Unplug Your Kids: Spiral

This month's theme at Unplug Your Kids is Spiral.  Immediately, I thought of cinnamon swirl bread!  We love to make food for our Unplugged themes.  Usually, it is just Arin and myself making the project, but we ALL get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, if we make a food item! 

We started the project with Arin helping to make my normal bread recipe, which can be found here. 

Ella, has a natural curiosity about the goings on in the kitchen.  She LOVES to be held while I am making dinner, and I believe this is just because she likes to watch.  So I sat her at the bar to watch Arin make the bread. 

Ella was content to watch Arin, but then I let her try helping and it was all over from there!  She LOVES helping as well and she really didn't make much of a mess!  It was a delight to cook with BOTH of my girls today!

After, the bread did its first rising, I rolled it out and let Arin butter it and sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar.  Ella quickly climbed on the chair to see what was going on, but she didn't fuss about not helping, which was a good thing.  I rolled up the bread, allowed a second rising and then baked it off.

This bread tastes amazing, like a giant cinnamon roll.  This is the second time that I have attempted cinnamon swirl bread and both times, the outside rose beautifully, but the inside was not so pretty.  What am I doing wrong?  Not rolling it tight enough?  Not letting it cook long enough?  I need some advice so we can improve the appearance and continue enjoying this yummy treat!

Unplug Your Kids: Thanks

This week's theme at Unplug Your Kids is Thanks.  We were going to go the Thanksgiving theme way, but the kids needed to get some thank you cards out, so we went in that direction instead. 

It's been a while since Arin has practiced her sewing skills.  I punched holes in a card and handed it, along with a plastic needle to Arin.  She picked the colors of thread that she wanted to use.  She wanted exactly no help with the sewing.  Normally, I would have guided her a little more on a project, but this was her thank you card, so I let her go with it.

Once, she was done sewing, Ella lightly colored the inside. 

Next, Arin and I looked through magazines and found the letters T, H, A, N, K, and S.  I cut them out because it is still not Arin's strongest skill. 

Then, I gave Arin a glue stick and showed her the order to glue on the letters.

Arin was pleased with her finished work!

Unplug Your Kids: Purple

We haven't participated in Unplug Your Kids in a while, so we decided to get back into it today.  This week's theme is purple.  I found a recipe for Purple Monstrosity Fruit Smoothie.  The girls like smoothies, so we thought we'd try this.  Arin said it was yummy!

Unplug Your Kids: Sun

This week's Unplugged theme is sun. We haven't participated in Unplug Your Kids recently, but when I saw this week's theme, I remembered a simple project that I wanted to do with Arin. We painted her hand yellow and she made a handprint sun.

Unplug Your Kids: Happy

This week's Unplugged theme is HAPPY.

Mommy: Arin, what makes you happy?

Arin: Uncle Todd.

Mommy: Does Aunt Candace make you happy? (Candace was in the car with us)

Arin: No, Uncle Todd

Mommy: Does Mommy make you happy?

Arin: No, Uncle Todd makes me happy.

Mommy: Do balloons make you happy?

Arin: No, Uncle Todd.

Aunt Candace: Does ice cream make you happy?

Arin: No, Uncle Todd.

Mommy: Do slides make you happy?

Arin: No, just Uncle Todd!

I wasn't sure what to do for a 'happy' project, since she only thinks her uncle makes her happy. So we did a project in teamwork with her cousins. We made the letters H-A-P-P-Y out of their bodies.

Some pictures of Arin with her uncle Todd (apparently the only thing that makes her happy).

Unplug Your Kids: Wrinkle

This week's Unplugged project is wrinkle. This was one of the more difficult themes for me to come up with any ideas. I thought of the obvious wrinkling paper. I thought about letting clothes get wrinkled and then let Arin help iron them, but I wasn't too excited about a two year old playing with an iron. So that idea was thrown out quickly. I thought about making paper because it usually has a wrinkled look, but again, she's two, so I wasn't sure if that'd be a project for her or one that was more for me! I was going to attempt to make our own raisins, but I didn't think of that idea until the middle of the night and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store this morning for grapes. So maybe we'll try that experiment another time.



What we did this week came from ideas that my little sister gave me. First, I had Arin wrinkle her nose. It was very, very cute. I didn't take a picture because she did it so well that I just knew she'd be able to do it again when I had the camera ready. Wrong! She seems to have forgotten how to wrinkle her nose as quickly as she learned to do it.



So next, I gave Arin a piece of saran wrap. Then, she was allowed to wrinkle it. Then, she took the wrinkled piece of saran wrap and painted with it.

Next, I rolled out some Play-Doh and pressed Arin's hand into it, so we could look at the lines and wrinkles. It didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped. I also gave Arin a bath and let her hands and feet wrinkle. I was going to press her super wrinkled fingers into the Play-Doh, but it didn't work so well the first time and the Play-Doh was already put away and I didn't really want to get it out again.

Unplug Your Kids: Float

I was very excited when I found out that this week's Unplugged theme was Float. I chose to do a project with Arin that I did when I was in kindergarten. Such a simple project, but it made a big impression on me - it is almost 25 years later and I am still thinking about that project with fond memories!

First, I gave Arin a piece of craft foam (when I did the project as a kid, we used construction paper - I recommend the craft foam). She colored the foam with markers. She used the green marker to make dots. I asked her what she was making. She said "Dot grass." Then, she made dots with the blue marker and I asked what she was making, "Blue dot grass!" Silly little girl.

When she was done coloring, I cut out a triangle from the foam. Then, I cut two small slits in the triangle and I threaded a popsicle stick through the foam. Then, I gave Arin a bar of Ivory soap (it floats!). She unwrapped the soap and stuck the popsicle stick sail into the soap boat!

Unplug Your Kids: Color

This week's Unplugged theme is color. For our first project, I printed two color wheels. The first, I cut out and covered with clear contact paper. The second, I used to cut small pieces of each color to glue onto clothes pins. Then, I gave the color wheel and the clothespins to Arin to match. It was the first time that she had used clothespins, so it was a little tricky at first, but soon she got the hang of it and had a blast. I saw a similiar project on this blog.

Our second project came from an idea I saw on this site. I washed an egg carton in hot soapy water. Then, I painted the sections in different colors. While I was doing this, Arin was painting pieces of cardstock. When the cardstock was dry, I used my scalloped circle hole punch to make circles. Then, I gave Arin a bowl of colored circles and the painted egg carton. She matched the circles to the same colored section of the egg carton. As she did this, she'd call out the name of the color.