Making Faces

Kidlet turned 7 this week, hard to believe seven years have gone by. Most of it has been spent eating, photographing, growing and playing with our food. Kidlet is a good sport, she likes helping me develop recipes and helping her dad take photos of food. (please excuse my non- professional food pictures here) It was four years ago that we started writing The Toddler Cafe and she was just as much a part of it at age three as she is now.

Her dad picked up a very cool gift having to do with food, of course! Food Faces, is a very inventive brand of plate that kids can use to play with their food.

For dinner I made Pork chops with Cherry Balsamic glaze, sauteed kale, steamed broccoli and homemade creamed corn. I was sure she would reject the sauce but she ended up using it as "hair color" and loved it. We also had some potatoes that kidlet helped harvest so I knew she would eat those.

It was one of those tossed together meals, I was trying to use up what I had in the house.

Once she started decorating the plate she was hooked! The only thing left on her plate after was a scrap of food, she ate everything! I was thrilled and she was full. I am very proud of my adventurous eater, she tries anything once and that is all I can ask.

If you can't get a plate like this I suggest buying a few cheap clear glass plates, from the second hand store. Use a Sharpie marker on the back and draw an outline of a face. Turn the plate over and your kids can decorate the face just like we did! Make sure if you draw on a plate it is on the underside so no marker comes in contact with the food. To remove the marker wipe with rubbing alcohol.

Have fun and stay creative.

Georgia O’Keeffe in Milk?

[Photos taken with my phone....sorry about the bad quality]

What am I talking about, you ask? I hate to stray away from food because this is The Toddler Cafe you know, but this was so fun I just have to share. Lately my husband

and I have been doing projects with our daughter, simple stuff from home school websites.

The other day on a whim I found this project, Color Changing Milk. I thought well, it is made with food so therefore I can put it on my blog! The project itself is very easy and fun, but I warn you it will only work once or twice and your child will want to keep doing it. I say this because you may have to use a lot of milk, could get expensive.

Who knew that milk and food coloring could produce such amazing and beautiful images I was shocked by the colors. I kept saying wow that looks like and O'Keeffe and I'd explain to kidlet what her paintings look like. She thought latter ones looked like Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, I was amazed she remembered that.

Here are a few shots of our milk paintings at the start:

It turns out that when we went to open house for her kindergarten we learned that they had been learning about O'Keeffe. Each student had copied one of her flowers, our daughter was absent on the day of the project so she never got to learn about O'Keeffe. I turned to her and said, "remember you made on at home in milk, I bet no one else made one out of milk." She smiled!

We learned that we can be in the kitchen and use food to make art with! We also learned that we can use up passed date milk by making cool temporary paintings!!

Bird Seed and World Music - CD Giveaway!

Thanks to all my entries...we randomly chose a winner, big congrats to BarefootGypsyGirl.

Putumayo music has been around for a long time and so has Sesame Street now they have combined to create Sesame Street Playground, songs and videos from around the world. This cd is really fun for the kids the music is great. It is world music but with familiar voices and characters. The music still retains the tunes from the show so your little on can recognize it.
The mission on the cd case says:
Sesame Street Playground represents a shared mission of Putumayo Kid and Sesame Workshop: to help children around the world gain an understanding of and respect for other cultures.
I love this statement because it is so important for is to expose our kids to other peoples and cultures of the world. It promotes understanding and compassion in them.
One of my favorite songs on the cd is #5 La Chanson De l’Amitié (the song of friendship)
There are songs in Hebrew, African languages, Spanish, French, Dutch….

If you would like to listen to samples of the songs go here.

For more info go to:
Sesame Workshop
or
Putumayo Kids

If you want to win this cd just comment on how you think your kids would love it and I will choose a winner using random.org
On Sat 2/14 I will notify them by email so make sure when you comment you leave a link to your blog or some way for me to find you.

And now for the recipe....

Bird Seed (something Big Bird would eat)
A mixture of seeds (as of hemp, millet, and sunflowers) used for feeding caged and wild birds (or kids.)

I was thinking about recipe that could go with this post and I remembered that when we were kids mom used to make “Bird Seed” we’d take a huge bowl to the basement and hangout playing music and spin the bottle!!
I have memories of finding the birdseed in the infamous black couch (yes, only my middle and high school friends will get that reference) I remember a food fight with handfuls of it being tossed all over...lets hope your kids are a bit more behaved than we were!
Anyway our birdseed recipe was kind of unhealthy so I have revised it here for little ones. Enjoy!

Bird Seed Recipe
Really you can add what ever you like, I use whatever I have on hand. You can make it as sweet or as healthy as you want, no rules here.
I like to have the proportions equal but you can quarter the recipe easily.
Mainly it is just fun to tell the little ones that they are eating bird seed! They can pretend to be Big Bird and sit in a nest of blankets eating their bird seed and listening to the music!

1 cup dried currents
1 cup corn flakes or Chex style cereal
1 cup chow mein noodles
1 cup cheerios
1 cup mini chocolate chips
1 cup crisp rice cereal or nutty rice cereal
1 c crushed nuts
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Ice cream cones (optional)

Mix together. Serve in a plain ice cream cone just like at the Zoo!!

EXTRA EXTRA! “Fairy Dust Found on Bed Post!”

I knew this day would come, the one where my daughter says, “look mom, my tooth is hanging out.” First off…ewe! The whole tooth falling out thing really freaks me out.
I have never had a good relationship with my teeth or the dentist for that matter.
The next day she came home with an over sized plastic tooth around her neck and inside was her real tooth. It is a little thing, like some old shell you might find in the sand on a beach.
My first thought was, yikes, she is not a baby anymore.
The second was, what the hell is the tooth fairy supposed leave her?
And the third was a memory of a friend telling me that one time she forgot to leave something from the tooth fairy for her child, she felt terrible of course.
My goal was not to forget to leave something.

The day was fading; my husband and I had not rehearsed this event yet so we were mouthing ideas back and forth during dinner. He had a great idea for a charm bracelet. With each tooth she would get a charm to attach to the bracelet, but it was 7pm and there was nowhere to get that, although it was a good idea. We had to think of something special, we ended up giving her 2 bucks and a pin (more of a broach) of mine of van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night. We wanted to put it in a little satin bag but we thought she may recognize it and then figure out that it was us all along. After much debate we decided on a baggie. It was like a silly sitcom, us runing around trying to decide on what to do, it was pretty funny. We slipped the tooth out and placed the new goodies under her pillow.
The best part is that I sprinkled “fairy dust” all over the bedpost so when she woke up she saw it.
In the morning she was delighted to see the gifts under her pillow. I told her the fairy must have landed there to rest and the dust came off her wings. The fairy dust was the icing on the cake, but really it was just edible cake glitter!
My husband thinks she knows it is us leaving the gifts, but is just going along with the whole song and dance because we are having such a good time with it!

Here is my recipe for 

Fairy Dust Snack Mix

Edible glitter- fine (get at baking supply or craft store)

Use up all your leftover:

Cereal

Pretzels

Dried fruit (we love coconut)

and whatever else you need to use up

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, sprinkle in glitter and toss until you get the desired effect. 

Play is Back

With school in full swing, I thought this was a good time to share this short post.
I am getting serious on you but don't worry regularly scheduled programming will return as soon as possible.

A while back I had the pleasure of listening to a fantastic author and researcher named Kathy Hirish-Pasek. She spoke about her book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. Not only was she funny and energetic but a wealth of information on the subject of how our children learn. It was as if she was speaking directly to me, I breathed a sigh of relief for my school days past and my daughters future.
School for me was an endless struggle of failing miserably and succeeding superbly. Trying to fit inside a box of purple and white dittos, smelling the wet ink feeling the frustration before I even tried. Sitting in endless math classes feeling lost and knowing summer school was in my future.
I hid in the art room, throughout my years in middle and high school I retreated to the art room where the familiar smells of tempera and clay welcomed me. I was good at art I thrived there, I received praise there I was smart there I succeeded there.
My daughter at the wise age of five loves to play, make up stories and be in her fantasy land as much as possible. I do not feel the need to drill her on flash cards or force her to stifle her creativity. I was worried about her academic prowess. She is learning through her play they kids are designed for that, have you ever seen a four year old able to sit still for more that 10 minutes? Drilling her with flashcards may put my worries at ease but it is about her not me right? Hirish-Pasek says, " putting children in a rigid structure as young as two or three can create anxiety, hostility and fear." They need us their parents not tutors, she also states that, "children as young as nine are experiencing anxiety attacks," that is an outrageous statistic. We want our kids to be creative thinkers not robots, the system is an endless snarl of red tape and test scores, not designed for individuals but fore the group.

What does this have to do with food and your child you ask? Well, Hirish-Pasek is passionate about learning through play, touching, exploring, imagining and more and so am I.
Let them play and teach them while they are comfortable and relaxed. If your child needs to brush up on letters, serve alphabet soup. If they are having trouble counting, count and stack carrots, teach it out of context and see what happens. Our kids don't have to struggle just find out how they learn best and follow their lead.

The Playdate Café- playtime for parents and kids

The doors are open, come in get out of the heat!
I was lucky enough to have consulted on theconception and opening of a fabulous new cafe for kids and parents.
Joel and Nicki, the owners and I worked on the menu and other important aspects of this project, it was fun and best of all the kids love it!!
My friend Lisa Quinn did a live shoot from there last week, check it out and drop by for a snack and a break.
If you look really close you can my hubby and myself having a great time with some other moms and dads.




Playdate for moms! Lisa Quinn visted the Playdate Cafe in San Anslemo, a child-friendly cafe where the whole family can play, nourish and unwind.

About Playdate Café

Miss having uninterrupted conversations with friends and enjoying a meal with utensils? Wish you could have all this and bring the kids, without getting the evil eye when they make a racket?

Created especially with parents and caregivers in mind, the café lets you relax, worry-free, with a cup of coffee while your little ones explore our imaginative, custom-built play area. Play with your children, read magazines, get some work done with free WiFi, or meet a friend for a delicious breakfast or lunch. They also offer weekly sing-alongs, story times, and amazing classes like "Toddler Time."


Playdate Cafe
101 San Anselmo Ave
San Anselmo, CA 94960
(415) 459-7529 (PLAY)
Open 7 days a week from 9am - 5pm

For more information, including prices and special weekly events, visit: www.playdate-cafe.com