Our Inspired Journey

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now...ever since I attended a literacy workshop here in town for moms of kids age 2-5. Cole speech therapist told me about it first and then some of my friends from church ended up going as well, so it was fun to get away from the house for a couple hours one night for an outing of my own! Sitting there in the church it was held at, I had flashbacks to teacher trainings I used to attend when I taught full-time before my munchkins came along! My brain immediately went into teacher mode as I soaked up all I could from the presenters to pass on to my "students" back home! The presenters were funded from a grant from Target and were from an organization called the Reading Group here in town where school-age children can go to receive literacy help :)

Here are a few of the ideas I thought were especially fun...

1. Writing in the Sand...A sand tray or cookie sheet with 1/2 cup of Cream of Wheat sprinkled over the surface can be used for writing practice. You guide the child's hand to form letters or numbers, saying them as you do. Ryder loves this one! Cole even loves drawing circles in the "sand" and when he does we say "around and around and around" for speech practice! I also like that using a cookie sheet and Cream of Wheat saves the many pieces of paper we would otherwise go through in experimenting with writing...the kids think it's more fun too! We write and then shake it to erase and start over! After practicing for a while in the "sand," Ryder now loves writing his name everywhere! Go Ry! He wrote this all by himself!!!2. ABC book...We started this one with Ry this past summer and he loved it too...In a 3 ring binder or any other spiral bound book with blank pages, place a letter at the top of the page and help your child think up words that begin with that letter...say the sound first and then the letter name. After we started this one, Ryder liked being a letter detective and throughout the day, he'd say, "Hey mom! b-b-bat! That starts with b too!" If the book wasn't near, we'd write it down later, but he loved having his own place to collect words! We also placed the picture next to the word so he could read them on his own with picture help if he needed.

3. Word Building...Once your child knows the letter sounds, they can start building words! A fun game to play is placing objects before them like (banana, apple, turtle) and saying "Write the 1st letter of each word in the sand." Once they do, they can try to read the word...B-A-T, bat!

4. Bathtub literacy...Bathtub crayons are also fun for writing practice but messy, so be prepared to scrub your walls after using them! Ryder started using foam letters to make words and as his fine motor skills have progressed, now likes writing them with the bathtub crayons :) We still like using the foam letters to make rhyming words. For example, make the word "BAT" then take off the "B" and try to find the "M" ...(especially fun in bubble baths!) The ending still says "-AT", but now the first sound is mmm...what is our new word? "M-AT, MAT!" Ryder plays this on his own now sometimes!!!"

Okay, enough literacy, now onto COOKING! My mom gave me this cookbook, "The Sneaky Chef," before we left California and I didn't really give it a good look until a few weeks ago...now I'm hooked! The idea is to put as many healthy foods our kids don't like to eat into their food without them refusing to eat it because of the taste! In order to do this, there are several "purees" she has you make that make it easier to add the power foods (spinach, sweet potatoes, carrots, white beans, wheat germ, etc...)to recipes without tasting the chunks that many of our kids don't like!

Now I have to admit...I like being honest with my kids, and don't like the idea of tricking them into anything...I want them to know vegetables are good for them and that they should eat them to stay healthy! If your kids are really picky this may not work, but because Ryder has become better lately (he used to be incredibly picky!) I've had him start to cook with me so he sees what is going into his food and learns to love eating it!

This has been great not only for my boys, but for John and I also! The bottom line is, by adding power foods to our everyday meals, we are getting more of the good stuff than we would normally eat! I would encourage you to go to her website where she posts some of the recipes from her book, including all the purees she adds to her meals! Here are some of my favorites that we've tried over the past couple weeks...

1. Breakfast Ice Cream...it's really just a smoothie thick enough to eat with a spoon! Frozen banana, a few teaspoons of plain yogurt, honey, a teaspoon of cocoa powder (Ryder wanted chocolate!) and a quarter of an avocado! Sounds strange but SO good! The boys GOBBLED it up after our walk one day when we were craving something sweet!

2. Royal Ice Pops...Frozen blueberries, strawberries or cherries (depending on what flavor you like) and add two cups along with a teaspoon of sugar in the blender with a little water...pour into popsicle molds, let freeze and eat the healthiest popsicle in the world! The boys loved the blueberry popsicles we made the other day...go antioxidants!

3. adding Orange Puree...I've been adding the orange puree to so much of our food lately since we gravitate toward these recipes in her book! The orange puree is just 1 sweet potato and 3 carrots boiled, and pureed in a food processor or blender with a few tablespoons of water, until it makes a thick orange puree! As she mentions in her book, I've added it to our pasta sauce when we have spaghetti, to the inside of the boys grilled cheese sandwiches (you can't tell it's there because the color matches the cheese!) pizza sauce, and taco soup! Again, the boys love carrots so it's not like I'm hiding it from them because they won't eat them on their own, but instead just adding to more vitamins to what we're already eating!

4. adding White Puree...white puree is just a can of white navy beans in the blender with a little water...she adds this also to pasta sauce, pizza sauce, taco soup and my favorite...chocolate chip cookies!!!! The best chocolate cookie I've ever tasted (healthy one at least) is from her book! She uses half the sugar and adds wheat germ, whole wheat flour, white bean puree and they are so good!!!

I would highly recommend getting her book for all of us with young ones and those of us who like to EAT like kids sometimes...it helps us add good stuff to the foods we love! Thanks to Missy Chase Lapine, my boys are taking a break from goldfish every once in a while and now munching on baked chick-peas with a little cinnamon and sugar! Yum, Yum! Check out her website for more http://www.thesneakychef.com/ This plus so many more recipes that "fix" our favorite foods are in here...Happy Cooking!