One potato, two potato, three potato, four
Five potato, six potato, seven potato more
It’s easy to include some maths in your garden if you’ve been growing your own fruit and vegetables.
You could…
Count how many potatoes you have. Draw up a chart to record the harvest from your garden and add up the grand total of what you’ve grown.
Rank your produce by size from biggest to smallest.
Measure your spuds – ours went from 1cm up to 10cm.
Happily shared with…
A big welcome to Alli Price from Motivating Mum who is visiting us with a great guest post for all those tricky eaters you know. She has some really fun ideas, so without further ado I’ll hand you over…
Don’t Play with your Dinner! Games to get your toddler to eat.
As all of you are probably painfully aware, it’s tough getting kids to eat and not always because they’re fussy. My daughter is great at eating but has the attention span of my boyfriend when discussing the shopping list! For this reason we have been forced to get creative at dinner time and, although it is sometimes painful always having to play games, it’s certainly less painful than the alternative which is negotiation, followed by yelling, followed by the naughty step.
Following are the games we have devised to get our toddler to eat and if even a few of you out there can benefit from what I share then it’s a blog worth posting!
1. I hold up the five fingers on my hand and wiggle them about. Amelie then has to make them disappear one at a time by eating a mouthful of food.
2. I ask Amelie to eat something red and she eats a pepper. I ask her to eat something green and she eats a bean. She’s usually so busy working out the colours she forgets she’s eating at all. You can also do this with the alphabet i.e. eat something beginning with ‘g’.
3. I tell Amelie she’s going to be a magician and she has to make things ‘disappear’ from her plate (while I’m looking in the other direction). When I turn back I’m amazed that it has disappeared. When I pretend that it has turned up in my mouth she finds that hilarious. When I protest that I don’t want her to make any more broccoli appear in my mouth as I’m full she can’t wait to eat more to fill me up.
4. We also use simple subtracting. If she has three beans I ask her how she can make it two. When she holds up a bean I say ‘quick eat it and make it two!’
5. We make food into families i.e. if there are four pieces of carrot they are mum, dad, brother and sister. When she eats one, I ask her which one it was and who misses them the most. Whichever she indicates has to be eaten too so she can reunite them. If there is one left on the plate, they must be lonely so they also have to be eaten!
6. I also play the animal game with Amelie which is what does this animal eat? She then has to be that animal i.e. pretend to be a rabbit to eat carrot. When it comes to something like broccoli you have to bend the truth a little! We use a turtle for broccoli! If there is a particular food your child doesn’t like it might help if their favourite animal eats this food.
7. We also play a fun game where eating food provides visible results of regaining energy. For example, eating one piece of carrot gets your finger moving, eating two pieces gets the hand moving and eating everything gets the arm moving about all over the place. This can be a bit wild and messy but is ultimately enjoyable!
8. Have you ever played musical dinner? Everyone has to eat until the music goes off and then you have to hold a pose. While the music plays everyone has to eat in a circuitous manner i.e. one piece of meat, one piece of potato, one pea and so on..
Alli Price runs Motivating Mum – website and events for mums in business (or those wanting to start up). She is also a mum to Amelie, 3 ½ and Freya, 2 months.
It may be a cliche but, in our house at least, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – which makes these Chocolate Chip Cookies the perfect gift for Fathers’ Day. The recipe is easy, and very yummy, so with just a little help your children should be able to bake some ready to give this Sunday.
You will need:
4oz butter (at room temperature)
4oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
1 dessert spoon golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 dessert spoons of milk
2 handfuls of chocolate chips (white, milk or dark chocolate)
To make them:
1. Beat the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the syrup.
3. Warm the milk (10 secs-ish in microwave) and add the bicarbonate of soda.
4. Add in the flour and chocolate chips and stir to make the dough.
5. Make balls of dough and press them onto a greased baking tray.
Allow plenty of room to spread
6. Bake for about 25 minutes* in an oven at gas mark 3-4 / 160-180C.
* This will depend on how big your cookies are. We think less (baking time) is more, as we like chewy rather than crunchy cookies.
Wrap them in cellophane and add a hand written note, and have a happy Fathers’ Day.
Why not? …. add some bubbles to your water play today and set up a carwash in the garden?
Include some washing up sponges and scrubbers and get your trikes sparkly and clean.
And how about giving the children a purse with some coins so they can count out and pay for their carwash?
More fun doing maths this way than with a worksheet!
Do you grow fruit and vegetables with your children?
Children benefit so much from seeing where food really comes from – and I find they’re much more likely to try new foods if they’ve helped to grow and prepare it. A cut and come again salad is a great way to start, no matter how small your garden. Sow the seeds in a pot of compost, have the children water them and wait for the seedlings to pop up. The good thing about a cut and come again salad is just that – the children can help themselves to a few leaves and the plant will kindly grow them some more. Sow seeds every 3-4 weeks and you’ll have a summer full of salad. Add a cherry tomato plant and let the children tuck in. The girls loved going on a treasure hunt round the garden looking for things to put in their salad and found lettuce, radish, nasturtiums and herbs. They ate the lot!
A delicious and easy receipe when you’re barbequeing, and just right for children, is:
Barbeque Bananas
Take one banana per person and slice down the centre. Fill the slit with chocolate chips.
Wrap each banana in a tinfoil parcel and place on the barbeque after the main courses has been cooked. The remaining heat from the coals will bake the bananas and melt the chocolate.
Unwrap* your banana parcels, add a scoop of icecream and enjoy.
*This is going to be hot of course, so leave it to a grownup who’s wearing oven gloves.
Why not use a disposable barbeque and head off for a picnic in the great outdoors?
