This Little Project: This Little Project is Yum

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Dr. Seuss Day: Edible Scrabble Game

A day to celebrate reading? We're in! Dr. Seuss Day (March 2nd) is one of our favorite holidays and it's always a "treat" to decide how we will celebrate. I love being able to sneak some learning into snack time. And this year we made a game of it!

Playing scrabble with cookie tiles was quite the {little} treat for my kids. Jay is old enough to manage the point system. But Jay and Kay had fun making their own crossword puzzles.

I think Dr. Seuss would agree that eating words is a lot of fun!

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Be sure to check out our other Dr. Seuss Day Food fun!

-Dr. Seuss Muffin Tin Meal

-Cat in the Hat Drinks

-ABC Pancakes

Dr. Seuss Day: Muffin Tin Meal

One of our favorite ways to celebrate holidays is with a Muffin Tin Meal.

My kids think it is the perfect {little} touch.

Our Dr. Seuss muffin tin meal was a hit!

From top left to right: string cheese (hat) with red pepper stripes, letter pretzels, green eggs and ham,

red fish-blue fish, oobleck (pistachio pudding), letter cookies

Although we have celebrated Dr. Seuss Day (March 2nd) for many years, I've never made green eggs and ham! I thought they would gobble it right up....but they were are afraid to at first!

It took some prodding, but they finally tried it and were surprised that it tasted the same!

The fun thing about a muffin tin meal is that there is just a {little} bit of each kind of food.

Kids love the variety and the novelty of not having it every day means something so simple can turn the day into something just a {little} bit more special.

Be sure to check out our other Dr. Seuss food fun!

Cat in the Hat Drinks!

Dr. Seuss {Edible Scrabble} Game

-ABC Pancakes

Dr. Seuss Day: Cat in the Hat Drinks!

Dr. Seuss Day (March 2nd) is one of our favorite holidays to celebrate!

My kids loved our Cat in the Hat drinks and they are so easy to do!

The trick to {this little project} is using Dry Erase Washable Markers.

Simple fun. We're good at that around here.

I love how the milk turns the cat white. But if you don't want to risk a glass cup, my {little} kids were equally content with a face drawn on our favorite IKEA cups instead--as long as I put a straw in, lol.

Be sure to check out more of our Dr. Seuss Food fun!

-Dr. Seuss Muffin Tin Meal

-Edible Scrabble Game

-ABC Pancakes

* Affiliate Links included. Opinions are always 100% my own.

Valentine Math {part 2}

Our question today? Can candy make you smarter??

hmmm. I know it's certainly motivating some math learning around here!

How much math fun can you have with a bag of chocolate kisses?

Here are a few {little} ideas we had fun with:

Division Practice Example: 24 kisses started in the heart.

Then Jay separated them into 3 groups to see how many 24 divides into.

Greater/Less Than Game: Of course we used the alligator mouth/heart again!

Estimating: 3 colors of kisses. How many of each?

We always count in spanish too :)

Grouping (division/multiplication): How many groups of five?

Practice counting by 5's (sing to tune of 10 Little Indians)

Adding/Subtracting in groups of 5 (and 2)

Since these are our games from last year, I'm looking forward to playing more advanced math games this year.

The kids are always moving forward in math and that keeps it exciting!

{Part 1} Valentine Math here!

Valentine Candy Math {part 1}

The secret to learning at our house is to keep the kiddos excited. And they always get excited when there is candy involved! Their Valentine's Day loot is perfect for lots of math learning.

With Valentine's Day coming up I've been thinking about what games we will play this year. I never take photos ahead of time, just during the real deal so these are some of our games from last year (in 2 separate posts)!

Greater than/Less than with Hearts: (an example with coins)

I love the idea of an alligator mouth wanting to eat the biggest number to show greatest.

It's the way I learned when I was {little} and so I play these kinds of games with my {littles} now. And a heart is the perfect shape for it!

Depending on the age you are working with, you can change the greater/less than game up. I did simple coins with Kay, more complex with Jay, and used groups of candy as well. The kids turned the heart with the jaws to eat the one with more. They loved it!

Color matching/sorting with candy hearts. We always graph these as well.

Sizing: small, medium, large:
This is great for toddlers and preschoolers.
After you sort all the candy you can graph it too!

Any {little} project with a treat is extra fun!

Here are some of our other {little} candy math projects:
Valentine Math 2010
Halloween Math 2012
100th Day of the Year /Easter 2009

Look for part 2 of our Valentine Math soon!

Homemade Honey Whole Wheat Bread - {A Journey}

I'm celebrating a goal accomplished at this Resolutions time of year!

The goal last year: to not purchase sandwich bread at the store for a year.

Instead I made homemade
Honey Whole Wheat Bread
for a whole year!

And to celebrate I want to share my favorite recipe

and a {little} story :)

My mother-in-law gave us This L'EQUIP Nutrimill Grain Mill awesome wheat grinder as a Christmas gift. And since I had made bread almost every weekend for years as a kid (that's the story coming up) I thought I should put the grinder to good use! That's right, this bread is made {little} Red Hen style: grinding my own wheat and everything (but no, I didn't grow the wheat--I'll tell you where to get some below :)

So I decided that I would make all of our own loaf bread for a year.

I didn't make all our bread--not hamburger buns, bagels, etc. Just loaf bread. We go through about 4 loaves a week, give or take.

And now that it's been 16 months of homemade bread (OVER 250 loaves!) I have to say that this really is a {little project}. Making bread isn't really that hard. It's like most things: it takes practice and patience. It might not turn out perfect every time. But bread is forgiving. And it's yummy too!

The best is that my {little} 4 and 6 year old tell me how much better homemade bread is than the bread from the store. Talk about motivation :)

Now for the story: This past year I have used the same recipe every time. It's the recipe I grew up with. My mom has a friend named Orva. Orva made her own YUMMY bread and my mom starting making it too. Now, Orva is one of those amazing people that has 7 or 8 kids and makes her own bread. And now that I'm a mother too, I can appreciate that! My mom was just that same kind of woman. In fact, she tasted the bread and thought that others would like it too. So what did she do? She put her entrepreneurial skills in motion and got her kids learning how to make bread!

You know how hard it is to find "real work" for your kids to do--especially when they don't grow up on a farm and aren't 16 yet? Well, 12 year olds and 10 year olds can make bread too. How do I know this? Because me and all of my siblings made bread and sold it to our neighbors!

My mom's brilliant idea worked: Our neighbors loved having hot-from-the-oven Honey Whole wheat Bread delivered right to their door on Saturdays. We had a regular route of people every week. Which means we had a regular responsibility! And we also had a regular income which we, as kids, loved!

So, whether you want to enjoy the bread for yourself and family, or put your kids to work,

here is the recipe and some {little} tips too!

Honey Whole Wheat Bread Recipe by

Here are some {little} bread-making tips:

First, making bread isn't hard. It just takes a little practice. Bread is quite forgiving. The main things you need to make bread are: time (I try to do it on a day I'm home a lot because it has to rise) and a willingness to try again if it doesn't work out as well as you liked. I've had bread with bubbles (holes through the middle) and undercooked bread and overcooked bread. But the more you do it, the better you get! Really!

I have a fun red Kitchenaid that was a wedding gift and I love it, except for making bread.

If you are considering a purchasing mixer and want to make bread, you want to get this Bosch instead:

The reason is that the bread dough can wind right up the mixing head of the Kitchenaid up to the motor, which can be a big pain.

So when I make bread I mix it in 2 halves (so only 2 loaves worth is in the mixer at a time. This is also easier on the motor (another reason the Bosch is better for bread making) and then the whole batch (4 loaves since I mix 2 of the recipe above ) is still rising and cooking at the same time.

I purchase my wheat here, from a LDS Home Storage Center.

Whole wheat flour and white flour are different enough that you have to be pretty true to the recipe, using what either calls for. This recipe is a whole wheat recipe and doesn't work with regular white flour.

Notice in the recipe that the first half of the recipe needs to sit for at least an hour. That is important. It's called "sponging" and it helps the bread to be softer.

Also, the knead time of 10 minutes at the end of the recipe is also important to the texture of the bread. I stay close by during that time, checking the consistency of the dough and adding more flour as needed. The dough should pull away from the side of the bowl as it mixes and not be too wet.

It's best to add that flour a {little} at a time. It's easier to add flour to wet dough than to add water to a dough that is too dry--because the water doesn't mix in as well!

If you haven't kneaded dough by hand before, don't worry! It's not that hard. Ask a friend who knows or look for a good video of how to do it on youtube :) You just do that at the end to form the dough into 2 loaves for the pans.

One great thing about making your own bread is that you know just what is in it. And this bread is healthy goodness that I can feel really great about feeding my family.

Not only that, but it's soooo yummy! There's no treat like hot bread from the oven!
If you haven't made bread before I hope you will give it a try!
Enjoy!!

You may also be interested in our (easy) Favorite Breadsticks!

Thanksgiving Blessing Mix Printable

I've shared our family's favorite Blessing Mix before. It's a treat we love to give to family and friends. This year I made a printable to go with it.

I finished {this little project} weeks ago but with all our baby preparations and being on partial bed rest I haven't shared it here.
Luckily, we can be thankful all year long :)

Below are files in color and black and white of the Thanksgiving Mix Printable: Thanksgiving Blessing Mix Printable

B&W Thanksgiving Blessing Mix Printable
Wishing you and your family a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!

After-Halloween Math

This is what it looked like at our house after everyone brought home their trick-or-treating loot.

It's waaaay too much candy. So our tradition is that the first thing we do is take 5 favorites out and dump the rest of everyone's candy into a bowl and sort it by color.

The kids record the number of each color on each colored paper. My kids had two nights of trick-or-treating so we did this twice-recording the second number on the underside.

Then we compared by graphing all the colors from one night to the graph the kids made of the second night. The graph happens the day after, of course. For the record, the first night had more candy overall.

{little} Ellie also sorted the candies by size and shape later on (no photo). I love using something that they care about to do learning games with. Finishing with a treat is the part that they love!

But my favorite part of {this little project} is that since everyone's candy is in one bowl it isn't really anyone's. So it lasts a lot longer and no one eats too much. We were just finishing last year's bowl when it was time to refill it for this year!