Alphabet Activities: Letter M

I feel terrible about posting so infrequently lately. Munch has kept us on the move with her busy social calendar every weekend. It's been a lot of fun getting to meet her new friends and their families have been really nice. I was relieved to have a day off for the holiday, even though AudioDad had to work. Munch and I decided to get back to our letter activities, so we tackled M,m today. We started off making the letter M with wood pieces and Munch was delighted to discover she had made the word "moo". Of course, I got sound effects to accompany the word making:Next, we moved on to her alphabet workbook. Munch found the stickers with M words and practiced writing the letter-before beginning her letter collage onto which she glued some dry macaroni-We had a puppet to assemble- and Munch loved making her monkey-
I was really excited about our super cute, super easy food project after getting the idea off the web. I melted some pink candy melts while Munch stuck marshmallows onto lollipop sticks. The marshmallow pops got a dip in the pink candy then sprinkled with decorations The only tricky thing was where to put them while they cooled and the coating dried- they were too top heavy to stand in a tumbler. In the end, I propped a cooling rack on a few cans which worked perfectly!Munch got to enjoy one as part of, what else? A muffin tin meal! I filled it with bunny mac & cheese (Munch's favorite), meatballs, macadamia nuts, mandarin orange segments, and a marshmallow pop- all washed down with a glass of milk-After naptime, which gave me a chance to clean up, Munch and I finished up her mermaid craft. Earlier in the day, she painted some tissue paper (a la Eric Carle) with green, teal, and blue dot markers
After it dried, she glued squares of her painted tissue paper onto a mermaid shape and decorated it with sequinsI cut it out for her and we glued it onto a water-scene background done in glitter glue-Last activities for the day were a batch of "hide and seek" muffins to go with dinner (the cherries she pushed into the center of the batter sink into the center of the muffin during baking)and some exploration with magnets.

Have A Heart

I'm not one to go all out for Valentine's Day in general. Between the parties at school and being bombarded with ads during the weeks prior, I'm usually over it by the time I dismiss the kids. But having the Munchkin to share in the fun has renewed the holiday for me just a bit. Since today was a Staff Development Day, I was able to get home a little earlier and we made these yummy red velvet cupcakes-


The recipe came from Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite blogs. These cupcakes had a great cocoa flavor. Although I find the overtly red versions pretty off-putting, I probably didn't put in enough food color in my batter because once they were baked, you really couldn't see even the slightest hint of red. We had a great time decorating them with heart shaped sprinkles and we even made a Valentine's Day craft for the grandparents-


I got the idea from one a student made me. The tissue paper squares are actually glued onto a piece of plastic film (I just set it against the purple background for contrast) and Munch got good use out of her new dot markers and her favorite sticky foam shapes. My initial impression with her careful use of paintbrush and glue (she would lightly dip, carefully brush a bit onto the tissue paper square, then add a dab onto the plastic before attaching the two) went out the window after I stepped a few feet away to get dinner going. She was happily working when I suddenly heard, "I'm stuck!" Turns out she decided to paint her face, hands, and arms with glue in squiggly and happy face designs!

Holiday Countdown...

Christmas is my second favorite holiday after Thanksgiving, mostly because I have to actually DO stuff to get ready for Christmas. On Thanksgiving, I just show up with a dessert in hand and eat! But this year is definitely different now that Munch is older. She "gets" it more and can participate in the preparations- the girl LOVES projects! So we spent a lot of last week shopping online- with her acting as consultant. She now makes sure all the boxes that arrive are properly placed in the "package room". We've made cinnamon-applesauce dough, then rolled and cut it out- I figure these fragrant little shapes will be cute with a red gingham ribbon, tied onto presents. We picked out cute containers at the dollar store which will be filled with holiday cookies. Last Sunday, we headed to our favorite pottery place to make ornaments and figurines for the grandparents-



they'll be ready for us this weekend, so we'll make a day of picking them up and chopping down the perfect tree at the tree farm! And this year, I'll finally get back to my old practice of having multiple trees around the house. We'll put a little tree in Munch's room that she can decorate (and undecorate) as she pleases. And maybe one on the front porch, with more of a "nature" theme...