the top of the bottle.

He struggled a little bit more with this concept - more with the co-ordination than with putting it into the hole. To help him, I guided his hand to the hole and he would let go of the toy. After a few times, he was able to do this alone.

 

 

After that, I let him play by himself. He enjoyed turning the bottle around and re-finding the holes to take the toys out and put them in another area.

 

Toto was able to extend himself further by taking toys out of the bottle, turning to a nearby basket, and depositing the toy into the basket, then returning to the discovery bottle and repeating the exercise.

 

What an entertaining half hour we had!

Counting Clouds

During the past week, we have been learning about weather (espeically clouds).

 

For maths, the children enjoyed this activity the most.

 

Again, to ensure total focus, I ensured that the materials were all available and organised in containers for ease of use.

 

There were a lot of skills that the children learnt in this activity, from fine motor skills, to number, and basic school readiness skills such as using the correct amount of glue.

 

Cupcake

 

• Is already able to recognise numbers 1-10 and count one-to-one up to 10.
• Needs to learn how to use runny glue (PVA) and show restraint with materials
• Struggles to show focus and follow instructions. This will be the lesson focus for her.

 

• She was able to use restraint with the glue up until the last two numbers.
• Because she enjoyed the activity, her focus was excellent again, up until the last two numbers.

 

Tinkerbell

 

• Can rote count (using her memory) up to 6.
• Is beginning to count 1 and 2 items.
• Needs to develop one-to-one counting up to 4.

 

• To take the focus off school readiness skills, I squeezed the correct number of glue dots onto her page.
• She was able to count (with assistance) each cloud as she put it on the glue dots.

This activity was a great success. The girls both wanted to put their cloud pictures up on the wall to show Daddy when he got home. This is also teaching them to take pride in their work.

Book-making - Part 1

My girls love books. They love to read books. They love to make books.

I have lately found that Cupcake is struggling to cope with boredom when at home. This struggle is usually expressed through misbehaviour. So I decided to teach her some sight words and challenge her in an area she seems to excel - reading and languages.

Firstly, I chose four sight words for her to use from the Ready to Read series taught in New Zealand schools. The sight words were from the Emergent/Red level books and were words most likely to be used by Cupcake in everyday life.

like                     it                       the                      I

 

I then thought about what Cupcake liked that I could apply to colours. At the moment her passion is eating apples. She would eat them all day if she could. So "apples" was the chosen theme. Its important when teaching children to make the learning relevent to them. If they do not see a reason for the learning, they often put less effort into their learning. It must be real to them and contextual.

 

Thirdly, I needed to make it easy so that I would not turn her off learning. I did this by typing the words and printing them out. They were then sorted into a partitioned plate. If the activity contains not enough challenge, or too much challenge, a young child is less likely to take risks with his or her learning.

 

Lastly, I needed to make it her own. To do this, I taught her how to draw a simple apple and helped her to colour it in.

 

Here she is writing her first sight word book:

 

 

Everything was prepared and ready to use. If you are fumbling around for materials, younger learners are more likely to 'tune out' and lose interest in the learning activity.

 

She loves her new book so much, that she chooses to read it at least once a week during our bedtime routine. She is now reading it - not just to me - but to her siblings.

 

Success!

Quiet Time Workstations

Every day, at approximately 10am, Toto has a sleep. Not a nap. A sleep. 2.5 hours of bliss spent in the land of Nodd.

 

Except for when the girls are home.

 

Then, he wants to join in the fun. And the noise. And there is usually a lot of it!!

 

One day I was struggling with this (and a very overtired, grumpy 8 month old baby) when I came across a solution.

 

Workstations.

 

I talked with the girls and discussed their favourite quiet-time activities. Then we picked three, and set up a 60 minute rotation. The children had 20 minutes per activity, with special mummy time doing each one to keep them ontask.

 

Here they are:

 

Laminated Playdough Mats

 

 

Colouring Station



 

Puzzles

 

 

 

What quiet time activities do you do with your children?

Allergy Alert

Where to start????

 

We have had a crazy fortnight with the children. We took Toto to the doctor to find out where to begin looking at intolerances and allergies, and were referred to the same specialist Cupcake has been seeing at the Specialist Centre in St Heliars Bay.

 

Pretty straightforward, right? Ring the specialists, make an appointment, wait for the appointment, attend the appointment and get some answers. Right?

 

A few days later, Plunket visits to look at Toto and asks what weight Tinkerbell currently is. The children all started to plateau in their growth at approximately 9 months so we look at her old growth charts to get a view on what to expect for him. Hang on a second, you said she was 11.4kg?? But last time we weighed her 5 months ago she was 11.9kg. Oh dear....

 

Another doctors appointment made (happening tomorrow).

 

To make a long story short, we visited the specialist for Toto and certainly got some answers.

 

Toto

 

 

Toto is officially intolerant to oatmeal. Because his reactions are delayed and a skin prick test came back completely negative, the specialist does not think there will be allergies. He has a 7% chance of having the same allergies as Cupcake. So the way that we will go forward is to give him a piece of bread (causes eczema around Toto's mouth within the hour) every day. Hopefully that will help him become more tolerant of wheat/gluten. We are to avoid oats and start introducing him to egg, peanut butter and other high allergen food ASAP as per latest research findings.

 

 

Tinkerbell

 

 

Upon being asked whether Tinkerbell had shown any allergies, we mentioned the really horrible nappies she has experienced since having a 6 week bout of runny tummy when she was 15 months old. And the important fact that she also experiences this after consuming even small amounts of milk. The specialist confirmed that this could be her body having a learned lactose intolerance from that bout of sickness. But. Big but. I hate big buts. A lot of her symptoms are also signs of celiacs disease so we are to ask to have her skin prick tested, RAST tested, and also screened for celiacs. In the meantime? Take her off milk immediately. See if that helps. And get to the doctor.

 

 

Cupcake

 

 

So how is Cupcake going? I asked if I could please have the email of the immunologist who we saw at Starship Hospital. Why, can I help you, she asked? So I explained the long doses of antibiotics we've had her on and the struggle to keep her staph infections at bay. Apparently it shouldn't be returning so quickly. Really?? So we need to get her nose swabbed to figure out if THAT is what is causing the infection to continue. Certainly the easiest outcome.

 

 

Wow. A lot of things to get through in my busy little mind!

 

Can you see why things have been so quiet lately!!

 

Look out, dear readers, as I've got a lot to catch you up on what we've been doing!!