mixology 101

I'm always looking for ideas to keep M busy while I cook dinner at night. A few nights ago I gave him two bowls of water and a medicine dropper. 20 minutes of fun. It helped that he's been fascinated with droppers since Baby G came along. 

Today we tried something similar but if added a drop of food coloring into the water and we experimented with mixing colors. 

M enjoyed seeing what colors we could make but he enjoyed squirting the dropper more. He also stirred and eventually tried pouring. 

Admittedly, it didn't last as long as it did the first time (novelty is everything with this kid) but we did have fun and only made a semi-large mess :)

ice cream in a bag

We haven't posted too much lately but summer is coming (seems like it's here today) and M and I already have a long list of fun activities to try in the coming weeks. 

Today we experimented with making our own ice cream using the Ice Cream in a Bag recipe. We used the one from the Disney website but Googling "ice cream in a bag" brings up plenty. 

This is the process:

Mix 1 cup of Half and Half, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a ziploc bag. In a larger (ours were actually the same size) ziploc bag fill 1/2 way with ice cubes and add 1/2 cup of salt. Then shake the whole thing for about 5 minutes. 

Obviously I prepared it but M enjoyed both shaking the bag and dancing to the sound when I shook the bag. It was a little on the heavy side for him but he managed. 

Ours was done in a little less than 5 minutes. It's pretty easy to tell when it's ready. On the website of one of the recipes I read it showed children eating the ice cream right out of the smaller bag. We put ours in a bowl and added sprinkles because the inside bag comes out covered in salt. I wasn't a huge fan of the taste (maybe less vanilla extract if we do it again) but M liked it!  One other thing- as you can see in the picture it melted rather quickly after coming out of the bag. M didn't mind but I imagine it would melt super fast outside on a hot day. 

rainbow snow

M loves the snow.  He's been outside to play it in a handful of times this year and tends to stay out as long as we'll let him, followed by screaming and crying when it's time to go in.  This morning when M saw the snow he was dying to get out into it and he wasn't too happy when the dogs went out without him.  Since I was not ready for a 9am romp in the snow we brought the snow inside to us and had some fun.

I filled a 9x13 glass casserole dish with snow.  It's great snowman snow and made snowballs very easily, which M loved.  I also got three small containers, filled the each with cold water and added a drop of food coloring to each.  I gave M a big mixing spoon and a cooking brush to "paint" with.

At first M was pretty surprised that the snow could change color.  Pretty soon he was painting and eventually dumping the water into the snow.

We used yellow, red, and blue water which worked well because it mixed into green, purple, and orange so at point we had a pretty good rainbow of colors going on...until it turned to a peach colored slush.

We made snowballs, a snowman, and built some towers that M enjoyed knocking over with the spoon. Eventually about half the snow had melted leaving a coating of water on the dish.  The snowballs that were left could easily slide and spin on the wet surface, which M really enjoyed too.  All in all it served it's purpose- pushing our journey outside back a few hours.  

mix and pour

I loved this activity because the idea came from M.  Every year since I was little my mother and I have decorated a gingerbread house before Christmas.  This year was the first year M could participate.  We did a train instead of a house because he loves trains.  He got really into the decorating, which made it really fun.  However, during the course of the decorating he discovered that he could pour the little candies from one small dish to another (and then into the back of the train).  He ended up totally consumed with pouring the candy into different bowls.

And so we have this pouring and mixing activity....super easy to set up, one of M's favorites, and (maybe) the first independent activity we've had so far.

We started off like this with various bowls and measuring cups.  Some were filled with small snacks (we used Cheerios, banana puffs, and Goldfish).  Leave some empty.

Then M was let loose with them.  He poured and mixed and had lots of fun.  I started off playing with him but then I was able to clean the kitchen up a bit and load the dishwasher while he played quietly by himself.  He had a great time:

Here is my warning: If you don't want a mess of small snack foods on the floor, skip this one.  If my husband had been in the kitchen while we did this it wouldn't have lasted long.  However, we have a great clean up crew that ensured that no Cheerio or Goldfish stayed on the floor for longer than 2 seconds.

If When we do this one again I will give him a spoon to practice scooping.  If you have an older toddler you could get into mixing them together then sorting them back to the original bowls.  You could even use objects like buttons or pom poms or fruit loops if you want to stay edible, and get into sorting by color or size or shape, etc.