Chocolate Play Dough

I owe this post to The Imagination Tree blog! We have been due to make new play dough and I knew the instant that I saw this recipe on their site that this would be it. We had everything on hand (well, except for the vegetable oil I discovered...thanks to my friend and neighbor Mandy for saving me on that one) and we were actually playing with it in less than ten minutes.

Chocolate Play Dough

2 c flour

1 c salt

1/2 c cocoa powder

2 T cream of tarter

2 T vegetable oil

2 c boiling water

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl

Stir in vegetable oil and mix thoroughly

Stir in boiling water

Knead the dough until it loses its stickiness

Words can't explain how amazing this dough smells. It was the perfect consistency as well!

Ty was a bit tempted to eat the dough, but thanks to his texture/eating quirks he didn't. He was sweet enough to let his giraffe friend have a taste though!

He thought that making chocolate worms was quite funny!

I know what you may be thinking here (gross!), but if you smelled this stuff the thought wouldn't even cross your mind!

Making chocolate waffles has been his favorite, though he also really thought that we should pop them in the toaster oven, heehee.

This has definitely been our favorite recipe so far!

Oatmeal Fun Dough

One rainy day, Tyler (my little play dough lover) and I decided to make something a little different than our usual dough. We have a large canister of oatmeal sitting around that Tyler doesn't care to eat, so when I found a recipe for "Oatmeal Fun Doh" online, we decided to give it a try (be sure to read on...).

Oatmeal Fun Dough

2 cups uncooked oatmeal
1 cup flour
1/4 cup water

Add ingredients, mix and knead. 

From the start, I was skeptical about this recipe. It didn't seem like there would be enough moisture to make much of anything.

Maybe I was just impatient with our kneading and already had the idea in my head that it would require more water, but it didn't seem to work. I added more water...then too much water. I added more flour. Maybe too much flour...

Our dough had an interesting texture that Tyler had to get used to (great for his sensory quirks) but it was also thick and tough rather than the pliable consistency you'd hope for.

Cutting with cutters required help from Mama, as did forming balls and worms.

Our play doh press requires a great deal of effort anyhow, but it was almost too much with this dough.

While the dough wasn't all that workable, we still played with it for about half and hour before throwing it away. I gave Tyler a small amount of water after a while to sprinkle and paint onto the quickly drying dough. That was probably the most fun for him.

After this failure, I researched other oatmeal dough recipes. They often look the same as the one I tried, but with much more water. Almost all of the recipes I found call for: 

1 part flour

1 part water

2 parts oatmeal

Not sure how I lucked out with the bum recipe, but if you try this one, I'd love to hear how it went!

Baking With Little Ones

I'm really not the baker in our home, or generally the cook. I don't mind either and rather enjoy cooking at times, but the kitchen in the home we have rented the last 23 mos is so outdated and "yucky" feeling to me that I've really steered clear. We rented from 15 hours away via the Internet (with only nine photos of the whole place) as we had almost no time to relocate. Despite this, I knew I wanted to start a tradition and bake lots of Christmas cookies with Tyler this year, so I've sucked it up! I plan to involve Ty in a lot more of our cooking and baking when we (hopefully!) move soon. He really, really enjoys it!

The following pictures show what Tyler's "jobs" were when baking this week. Not pictured is Tyler helping me measure out ingredients (it's hard to take photos while we do that!) and I just don't let him crack eggs. Raw egg just makes me too nervous right now! So far we've made Spritz Cookies and Brown Sugar Christmas Cookies and will make and decorate traditional cut-out cookies later in the week. My plan was to have Tyler help me give many of them away to friends and neighbors, but Ty has come down with a cold and I'm quite stuffy myself; I don't think anyone wants our potentially tainted cookies. I have no idea what we'll do with them all!

Pouring dry ingredients 

Mixing

Pouring wet ingredients

Packing brown sugar

Scooping shortening from the measuring cup into the bowl

Pouring some yummy treats into the batter!

Though the batter was too thick for him to stir, it was interesting for him to feel how thick it had become.

Pushing the buttons on the cookie press

Decorating! I can't wait to let him decorate cut-out cookies soon!

So what has Tyler learned from baking cookies?

Following Instructions: I read aloud from the cook book which I kept in front of both of us, tracing my finger along as I read. I talked about how we had to read the recipe and follow the instructions to make our cookies, also showing him pictures of the end result we were working for.

Mathematics: We counted constantly as we poured a certain number of cups or spoonfuls and we also counted as we placed each cookie onto the baking sheets. I talked about each measurement, announcing what size cup or teaspoon we were filling. I also used smaller sizes that required us to use, for example, two  1/2 cups to make 1 cup or four 1/4 tsp to make1 tsp. and talked a bit about that as we went along.

Cooking Science: Tyler naturally learned that putting several ingredients together in a certain way can create something else. A yummy something else too!

Vocabulary: Ty added many more words to his vocabulary as well such as "flour", "teaspoon" and "mixer".

Relationship Building: As I quickly discovered, baking with kids is such a great bonding experience! Traditions like this are often carried on to the next generation and carry warm memories for life.

Confidence and Independence: If a child can go from a bunch of ingredients on the counter to something that the whole family can happily eat with as little help as possible, that feels really good! Tyler seems awfully proud after meals when we get to eat one of the delicious cookies he had such a hand in creating!

Linking with Deb at Living Montessori Now! and 1+1+1=1

Montessori Monday: Pets, Play Doh, Pumpkins and Ghosts!

This was another somewhat low-key week as Ty continues to adore his other works, but I feel like the new activities that we have done has been a big hit. As John Bowman would say in his book Montessori at Home, I've found his "sweet spot" for sure!

This activity is very similar to his Sandpaper Numeral Counting Boards. I feel like he's ready to move on from 1-3 to 4-6, but want to do a few more activities with this quantity to really nail the idea home for him. Here his work was to place one pumpkin sticker in each circle, which matched the number on each card. 

He really enjoyed this, counting each sticker as he stuck them and sometimes pointing at the number.

He enjoyed this circle/sticker concept so much that he wanted to do more. I quickly traced a bunch of circles onto paper and gave him some Halloween stickers with dogs and cats dressed up in costumes to put in them. I would have planned the circles better if I had more time, but I didn't want to lose him!

Counting of course! Ty really adored these stickers. He is in a huge "pets" phase. He wanted both the pumpkin counting sheets and the animal stickers to be hung right next to his table and counts/talks about them often during snacks and meals. Some of the animals stickers are the same so he enjoys finding the matches.

I finally made Tyler a new animal matching sheet! He has has a big laminated (with contact paper) two-sided sheet of paper with animals cut from magazines on it since he was a baby. Though I thought he'd love it, he just didn't care about it back then, but became briefly interested in matching animal figurines onto it a couple months ago. Trouble was we didn't have many animals to match it to, and even now, we don't have them all, and that's just not very Montessori. So I made him a new one with all of his favorite figurine animals on it last night. He was thrilled to see it this morning and to do the work!

I've been waiting a long time for a rainy day so I could make play doh with Ty. This week some rain finally arrived! A reader and follower on my Facebook page gave me this recipe and it worked beautifully!

2c plain flour

4tbs cream of tartar

2tbs cooking oil

1c salt

2c boiling water

food colouring

Mix dry ingredients into a bowl.

Add colouring to boiling water, then mix into dry ingredients.

Store in the fridge.

Ty really got into this, and I love how he was able to see how each ingredient came together to make play dough! The only thing I didn't let him do was to pour the boiling water or stir when it was burning hot.

While I handled the water, Ty played with flour on his table.

Time to play! Making "birthday cakes" and worms! It was heavenly to play with the dough when it was still nice and warm. I've heard of warming play dough up in the microwave so I'll have to try it...

Ty had become interested in the act of taking pictures lately (wonder why with Mama chasing his cute little face around with a camera all of the time...) and wanted to take a photo. I wasn't about to let him hold my somewhat expensive Canon by himself, so I helped him hold it. He decided to take a picture of his healing skinned knee. He is a bit obsessed with "boo-boo's" lately! I'm think I'm going to look into a real but child safe camera for Christmas.

When looking through one of my storage boxes to get a coin box he requested, Tyler spotted his Memory game. I usually only keep eight cards out at a time for our games, but he insisted on matching them all (face up). It took a while but I was impressed with how well he did! I think we'll do more of this soon.

He also found his peg and hammer toy from Melissa and Doug in the box. He has had this for 10 mos and never wanted to do it. Now is just the right time for it apparently because he has been all about it! Maybe I need to let him rummage through my toy and material storage boxes more often... 

We recently switched our cats from a wet food only diet to a mix of wet and dry, so now it's easier for Ty to help feed the kitties. He really enjoys this and I've watched him hang out to watch them eat with a rather proud and interested look on his face!

We did some simple black paper with white crayon and white pencil drawings.

We also did a "craft" I guess you could say, though I'm kind of against them. My original idea was to have him glue cottons balls onto blue paper and maybe have him puff them out a bit to pretend they were clouds. Then I realized that with a little imagination and dotting eyes on with marker (done by me), they could look like the ghosts that he's so into from one of his books (as well as make it a more seasonal activity). It went well, though even spreading glue with a brush his fingers got all sticky and the cotton balls tended to stick to his fingers, which was frustrating for him. A glue bottle may work better.

We played a fun gross motor game we did as well, but I'm going to save it for a future post. This will likely be my last big, whole-week post like this, as I've decided to go with one-activity posts for a while!

Linking up with Living Montessori Now, Tot School., The Imagination Tree and No Time For Flashcards! 

Liquid or solid?! Oobleck play.

Ty and I finally got around to making and playing with a classic kid (and adult) favorite, Oobleck! Oobleck is made from a combination of cornstarch and water and is considered non-Newtonian, as it is both a solid and a liquid. When sitting in whatever container you decide to use, it is a solid mass. When you dig at it to break it up (applying pressure) it instantly becomes a liquid, sliding through your fingers or pouring out of a cup/scoop/spoon. I delighted in making this amazing and fun concoction when working with little one's in daycare years ago. I dare you to try to keep your hands out of it! For the mess-phobic, you may want to take this one outside, though I have to say it does clean quite easily with water.

To make Oobleck, combine 1/2 cup water with 1 cup cornstarch. Adding food coloring is optional. I've always found it interesting to play around with the amount of water and cornstarch while we play as well.

Tyler found Oobleck quite interesting, but wasn't sure he wanted to touch it. When he did try, he was much too unsure and ginger with his touch to dig in and scoop anything up as needed.

So I provided him with a wooden spoon and a measuring cup. He had much more success experimenting this way, and though he didn't want it on his hands, covering his feet with it was quite fun!

Ty was still able recognize the liquid/solid aspect of Oobleck, even without touching it. He was quite intrigued by the fact that he would pour the liquid into the dish, drop the cup into it, and the cup stayed on top rather than sinking in. He noticed as well that it looked like a liquid when in the dish, as it appears wet, but touching it with is hand gave him a different message.  

  By the end, Tyler wanted me to dribble the Oobleck over his hand. Yay! Perhaps next time he'll dig in!

As an extension to this play, there is a classic prose work by Dr. Seuss called Bartholomew and the Oobleck. In this Caldecott Honor book, a king who is bored with the everyday weather asks his royal magicians for a different kind of precipitation. What he gets is sticky green Oobleck falling from the sky, and hence, all over his kingdom! In the end, the king's Page, Bartholomew, then teaches the king a valuable social lesson...saying sorry. Highly recommended!