New adventures on our menu

I try to add new items to our menu and encourage our picky eaters to try different things. This week I made organic beef meatballs with sweet basil and Parmesan cheese, a daunting experience to myself. The good thing is our children liked it, even some picky eaters ate the meatballs with no problem. I used to buy big bag of meatballs from Costco, but my version seemed more liked by our children.

Organic Beef Meatballs from Oven

Meatball Pasta

Dinner

I also made another new item last week for our children: mushroom and barley soup. This was a completely vegetarian soup with many other veggies, such as onion, carrots and potatoes. Our children accepted it very well.

mushroom and barley soup

We shared some grape tomatoes with our children last week, which were harvested from our backyard. They are very sweet and fresh, completely ripe on the vine.
(We cut them in halves before serve to our children)

Grape Tomatoes from Backyard

The Theme of Father's Day

We did several things to celebrate Father's Day this week.

1. make a card for Dad

make card for Dad

make card for Dad

Happy Father's Day

My Dad is a Great Catch

2. Dad Rocks
This is a fun idea from internet. Our children painted the rock and added sliver glitter. I helped them write the words "Dad Rocks" and finished it with a paint sealer so the painting will last long. A wonderful gift for Dad!

Painting the rock

Dad Rocks

Dad Rocks

Dad Rocks

3. matching game

This matching game asked children to help Dad put the tools back into the tool box. Through this activity children learn how to write numbers and connect objects.

Tool Box Matching Game

Chalk Drawings on Sidewalk

Every childhood should include the fun of free chalk drawing on sidewalk, I believe. It was amazing to see a big chalk could bring so much fun to our preschoolers. Nobody wanted to come back when we called them for dinner.

chalk drawing

chalk drawing

chalk drawing

Writing Skills: Using Stencils to write Alphabets and Numbers

We use stencils to help our children to learn hand writing. With the guidance of the tools, children can write their favorite alphabets or numbers. It was a good exercise of their coordination of fingers, wrists and eyes.

Hand writing with a stencil

Use stencil to write alphabet

see what a 2 years old can write

Science: Surface Tension

It is important to implement age-appropriate science activities that allow preschoolers to satisfy their inherent curiosity.We did two experiments this week about Surface Tension. These science activities completely drew our children's attention and they asked many interesting questions.

Experiment 1 : Colored Milk

Add food color to milk

Add one drop of dish soap, which broke the surface tension
of the milk and colors moved around

Observing

Experiment 2 Blow Bubbles in Milk and Water

Same amount of water and milk in cups

blow water and milk and see what happened

Many bubbles formed in milk but not in water,
surface tension worked again

Math: Abacus Counting

Every week at our preschool,  we incorporate many activities for our children to develop their math skills, including comparing, measuring, counting, number recognizing and writing.

This week, we had another math activity: counting abacus. We counted many other things before, such as jelly beans, eggs, crackers, fingers, toes, etc..Abacus is more abstract for children at this age. It is a real counting tool for people to record their important numbers.

After several practices, most of our children were able to use their fingers to count 5-10 on the abacus precisely and comfortably.  Considering most of our children are just in their two's,  I think that was wonderful.

Party Food: Cake Pops

I was fascinated about Cake Pops and bought a baking pan last week. There are endless ideas to decorate cake pops to make them the perfect party finger food for any party theme.

Before we started baking the cake pops with our children, I watched some clips on youtube and  learned the tricks. So our first batch turned out to be a success. No waste of time and cake mix...:))

Make the cake mixture

fill into the baking pan

cake pops baked

Dip in melted milk chocolate

Decorate with Spring theme candy sprinklers

Cake pops !!

 Our children love to eat those cake pops. They were fun, beautiful and unique....