Muffin Tin Monday

Yippee we are finally back and Emily was SO excited to see our star muffin tin make it’s appearance at lunch!!  This week there was not theme for Muffin Tin Monday so Emily had some of her favorite leftovers from this weekend.

Emily’s Muffin Tin Lunch

  Top Row: Fruit Kabobs, Pumpkin Gob, Graham Crackers

Bottom Row: Fruit Kabobs, Minestrone Soup, Cheese Circles

Emily LOVES Pumpkin Gobs and they are so delicious I really thought she would say that was her favorite part of lunch today, but to my surprise the Fruit Kabobs won!! 

Here is the delicious and easy recipe for the Pumpkin Gobs away:

Pumpkin Gobs

Ingredients:

Cookies
2 egg yolks
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup oil
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 large can of canned pumpkin (the one I used was 29 ounces)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Filling
1½ cups butter (softened)
2 tablespoons milk
4 cups powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Directions:
1.    Preheat oven to 350°
2.    Cream together egg yolks, brown sugar and oil
3.    Combine the flour, ground cloves, ground ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and baking soda and add to the egg, sugar and oil mixture.
4.    Add canned pumpkin and vanilla extract to the batter.
5.    Drop by teaspoonfuls (not to big) onto greased cookie sheets and bake for 12-14 minutes.  Cool on wire racks before filling.
6.    Beat all of the ingredients for the filling together until fluffy.
7.    Once cookies are cooled spread some of the filling on the bottom of one cookie and cover it with another one to make a sandwich.   ENJOY!!!!

TOTSchool

We had a very busy couple of weeks. I have been working with my mom to open an Etsy store, so all of my extra time was spent listing items. Now that we are all set up I hope to be back to our regular posting schedule. Although I missed posting TOTSchool last week we did do a lot of fun things.

Emily is 33 months old.

Emily and I made Butternut Squash Soup so Emily got to explore a squash. First I let her feel it and hold it. Next, I cut it in half and she got to feel the insides. She found this to be a lot of fun!

Emily made a cute handprint Turkey project at Sarah’s house. Here she is gluing the leaves around the edge of the paper to make a border.

The girls also made the letter “E” out of an Envelope. Emily liked putting all of the Ee papers into the envelope.

Braeden and Emily had fun playing on their mat while the girls worked on their projects.

Emily made a q-tip painted turkey for her stART project.

Emily has been working on coloring pictures for us to send to Color A Smile.

Emily worked on these sequence puzzles.

Aunt Jaclyn gave Emily her first hair cut!!

She only took off a very small amount so you can’t even see a difference, but Emily thought it was so much fun. She has been asking for another haircut every day since!!!

Emily helped make Italian Herb Biscuits for dinner.

Emily colored Thanksgiving cards for her cousins.

We made cupcakes and decorated them with Ryleigh. This was a very big hit! They got to practice pouring, scooping and stirring while having a lot of fun :0)

We talked about colors with this fun Princes Activity that Sarah made from the Totbook at 1 little, 2 little.

Emily requested the Ducky game. She loves moving the little ducks around the board!

Emily made a really cute Shape Turkey. We worked on shape recognition and following directions.

Emily practiced using a water dropper. This was a great fine motor and color mixing activity. I filled one cup with blue water and the other with yellow. The girls dropped the blue water into the yellow water to make green water!

Emily was playing in this Toy Chest with her doll at my mom’s house. She loves that she fit inside it.

Emily and Juliette.

Emily loves posing for pictures with Juliette…it is so cute to see her get into the picture and actually look at the camera!

My friend came to visit us from Texas and Emily had so much fun playing with her. Here they are playing with Emily’s Fisher Price Snap n’ Style Dolls. Emily loves snapping the outfits on them and brushing their hair.

Our favorite books from this week:

• 5 Silly Turkeys ~ Salina Yoon
• A Fly Went By ~ Mike McClintock
• Ten In The Bed ~ Penny Dale
• The Napping House ~ Audrey Wood

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!

Handprint Paper Towel Tube Advent Wreath

Every year at the beginning of Advent we sang this Advent Candle Song with the entire Sunday School and different children would get a chance to “light” the candles. I always knew that when I had children that I would do the same thing with them in our home.

Emily and I made the advent wreath out of her handprints. The candles are paper towel tubes cut into thirds and then wrapped in colored construction paper. We use yellow tissue paper to “light” the candles.

Emily colored the green construction paper first.

She had a great time…it got all over her face!!

I traced her hands onto the green paper and then cut them all out.

Emily glued her handprints onto a paper plate that I cut the center out of.

Emil put the yellow tissue paper into the first candle as we sang the song together.

Our Advent Wreath.

I found a video of the same song that we sing so you can hear the tune! I love this song and find myself singing it all day once it gets into my head :0)

Get Ready…

…for my very first GIVEAWAY!!!

Stay tuned for all the details :0)

Open Ended Art ~ Turkeys

Our Turkey Parade!!!

This weeks Open Ended Art theme is Turkeys.    Throughout this month Emily had a lot of fun creating Turkeys in all different shapes and forms.  Here is our Thanksgiving Turkey Parade for Open Ended Art this week.

Handprint Turkeys

Paper Towel Tube Turkey

Coffee Filter Turkey

   Q-tip Painting Turkey

Shape Turkey

Her Turkey is Taking Shape!

Today Emily made a Shape Turkey with her friend Ryleigh.  The girls had a great time identifying the shape and we were all so excited to see how cute these turkeys came out!

Sarah cut out the shapes and then reviewed each shape with the girls.  Emily and Ryleigh were so excited to hold up each shape the Sarah asked them to find!

The girls glued the shapes onto the paper.

    Emily’s finished shape turkey.

When we were all finished Emily asked what was going on the top of the turkey so Sarah got them some pumpkin stickers to add to the top.  I think it added a nice touch!!

Songs That Make Juliette Smile

We do a lot of singing in our house, we have songs for nap time, snack, bath time and just for fun. Many of them are just made up to go with what we are doing at the moment and others are old favorites from when I was little. Recently I have noticed that some songs make Juliette break out into the biggest smile ever. So here are two of her current favorites.

Ham and Eggs

Ham and eggs
Ham and eggs
I like mine fried nice and brown,
and I like mine turned upside down.
Ham and eggs
Ham and eggs
Flip! flop! Flip! Flop!
Ham and eggs!

Songs for teaching have the sheet music for this song.

Boom Boom Chicka Boom

I said a boom chicka boom
[Students repeat]
I said a boom chicka boom.
[Students repeat]

I said a boom chicka rocka
Chicka rocka, chicka boom
[Students repeat]

I said a boom chicka boom.
[Students repeat]

Oh yeah (echo), uh huh (echo), next time (echo)

A little softer (echo).

A little louder...
A little slower...

A little faster...

The end!!!

Emily loves being able to help out with this song so both of them get to enjoy it!!

Color-A-Smile

This week Emily worked on coloring some pictures for Color-A-Smile.  This is a non-profit organization that collects pictures that are drawn or colored by children and then every month distributes them to Nursing Homes,
Meals on Wheels Programs, and Individuals all across the country.

If you visit the Color A Smile website you can print out coloring and drawing pages.  I love the idea of sharing the beauty of children’s art with others.

We are going to be sending our winter coloring pages in soon….I hope you will join us in helping to make people smile too!!!

My New stART Button!!

I am so excited about my new stART button!

A humongous Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to Rachel from Blog Candy Designs for the amazing job she did creating the perfect button for stART!

stART ~ Five Silly Turkeys

A Story + Art = A Great stART!
Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our book and art project and maybe even share your own too! For an explanation of stART click here.

This week we read Five Silly Turkeys, by Selina Yoon. This is a fun counting book where five turkeys have a great time doing some very silly things. Emily enjoyed pretending to dance and twirl around like the turkeys.

We have already made a few turkey projects already, but when I went to my friend’s house and saw this cute q-tip painting turkey I knew that Emily was going to make one to go along with this book this week! (Thank you Dawn for the idea!!)

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I spread paint out on a piece of white paper and then gave Emily q-tips to spread out the paint. I told her to make it look like the turkeys we have been making. Emily added a wiggly eye, and painted on the beak, snood and feet.

Emily’s finished Turkey Painting.

See Saw Knock on the Door

When Emily was a baby my Mother-in-Law would rock her and sing her this little rhyme.   It always made her smile and now Emily loves singing it to Juliette.

See Saw Rhyme

See saw knock on the door.

Who’s there?

Juliette Bear

What do you want?

A glass of milk

Where’s your money?

In my pocket

Where’s your pocket?

In my pants

Where are your pants?

I left them home!!