Muffin Tin Monday

4th of July RED, WHITE and BLUE Breakfast Muffin Tin

This weeks theme for Muffin Tin Monday was Patriotic/4th of July so we went with a Red, White and Blue Breakfast.

Emily Muffin Tin Breakfast
Top Row: Uncle Sam Toy, Strawberries, Milk in a Red and Blue Cup
Bottom Row: Cream of Wheat with Red, White and Blue Sprinkles

Emily was so excited to have her Cream of Wheat in her muffin tin and with sprinkles on top. She loved mixing it up so the colors swirled all around. She also thought that the toy was very cool. She said "Mommy, can't eat it!!" I told her we were going to use it for a project during the week! She loves projects so she can't wait :0)

Tape Paint

More Wrapping Paper Made By Emily!

Emily loves to paint and we needed wrapping paper for Father's Day so I decided to try some tape painting with Emily.

I cut different sized pieces of electrical tape and Emily placed them on the paper.

I told Emily to cover the whole page so she went right to work painting over the tape.

Emily chose blue and pink to paint with.

She did some color mixing with her hands. She loves to paint with her hands whenever possible!

When the paint dried we peeled off the tape. Emily was impressed with the white lines it left behind. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the finished project. We were in to much of a rush to wrap up our presents!!

Baking with Emily

Peanut Butter Cookies

Emily LOVES peanut butter so we decided to make some peanut butter cookies for dessert!

I measure the ingredients and Emily pours them into the bowl.

Emily's favorite part is using the hand mixer!!

Wrapping the dough in plastic wrap so that it can chill in the refrigerator.

When Daddy came home we rolled the dough into balls.

Emily smooshed them with a fork.

These cookies were really easy to make and I had all the ingredients on hand. I love recipes like that!!

Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Cream the butter and sugars.
2. Mix in the peanut butter and egg.
3. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and mix well.
4. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours (I only did mine for maybe 1 hour and they came out fine)
5. Preheat oven to 375. Shape dough into 1 inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Flatten in crisscross pattern with a fork.
7. Bake until light brown, about 8 minutes. Cool on baking sheets for a minute and then transfer to rack to cool completely.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Sticker Shapes

Emily's Sticker Shapes

I saw this idea on Her Cup Overfloweth and had to give it a try. Emily loves stickers and I we have been working on shapes . So I printed the paper from the link on her site and gathered our stickers and Emily and I had fun tracing the shapes with stickers.

I love how she is sticking out her tongue while she is concentrating on putting the sticker on the line.

Showing the camera the sticker! Emily and I took turns putting the stickers on. It was a lot for her to do all by herself. She always likes when I help.

Our finished project!

Strawberries and Chopsticks

Emily has been enjoying all of the strawberries that we picked this weekend.
Her favorite way to eat them...

...is with her new pink chopsticks!

I picked these Animal Training Chopsticks
up at the gift shop of our local children's museum. I figured we could use them to work on some fine motor skills like picking up pom-poms. But once we tried them on food she now asks for them all the time. It is so cute to watch her eat with them. I think I am going to pick up a few more the next time we are at the museum!!

Muffin Tin Monday

This week there was no theme for Muffin Tin Monday. We went strawberry picking and brought home almost 6 pounds of strawberries yesterday, so of course they were incorporated into today's lunch!!

Emily's Muffin Tin Lunch
Top Row: Peanut butter and jelly roll up, Banana yogurt, Peanut butter and jelly roll up
Bottom Row: Strawberry and pineapple fruit kabobs, Peanut butter and jelly roll up, Strawberry and pineapple fruit kabobs

Emily's favorite were the fruit kabobs!

Strawberry Picking!!

We had a great time!!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool
Emily is 27 months old

Emily made number prints with cookie cutters and put her fingerprints inside to match each number.

Emily asked to practice cutting almost every day this week. I drew lines on a strip of paper and showed her how to cut on the line. She did really well with this. She also enjoyed cutting out stickers like we did a while ago. I made a bag of 3 different strips of cutting paper. One with lines, one with stickers to cut in between and on that was blank so that she could pick which one she wanted to practice with. It is so nice to have them already for her!!

We got this new sand toy to use in her rice bucket. She had a lot of fun pouring and scooping the rice into.

Emily made some pretend pizza with her Velcro Pizza Playset. She asked what I wanted and then what Beau wanted on our pizza.

Emily had fun making a Duplo wall.

Emily did some puffy painting.

We took a trip to the Long Island Children's Museum and Emily enjoyed the bubbles exhibit. She also had fun in the new traveling exhibit "The Big Adventure" it had a lot of things for them to climb in, on and through with is always a lot of fun!!

Emily enjoyed making her own pizza for dinner.

Our favorite books from this week:

• Ten Little Fish ~ Audrey Wood
• Bear Wants More ~ Karma Wilson
• Alphabet Animals: A Slide-and-Peek Adventure (Slide-And-Peek Book) ~ Suse MacDonald
• Growing Vegetable Soup ~ Lois Ehlert

We have also been talking about authors and that they are the people that write the books. Daddy taught Emily the authors names for Wiggle and Good Night Moon, two of her favorite bedtime books. It is so cute to hear her say Doreen Cronin or Margaret Wise Brown when you say the name of the book to her. Now whatever book I read she wants to know the name of the author.

Check out the great things that others are doing in their TOTSchools by clicking the button on the top of this page!!

Unplugged Project ~ Homemade

Pizza Pie!!!

This weeks unplugged project was "Homemade" so Emily with help from Mommy and Daddy made her own pizza for dinner last night.
Aunt Jennifer gave Emily a cute pizza making kit for her first Christmas and we have been waiting to use it until Emily was older. Last Friday when we made pizza for dinner Emily loved helping Daddy and wanted her own pizza. So this week we broke out the pizza kit and she made her own little pizza. She had so much fun and ate the whole pie too!!


Emily rolling out her pizza dough.


Emily spreading out the sauce.


Emily sprinkling on the cheese.

Emily eating the cheese!!

Cutting her pizza.

All ready to eat it Yummy!!

Puffy Painting

Emily's Puffy Paintings

I originally saw this idea on this blog and have been wanting to try it with Emily. Today we finally got a chance to and we both had so much fun. The paint was easy to mix up and the puffy effect on the paper is so cool. When Emily finished each picture she said "cook it Mommy" and loved feeling the warm paper as it came out of the microwave.

Emily started with a q-tip in each color.

Of course by the end she was having a blast finger painting with the paint. The salt in it gives it a great texture.

We popped them in the microwave for 25 seconds with the turntable off and Viola...Puffy Paint Pictures!

Puffy Paint

2 tablespoons salt

2 tablespoons self-rising flour (I used all purpose because that is what I had and the effect was very cool)

Add enough water to make a thin paste.

Separate and color with food coloring.

When your little one is finished painting place in the microwave with the turntable off for 30-45 seconds (I only needed it to go in for 25 seconds, but Emily spread her paint out pretty thin).

Muffin Tin Monday

A 1-2-3 Muffin Tin Monday!!

This weeks theme for Muffin Tin Monday was Numbers. We stuck to the numbers 1,2 and 3 for today's lunch. Emily was very excited to have some fresh picked strawberries from our garden for lunch today!

Here's Emily's Muffin Tin

Top Row: #1 Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, 2 Strawberries, #3 Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Bottom Row: 1 Strawberry, #2 Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, 3 Strawberries

Emily helped by putting the correct number of strawberries in the muffin tin under the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich. She thought that it was a lot of fun to help put her muffin tin lunch together!

We did a fun 1-2-3 Cookie Cutter Printing project before we had lunch. Emily's favorite part was putting her fingerprints inside each number!!