Parfaits Anyone?!

My husband was home on Monday and came up with the idea of making 

parfaits with the children for snack time.  

I thought it was a great idea, and apparently the kids did too.

Josh is an educator as well, so he knows the importance of preparing ahead of time.  

He got all the goodies together; he had yogurt, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, and granola.
He then explained what a parfait was and helped them get to work.

They first added a layer of yogurt into their mason jars, then a little 

fruit or granola, the kids got as creative as they wanted.

A little more yogurt was added and some more toppings.

Just the process of scooping and pouring to make a mixture is fun for them,

I don't think they were thinking too much about what would taste good.     

Fortunately, all but one liked their creation.

Time to eat!

It was a nice, fun, snack to make and was enjoyed by all.

All Natural Lip Balm Valentine's Gifts

Well, Valentine's Day is approaching fast, and one of our activities this week was making Lip Balm to give as a gift, although many of the kids informed me that they are going to keep their lip balm.  I guess that is a good sign...they loved them!  A little while ago I read what was in lip balm and was shocked that even "natural" companies loaded up their products with harmful chemicals, so I began looking for natural recipes and I found this recipe on Wellness Mama.  She has a ton of great recipes for natural remedies, you should check out her link:

Wellness Mama

It is a simple recipe:

1 tsp Coconut Oil

1 tsp Cocoa Butter or Shea Butter

1 tsp Bees Wax Pellets

Optional: 20 drops of essential oil (we used grapefruit oil)

I was able to purchase these materials at the health food store and Trader Joe's, however I purchased the chap stick container from Mountain Rose Herbs.  You can also purchase all the ingredients from Mountain Rose Herbs as well if you cannot find them at you local health food store, here is their link:

http://mountainroseherbs.com/

Here is our experience with it, I was surprised by how simple the process was, and we only had one little hiccup, which we remedied the next day when we made them.

Before we started we went around and smelled all the ingredients and tried to guess what they were.

The children added the bees wax pellets first, then we added the Cocoa Butter and Coconut Oil to our mason jar.

We tripled the recipe to make 7 lip balm containers.

I placed the jar in a pot and heated it on low, then switched it to simmer as the ingredients start to melt.

Add the essential oils after the ingredients have melted down, we forgot the second day, so the lip balm smelt more like chocolate from the cocoa butter which was still nice, but the grapefruit essential oils have a lovely refreshing smell, in fact grapefruit is suppose to energize!

 While the ingredients slowly melted, the children worked on their tags for their lip balm.

Last year for Valentine's day we made beautiful hearts using homemade paper, washable markers, and eyedroppers of water to make the colors "melt" into each other.  This year I cut smaller hearts that we could use as tags for their lip balm.  Here they are filling in their hearts and then "melting" them with water.
If you would like to see more of what we did last year, click below:

 Valentine's Day 2012

 I love how these come out, when we do this technique on handmade paper the colors stay rich and the paper holds up a lot better then coffee filters, which are often used for this process.

Back to our Lip Balm

You will need a glass eye dropper for this next part, and here is where we had our only problem the first day.  Because I would call the children up one at a time, and they took their time with the process, the lip balm started to solidify in the eye dropper.  So the second day we did it, I kept a cup of hot water near by, and as each child finished with the eye dropper, I soaked it in the cup to avoid this problem.

the children opened up their chap stick containers, writing their initials on the bottom with a sharpie helps.

I moved the melted lip balm to a trivet, but kept the water on simmer near by so it didn't harden.

The children then proceeded to fill their containers with the balm.  It is not hot like melted wax, so do not worry if it drips a little.

Have the children try to hold their containers as straight as possible, and fill till it is above the stick inside.

They take about 15 minutes to harden, but a couple hours to be ready to move up and down in their containers.

On sticker labels they made their own lip balm labels, and then I tied on their tags.

Puckering up to put on her lip balm!

Too Cute!

Making Corn Bread and Butter

Each week at school we cook on Wednesdays and Thursdays and make our own snack.

Most weeks it is our school bread recipe or apple cake (look under cooking at school for recipes).

However as the school year progresses and as the children become well acquainted with the routine of cooking, we start trying out different cooking projects.

Right before Thanksgiving break it was very fitting that we made corn bread muffins.

 In addition to the corn bread, my assistant, Laura, suggested making butter.

I have had a recipe for this but had not tried it out with the kids, so I was thrilled with the idea.

 

The butter making recipe is simple and wonderful to try at home.

You will need:

*Heavy whipping cream (try to find one that is not ultra-pasteurized, I bought mine at Stewart's)

*2 or 3 marbles

*A clean jar, we used a mason jar

 

The children each added a little whipping cream to the jar, and then we placed the marbles in.

 

The jar went around in a circle and each child was able to have several turns shaking the jar.

Some were sceptical, but they kept up the process, and as they did they started to see lumps forming in the cream.

We passed ours around maybe three times

Here is a picture as the butter was really starting to form.

Eventually, the excess cream was poured off and we had a nice bowl of butter.

 

We placed this butter in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to firm up a little more.

Later we placed the butter in a butter pad, and each of the children pushed it out onto a plate.

I think this would have worked better if we had refrigerated the butter longer, but it still made cute little pads of butter.

The children each were able to butter their corn bread muffins with their own butter they made and pressed.

 

I wasn't able to take pictures of the corn bread muffin making, but here is the recipe we used:

 

1 cups corn meal

1 cups unbleached flour

1 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

3 teaspoons maple syrup or honey

1 cup milk

1 egg, beaten

1/2 stick of melted butter (save the wrapper for greasing the muffin tins)

 

1. grease the muffin tins.
2. preheat oven at 375 degrees.
3. sift dry ingredients then add sweetener.
4. add the milk and egg and mix until smooth.
5. mix in melted butter.
6. fill each muffin tin half full.
7. bake 12-15 minutes
8. makes 12 muffins
    

 

The Gak is Back!

Gak is a well loved sensory play item at Art and Soul, but recently we had to make more.  I decided to try a new recipe for Gak this time because I didn't love using Borak, although the children didn't add it in, I like the idea of them making the whole recipe.  Our previous post on gak can be found here: http://artandsoulpreschool.blogspot.com/2012/01/learning-about-molecules-and-making-gak.html

The recipe for our new Gak is simple:
1 Cup Elmer's Glue
1/2-3/4 Liquid Starch
Food Coloring

Add the glue and food coloring to a bowl, and stir.  Next slowly add the liquid starch sirring and eventually kneaded the mixture.  It is amazing how little time it takes for it to transform, and then it is ready for play!

 Adding the glue

 We made two batches so we had different colors.

"The Gak spread and captured the animals"

Watermelon Mint Pops

I wanted to make a tasty, cool treat for the kids, but didn't want the sugar and the hyperactivity that comes along with the sugar.  One of my favorite refreshers for the summer is to make a watermelon, mint, and honey smoothly, and I thought that would be great for a pop for the kids.

I start by filling up the cup of my rocket blender with watermelon,

I add a couple fresh mint leaves, and a teaspoon of honey.  The mint gives it an extra cooling quality

so it is a nice add in.  Then I blend.

I added the watermelon mixture to small plastic Dixie cup and freeze for at least 1/2 hour before placing pop cycle sticks in.

I add the sticks when the pops are frozen enough to hold them up.  I then cover with plastic wrap and freeze over night.

When you are ready to enjoy them, just warm the cup with your hands, then squeeze and they release from the cups.  Enjoy!

Three Little Birds

For almost three weeks Art and Soul has been bird sitting three little birds.

Tomorrow these little friends go back home, but throughout there time at school they have been well loved and have inspired many projects.

Because the children have taken such an interest in birds, and in keeping with the reggio philosophy, even though our friends are going home, I feel the bird project will continue to have life and thrive. 

For the first couple days the children enjoyed visiting the birds and getting to know there ways.

Some initial comments were:

EB: "look one curled their toes."

Me: "Why do you think they do that"

EB: "Because they can"

MK: "They're not much a talkers.  Birds can tweet but not talk."

TM:"I saw them kissing."

EB: "awe, they're so cute!"

One of the main queries about the birds was in regards to their eating.  The children always wanted to see the birds eating and what did they eat?  Anytime a birdie was caught eating the kids happily pointed it out.  They also looked at the types of food in the cage, they noticed there was bird seed, a cracker, lettuce, water and a clump of bird seeds on some sort of shape.

I pointed out that this is a kind of bird feeder and asked if they would like to make one as well.  Two days later we made similar bird feeders, however we gave ours to the birds outside.

Here is the recipe we used:

Bird Feeder

4 cups wild birdseed

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup water

3 Tablespoons corn syrup

1 envelop Knox gelatin

We took non-stick cooking spray and sprayed cookie cutters and then placed them on a piece of wax paper laid over a cookie sheet.  We then filled the cookie cutters and smoothed out the top with the spoon.  A little later we used a straw to poke a hole in the feeder for hanging.

Ours came out red because I didn't have the Knox gelatin and had to use the strawberry gelatin we had in the house.

On another day of school the kids pointed out that the birdies did not have a nest so that night I gathered some materials and the next day they made some nest for the birds.  These nests had eggs and of course wormies for the birds to eat.

 

I had these bird shapes from a while back and the kids did water color painting on one side to make birds for their nests.  On the other they layered colored tissue paper and sprayed the paper with water sprayers to make the colors bleed.  We then removed the paper and unveiled the colors.  I love how they came out.

 .

Bird's Nest Sensory Station

 One morning I put out a bin filled with plastic containers, and recycled straw filing and shredded paper bags.  The invitation was to make birds nest's in the bowls.  They were most excited about the eggs and it became a race to see who would get the most.

One of the completed nests made at the bird nest sensory station with lots of EGGS!

That same day the children took turns in front of the cage observing the birds and drawing their version of the birds.

I am interested to see where this project may continue to take us.  My hope is to stay open to the cues from the children, and continue with studying birds as long as they are interested.