Screenless Activities - Quick Recipes
Your kid is a font of good ideas. They want to make dragon trains and have princess dance parties. They want to turn the living room into a Hotwheels rainforest! They want to cook a three-tiered cake to celebrate Wednesday! If only we could see the world through their eyes…
But you’re tired! Work is long and Covid is never ending. There are dishes to be done and laundry to fold. It can feel like it takes a huge effort to switch directions into the creative realm.
My advice to you: Do it anyway, keep it simple.
You don’t have to turn your whole house into a sprawling city scape to play Taxi like they did in Bluey, but you can pull the chairs around and put on “city noises” with youtube. (I did say screen-less… but I think we can make exceptions for excellent ambient noise apps).
You don’t have to put on full costumes for a dance party! You could just only dance a certain way if you’re a certain character/princess.
I WILL WRITE MORE ON SIMPLE DANCE PARTIES AND IMAGINATION GAMES IN A LATER POST! For this entrty I’m going to focus on one thing, and it’s because my little Imagination Rockstars have been a little obsessed with it…
Baking on a School Night.
I know. I picture it too.
Sticky bowls. Flour on the floor. Every one of our measuring spoons eventually hits the floor, and they all just end up tossed into the batter bowl.
But before you say no, think about what baking offers your child and you.
Measuring out ingredients is good for several different math essentials from number sense to subitization to fractions.
Helping in the kitchen gives them a sense of independence. It offers confidence that they are being entrusted with real tools, not toys. It gives them a chance to feel like they are contributing. Being natural helpers, this is an enriching experience for them emotionally.
Baking and cooking give the child an opportunity to experiment. Little failures with you help them become more familiar with failure as an essential part of the learning process rather than something to be feared.
You get a chance to be with them, doing something fun, no distractions. This is an incredible boost to your relationship and the trust you share. It also may help you feel enriched and emotionally boosted, because who doesn’t like licking a batter spoon? At the end of the day flour and milk are pretty easy to clean up. Having giggles and belly laughs can turn a whole day around.
All this being said, you don’t have to bake a three-tiered cake.
Simple recipes that do not take four hours to complete are key. I like to use the Star Wars Cookbooks for kids! They also have Harry Potter cookbooks, Sesame Street Cookbooks, and countless online resources for parents like who you have gone through the process.
Rice Krispies Treats: We LOVE cooking rice krispies treats at the center with our students. They are easy, fun, and full of mostly shelf-stable ingredients. They are also super easy to modify for allergies. You can cut them in any shape you like. They can be multicolored. You can BUILD with them! The possibilities are endless, and the clean-up is quick.
Banana Bread: Everyone has a fantastic banana bread recipe. We included “Big Bird’s Banana Bread” recipe because it was specifically designed with little hands in mind. It’s yummy, healthy, and perfect for breakfast and snacks!
Frozen Yogurt Bites: These are so cool because you really can’t go wrong with flavors. Fruit and Yogurt are foods for all ages, so an older sibling can make a scrumptious treat FOR a younger sibling. Silicone baking molds come in all sorts of shapes from robots to unicorns, so you can have “themed tea parties” with your frozen treats on the side!
Mug Cakes: Full disclosure, we make these in my house all the time. They’re quick, simple, and small, perfect for a little sweet bedtime bite while we read. If you are totally out of energy but still want to do something a little extra sweet with your littles, this one “takes the cake.”
No Bake Cookie Dough Balls: All the fun of making cookie dough without any of the worry about raw ingredients or messing with the oven! This is one example of a really great recipe that accommodates allergies and has healthy ingredients for growing bellies.
We are not always the parents we want to be, all patience and creativity. But you are amazing. All of you. Just as you are. At the end of the day, you’re not going to remember spotless counters. You’re going to remember the first time they cracked an egg. You’re going to remember when you mixed up baking flour and baking soda and laughed at the result. And they’re going to remember that even on a cold, rainy Tuesday, you all found a little magic together before bedtime.
Do you have recipes you and your families use when baking with kids? We would love to see them! Share them in the comments.
With love (and plenty of baking disaster stories!)
LJ and your Common Ground Family
Team Spotlight: Kindergarten + School Age
Our Kindergarteners, better known as “The Jellyfish” are doing swimmingly with Miss Janette!
The small class experience has really allowed Miss Janette to take our kids on a hands-on, personalized adventure for their first year of elementary school. They do yoga, they utilize play in all their lessons, they get up-close and personal with science projects and class activities. It has been such a delight seeing them grow so much in so little time!
Our School-Age Kids don’t “check out” when they check in, thanks to Ms. Victoria!
Once the Before/After care kids get to their outdoor classroom, the fun really starts! Ms. Victoria has taught them kickball, read Encyclopedia Brown, even made elephant toothpaste! They are even making a HAUNTED HOUSE for our Trunk or Treat Spooktacular!
They may only be here for a few hours, but our School Age crew really makes that time count for something.
We have found that, for both groups, the more focused physical activity the better. These two teachers really get to know the students in their care, take account of what they need, and make sure they provide for them in a patient, structured way. In doing so, these kids feel confident in trying new things and exploring their curiosity.
Thanks, Elementary School Team! You exemplify what Common Ground stands for.
WOYC21: Our Playful Pandas are Living it Up
All week we have been celebrating “Week of the Young Child” with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and it has been a TOTAL BLAST.
Ms. Pinky and Ms. Simi in the Playful Pandas have really taken this opportunity to flex their incredible teaching muscles and show the world how much education really happens in play-based learning.
On Music Monday, Mr. Josh stopped by to play a little concert for each class. The Pandas got to play instruments and sing along to practice rhythm, patterns, and cause and effect! They also got to sing their heart out and dance the morning away.
On Tasty Tuesday our Pandas Teachers went above and beyond! Ms. Pinky and Ms. Simi presented their students with all different fruits. the kiddos got to touch and taste each one, then they took turns placing them into the blender. They even got to press the little blender button, much to their surprise and delight! Afterwards they placed the smoothie mix into little popsicle makers. While these froze a little more, the pandas got to try their concoction. At the end, they got to eat popsicles they made themselves. It was a step by step, multi-sensory science experiment that ended in a tasty treat!
Work Together Wednesday was quiet, cold, and rainy. But our Playful Pandas teachers had their kiddos build large, technicolor castles together. At the end, they all picked up the mess one piece at a time. Teamwork, patience, social practice. All these essential building blocks to emotional resilience and independence can come from something so simple.
Artsy Thursday is maybe my absolute favorite, and a perfect example of why kids’ art needs less guidance and more trust from teachers. Ms. Simi and Ms. Pinky put out paint, string, and paper. Then they stepped back and waited. The result was absolutely incredible. These one year olds stepped up, picked up the yarn, and began goofing around together. They splashed colors around, they shared, they made art. If we had walked them through step by step, it would have been a project. It would have been uniform. This was creative expression. This was pre-writing, fine-motor work, and independent experimentation. This. Was. Brilliant.
PLAY TO LEARN. LEARN TO PLAY. LEARNING IS JOY. Thanks for celebrating with us, Pandas!
Stay tuned for more wonderful ways our classes celebrated this week!
Paleontology and Potatoes
When it comes to Child-Led Learning, Full-Body Play, and Play-Based Curriculum, our Owls Teachers are really DINO-mite.
Today was the last day of Spring Break, and we wanted to do something extra-special for the Owls. They spent last week solving fairy riddles, sewing their own stuffed animals, and just enjoying each other’s company. Being a whole class of hybrid learners, we knew what they really needed was a technology detox. The one drawback to last week was that it was pretty cold each day! But today is pretty mild, and we wanted to get the kids outside as much as possible before school restarted…
There is no greater grand-finale to a no-tech week than a prehistoric dinosaur dig!
The idea came from last summer, where we had noticed some of the kids were digging, looking for “dino bones” in the mulch. We thought to make it an actual activity for our spring break, so it was time to get our hands dirty! The owls prepared for our dino dig outside in our garden patch with Miss Liz! After the fun dirt patch was all set up and the owls went in for snack, something strange happened… suddenly the dirt was filled with small dinosaur skeletons and a scattering of gorgeous jewels! The students were absolutely delighted. They gathered around the patch with spoons and plastic baggies, carefully sifting through the new dirt to find “long-forgotten” treasures. The children had a great time observing the various rocks and minerals they had found. What we were delighted to see was, rather than being a total free-for-all, they began helping EACH OTHER find dinosaur skeletons amongst the dirt. They all took turns scooping and combing through soil, feeling for a fossil, bones or rocks. When some students found more dinosaurs than others, they made an effort to re-hide the skeletons and guided their friends to find it for their keeping.
This activity was an absolute delight for everyone involved. Not only did they get to experience a “paleontology dig,” but they practiced working on their socializing, patience, fine motor skills and problem solving. These social-emotional tools are as essential as any reading/writing practice, and the events have spurred their imagination for future games and projects. At the end of the day, everyone went home happy and with great treasures, a truly wonderful way to end the spring break at Common Ground.
This was just the first digging project. We have a lot of planting to do in April, especially during Week of the Young Child.
The Owls class has shown their love of digging and playing in dirt, so we figured a little Spring Break Gardening would partner nicely with our Dinosaur dig. Every so often you end up with a sprouting potato or two in your kitchen. That is an excellent and easy way to start growing your own and teach about nature and sustainability. We started with 6 sprouting potatoes, provided by a family member who started scrap gardening during the pandemic, and a google search https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/potato-grow-bag-instructions/7099.html. The class got to see the sprouting potatoes whole in the classroom and learned that seeds are not the only way things can grow. We purchased soil and two potato planting bags. With good quality Dollar Store spades, the kids took turns and worked together to get the base layer of soil down. We planted our chunks and took turns again to cover them up. The bags are placed on the grassy patch by the main entrance which is perfect for us to be able to monitor when we go out for recess and then add more soil when the sprouts outgrow the top layer.
As you can see, the best memories do not have to take too much effort. This is an afternoon they won’t soon forget! We encourage you to go on outside and get your hands dirty! You won’t regret it.
