Halloween Treats

Because we live in a rural area we don't see a lot of kids traipsing around on Halloween.  We do get a few folks who know us and bring their kids by, so I try to have something around.  A couple of years it was candy, but then there's leftovers and my will power around mini candy bars is close to nil.

Last year I made sugar cookies and spent the afternoon with YouthGal (aka- GTot's favorite baby sitter) and GTot decorating them.  I wanted to do it again this year but just didn't have the energy to do the whole shebang  sugar cookie - cutting- baking - frosting mess.  So I improvised.  I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookie dough and a batch of the best Chocolate Sugar Cookie dough.  I colored the plain dough orange (well, as orange as I could get it with very little red food coloring in the house) and we cut out pumpkin faces with the chocolate and put them on top of the pumpkin cutouts before we baked them.  We used a pastry cutter to get the zig-zag affect which made the mouths super easy.  They turned out pretty cute and tasted pretty good too!

We didn't use much of the chocolate dough, but that's ok because there's a bake sale I'm going to have to do something for later this month and this dough freezes beautifully!

Kitchen Sensory Activity

I follow a couple of blogs that have all kinds of great ideas for sensory development activities for pre-schoolers.  I always look at them and think that sometime I'll get around to doing that for GTot.

Today, as I tried to decide whether to find a busy activity for GTot while I got tomatoes ready to can, or to include her in the process.  I took a look at my project gathered G up to help me in the kitchen.  I realized that the process of peeling tomatoes for canning is an amazing sensory experience for her.

First, she practiced sorting, as she pulled the stems off the tomatoes and put the stems in the compost bin and the tomatoes in the colander.  After I dipped the tomatoes into boiling water and they had cooled in ice water, the fun with textures began.  The textures of the smooth skin of the tomato, the squishy flesh of the fruit, the warm tomatoes and cold water and the colors of the tomatoes engaged her while she "hepped".  An extra squeeze of the tomatoes didn't hurt them in my process.  She continued sorting: skins to compost, tomatoes to my cutting board.


She had fun and I got at "thanks for helping me mommy" when we were done.

Kissing Shoes

I really really really REALLY wish I could remember where I picked up this little trick so I could properly credit the original author.  But I can't. And I googled every possible search term I could think of to find it again.  So instead I'll share my version of it.

G-Tot is getting pretty good at putting her own shoes on.  She loves her shoes and is so proud of herself when she gets them on.  Her delight is not impacted by the small fact of whether or not the shoes are on the correct feet.   I kind of like it if shoes end up on the right feet, but I do not like the extreme emotions that are expressed by G-Tot when I try to switch the shoes she so carefully put on.

Then I read about a mom who drew smiley faces with a pen on the inside of her child's shoes, like so:



Ok, it's kind of hard to see.  It's the blue spots on each shoe and I don't claim to be an artist in any form, but especially ink and rubber.  Here's a close up:



Easy so far, right?  Now I hand G-Tot her shoes, tell her to "Make them kiss".  She matches the little smiley faces complete with kissy noises and puts them on the floor, and then puts her feet in the correct shoe!  Everyone is happy.

This little trick has worked fabulously!  Now I just need to find a silver sharpie and hit her black soled ladybug boots!