Muffin Tin Monday

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This week for Muffin Tin Monday we are at Little Bug's Nona's house (my mom's house). We are on a mini vacation away from home this week but that didn't stop us from having a muffin tin meal on Monday. In fact, I decided to do a muffin tin breakfast instead for something different and so my mom and  I brainstormed things we could make her - luckily for us Nona had a variety of breakfast foods in her house.  I also decided on Sunday night at about 11:45 PM that I wanted to make mini pancakes after seeing little cute pancakes on a stick bookmarked on one of my Pinterest boards. (By the way if you've never seen this site you should check it out - it's awesome!)

So there I stood at the griddle almost at midnight excitedly making these pancakes thinking Little Bug would love them. And she did. Perhaps she loved the syrup more - she loves to dip foods. Here was what we came up with for her Muffin Tin Breakfast.

Top Row: Mini pancakes, syrup to dip, blueberry toast (and a cute little glass for serving OJ - that was transferred to a plastic cup about 5 minutes later!)
Bottom Row: fruit kabobs, yogurt with whipped cream and sprinkles, dry cheerios

If she is dipping food she is a happy camper!

Muffin Tin Monday

Mondays sure do come quick. I thought about doing a muffin tin breakfast for Little Bug (because she asked for a muffin tin at 8 am) but she said she wanted a muffin tin lunch. Then she comes up to me around noon as I was feeding Little Monkey with a bag of pretzels and a peanut butter to go container wanting a snack so I thought it was time to feed the kid! Of course she is an instant gratification kind of girl at almost age 3 and she went at sat at the table waiting for her lunch asking me every couple of minutes if it was ready. This one took a little longer because I made her a cheese quesadilla. She LOVES cheese and actually will just eat tortillas plain without being cooked. She's never really eaten a quesadilla before but I thought it would be perfect - and it was a hit.

 Top row: apples, peanut butter, pretzels

Bottom row: quesadillas, pears and peaches, a few more quesadillas

After she ate the pretzels I put some salsa in that cup for her to dip her quesadillas. I asked her if she liked it and she said yes (but had a weird face on as she ate it). She probably said she liked it just because I said I did! 

For other Muffin Tin creations click here

Make Your Own Pop-up Book

Little bug has some pop up books that she likes to look at. Did you know you can make your own pop up books at home? Sure, they aren't as sturdy but it still works the same way! You could make up your own stories and characters or use it as a review book for colors, shapes, etc.

Pancake Art

After seeing an awesome blog on pancake art I thought Little Bug would love it too! She definitely did. Now my first pancakes were pretty simple because without looking at a picture I can only draw one thing well- a beach scene. I can draw other things such as animals if I have a picture to look at so maybe next time I'll try something new. I used some shake and pour pancake batter, divided the batter up, colored it, and added the colored batter to some candy squirt bottles. For directions on how to do the pancakes visit the Jenni Price Pancake Art Blog.

This picture was rotated the correct way but for some reason when I add it to my post it is sideways.  So turn your head and you can see the beach scene I made for Little Bug.

 She enjoyed eating them! 

 I cooled off the pan and let Little Bug make some

 I helped her out a bit

 I made some random colorful pancakes as well as a butterfly, ladybug, and snail

I didn't want the extra batter to go to waste! 

Really the possibilities are endless - it all depends on your creativity! 

Muffin Tin Monday

See other Muffin Tin creations

Well it's Monday again and instead of doing a Muffin Tin Lunch I did a Muffin Tin Snack. Today Little Bug, my mom, and I were going out to run some errands when we normally eat lunch and so we picked up lunch on the way home. I suppose I could have put Little Bug's "hangaburger" and apple dippers from her happy meal into a tin but I thought a snack would be better in a muffin tin. No theme this week - I just used what we had around the house! 

top row:  grapes, Jell-o jigglers, croutons (she loves croutons!)

bottom: pudding with sprinkles, PB rollups, a watermelon butterfly

She only ate about  half of the snack. I guess I should have put in some cheese because as she was eating my mom was eating some sharp cheddar cheese and crackers in the kitchen. Little Bug wanted a piece and then she went back for another, and another, and another. And so then she was too full to finish her snack. 

D is for Dinosaur

Little Bug and I made this craft a while back but I don't think I ever posted a picture of it. We had a dinosaur day because she just loves dinosaurs! If you look closely the body is made out of an Uppercase D.

Letter of the Day - Letter R

When I told Little Bug that we would do Letter of the Day activities I asked her what letter she wanted to do  - and she chose R so that is what we did. Here are some pictures of the activities we did today:

First she sorted the wagon wheel pasta by colors ( I colored the pasta using rubbing alcohol and food coloring)

Grabbing a bunch of pasta

I drew a rainbow and had her line up the pasta. I helped her the most with the red showing her how to do it but she did the rest on her own. 

Little Monkey just sat and watched (he was supposed to be napping but wasn't so he joined us)

After she made the rainbow she went and got the foam letter R from her playroom. 

Then we looked at the letter R on starfall.com She uses my phone as a mouse (she would try to touch my screen like she does with my phone but I told her it doesn't work that way - so I set up my phone as a mouse)

Next, she did some do-a-dot painting

R is for Rose

Finally, with the leftover pasta I had her work on some fine motor skills by using tongs to move the pasta from one container to another. 

Muffin Tin Monday

Muffin Tin Monday

It's Monday again which means it's time to make a muffin tin meal. I usually do lunch because that always seems the easiest although today I was quite tired and almost, I said almost, didn't have the motivation to do it. I was trying to think of a theme and also wondering what I could put in it when the idea came to me. This morning we have been doing Letter R activities so we made a pasta rainbow and did a do-a-dot rainbow so I thought to myself that a rainbow lunch would be perfect......................now could I find 6 things with the different colors of the rainbow?  Luckily I did and I hope Little Bug will like it.  I keep telling myself that I will plan for the muffin tin lunch the night before but it just never seems to happen - I guess other things come up but I'm proud to say I'm still going strong after 4 weeks.

Here is my Muffin Tin Lunch for today:

It's a Rainbow lunch

red= pizza sauce with mozzarella cheese stick dippers

orange = goldfish and cheddar cheese bears

yellow = banana stars

green = grapes

blue = gogurt (would have loved to do blueberries but we are all out!)

purple = prunes

Swat the Fly Game

Little Bug loves using the fly swatter. I'm not a big fan of her touching the yucky end that is actually used to swat the flies but she loves the idea of swatting. Since she loves swatting I thought she would love the "Swat the Fly Game". When I taught first and second grade a very popular game we would play to review spelling words or high frequency words was "Swat the Fly". I decided to try this game at home with Little Bug using Uppercase letters of the Alphabet. She knows most of them already so this game was a great review. Here is how you set up the game:

Materials:
* one or two clean fly swatters (mine were used simply for this game - I got them for $1 at the Dollar Tree)
* a piece of masking or duct tape for each of the fly swatters
* index cards with words, letters, numbers, or whatever you are reviewing written on them

Directions:
1. Spread the cards word, letter, number, etc side up on the ground. They don't have to be in a row. In fact, I always spread them out in random directions to make it more of a "hunt".

2. With my first or second graders it was a "face-off" game. With their backs turned away from the cards I would call out a word and then after I said the word the students turned around and it was a race to see who could find the word first. Once a student finds a word he swats it with the fly swatter. The tape on the back picks  up the card. (** for safety the students could not lift their fly swatter up past their shoulder)

3. The student would hand the swatter to the next person in line and repeat.


Now when I did this activity at home Little Bug was just playing and I did not use all 26 letters. In fact, I chose only the letters in her full name and maybe 3 more. I called out a letter and she swatted it. She loved playing this game! This game can be used to review any concept including numbers, letters, letter sounds, colors, shapes, and even math problems. For example, you could have students find the sum, difference, product or quotient when given an equation. There are so many possibilities!

Little Bug found a letter! 

Searching for letters

Swatting another letter