Toddler Theme Thursday: Leaves

This week's Toddler Theme is Leaves. Using this recipe, we made some maple leave cookies. I usually let Arin help measure the ingredients, but I mill my own wheat into flour and Arin hates the noise, so I just measured everything into bowls before calling her into the kitchen. Pouring the ingredients into the bowl is her favorite part anyway. I refrigerated the dough until it was time to roll it out, but it was still really soft and hard to work with. I have 2/3 of the dough in the freezer and we will try again later. We are planning on frosting the next batch with maple frosting.

Last night, I used tiny cookie cutters to make Playdoh leaves. I left the leaves out all night, hoping they would dry, but no luck, so I had to bake them dry this morning. Also, last night, I dipped the cookie cutters into poster paint and made patterns for Arin. After the leaves were dry this morning, Arin matched the Playdoh leaf to the correct leaf on the paper.

For the last project, Arin made a leaf necklace. She used her plastic needle and the Playdoh leaves. I think this was her favorite project for the day. She had a lot of control over it (she was allowed to pick which colors and how many leaves, etc.).