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Posts Tagged ‘Miss Anita’

Nov
6

Secret Ingredients for a Better Breakfast (part 2)

Posted in Bits and Pieces, parenting, Recipes

At age 2, Miss Anita's son Peter, loved waffles and strawberries. He still does now that he's 11!

“When I get up in the morning, what do I do?
I do this and that and that is what I do.”

- by Claire Clarke from Kindermusik Imagine That: Hello Weather

With all of the morning busyness, I find that breakfast preparation needs to be quick and not create a lot of dishes. So, I tend to make ahead and make a bunch.

I’ll mix up a lot of French toast batter (with vanilla in it of course…see Secret Ingredients for a Better Breakfast! – Part 1) and cook two or three loaves of bread worth of French Toast. Hooray, it’s eggs in a form that both of my boys will eat! I sprinkle both sides with cinnamon, adding flavor without adding calories or sugar. Then, I freeze it and we toast the pieces we need in the morning.

My other favorite make-ahead breakfast is Breakfast Burritos. Here’s how:

In a large skillet, cook ground chicken or turkey sausage according to package directions. When fully cooked, dump the sausage into a very large bowl. Use the same skillet to cook frozen hash browns according to package directions. I like to buy the ones from Costco and sprinkle them with cumin, dried cilantro, and some chili powder as they cook. When golden brown and fully cooked, dump the hash browns into the bowl with the sausage. Scramble a dozen or so eggs and cook in the same skillet. Add the fully cooked eggs to your big bowl along with some 2% milk shredded cheese. Stir the filling ingredients until they are combined.

Wrap a dozen medium size whole wheat or regular tortillas in paper towels and microwave them for 30 – 45 seconds or until warm and soft. Fill tortillas with egg/sausage/potato mixture and roll up. (Note: If your tortillas crack when you roll them, they need a little more warming.) Wrap each burrito in foil and place them in a gallon size freezer bags. When you want to eat a breakfast burrito, remove foil, heat in the microwave and enjoy with salsa and/or Tabasco sauce if you like.

-posted by Miss Anita, who also always makes lots and lots of pancakes while the griddle is out! And the same with the waffle iron. She likes to do dishes once and eat lots of times!

Tags: Miss Anita, parenting, recipes, Things to do

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Nov
4

Secret Ingredients for a Better Breakfast (part 1)

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, parenting, Recipes

Alex, Miss Anita's son, loved pancakes when he was 4 and still does at age 9!

“Great A, little a,
This is Pancake Day!
Flip it high, Flip it low,
Those that come after may sing heigh-ho!”
-adapted Mother Goose Rhyme from Kindermusik Our Time: Milk & Cookies

My Our Time classes are having a wonderful time with this rhyme and my giant colorful pancake pan (otherwise known as the parachute!)

Pancakes are a favorite food at my house – one of our favorite breakfast meals. Recently I realized though, that pancakes aren’t the healthiest thing for us to eat for the most important meal of the day. And, then there’s the whole morning rush thing. I don’t have time for a lot of pancake flipping in the morning.

So, I’ve been making a few modifications.

The first breakfast secret is the secret ingredient the kids know about. It’s vanilla flavoring! We put a splash of vanilla in our pancake batter. When they are sizzling on the griddle, they smell like those yummy waffle cones. And, since they have more flavor they don’t need as much butter or syrup.

We use our “secret vanilla” in waffles and oatmeal too!

Now, for this next secret I need to swear you to secrecy. My boys don’t know about this one! I also mix a tablespoon of soy protein powder into the pancake batter. What they don’t know is, in this case, good for them. Alex doesn’t like the breakfast meats so this is a great way for him to get some added protein. Peter loves bacon – but only bacon – and really shouldn’t eat that breakfast meat every day.

Stay tuned for my last secret – my answer to the busy morning dilemma - in another post.

- posted by Miss Anita, who mixes peanut butter into the Cream of Wheat cereal for more protein and flavor.

Tags: Miss Anita, recipes, Things to do

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May
14

Games for Babies: Beak-it

Posted in Games for Babies, parenting

In my Village Classes, we’ve been exercising little arms, legs, and brains to one of my favorite poems.

One misty moisty Morning
One misty moisty morning,
When cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to see an old man dressed all in leather.
He began to compliment
And I began to grin.
How do you do?
How do you do?
And, how do you do again?

When we get to the repeated “How do you do?” section, we stop the exercises and “beak-it” the babies on each word “you.” Beak-it? Yes!

Beak-it is a term used in my family for making eye contact and then gently touching baby’s nose, chest, or tummy with your pointer finger.

The touch is paired with language, either the poem above, or a simple “beep” or “beak-it.”

Although I can’t say I have an actual memory of playing “Beak-It,” when I was I baby, I know it was a favorite in my family. We even called one playful Aunt, “Aunt Beak-it.” It’s so simple, yet so fun!

- posted by Miss Anita, who loves the look of glee on a baby’s face during a “Beak-It! Game!”

Tags: babies, Miss Anita, parenting, Things to do

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Apr
16

Building for Fun – and so much more!

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That

If you are on a beach with Uncle Hans & his friend Jack-in-the-Box, you’re probably an Imagine That preschooler waiting for the cruise ship to pick you up and whisk you off on the next leg of the journey (in your musical mind!) And while you’re on the island, you should build sand castles.

Of course, that’s what we’re doing in class. (If you’re not in Imagine That right now, you can find out how we build sand castles indoors during many of our upcoming Spring Mini Session(no longer available) and Summer Classes – like Creatures at the Ocean, ABC Out & About, 1,2,3 Octopus & Me, and On the Road.)

Building is a childhood favorite and jam-packed with learning. Read on to discover how building structures strengthens each of the following developmental areas:

Cognitive: Building lays the foundation for scientific concepts such as gravity, balance, weight, and stability. Children engage in problem solving. “If I add another block on this side, it falls over. Let me try it over here.” Mathematical concepts abound: depth, width, height, length, measurement, volume, area, classification, shape, symmetry, equality (same as), and inequality (more than, less than).

Language: Building is accompanied by conversation. Older children talk about what they’ve built, why they’ve built it, and use their creation as the setting for pretend play. With children of all ages, adults can describe parts of the structure, ask questions, and make suggestions.

Emotional: The best part of building a tower can be the glee of knocking it down. Or, sometimes it falls before you want it to and you need to work through disappointment and rebuild. (This is a great life lesson. There are many times when our first plan doesn’t work out and we need to persevere and try it again.)

Social: Children need to learn to respect the building others have done. They share and practice give and take so that everyone has the pieces they need.

Physical: It takes a steady, controlled hand to add a block to the top of the tower.

-posted by Miss Anita, whose boys love to build with the wrapped rolls of toilet paper when we bring them home from Costco, and by taping boxes and cardboard tubes together, and with pillows and couch cushions, and with wooden blocks, and with…

Tags: brain, emotional development, kindermusik, language development, Miss Anita, physical development, preschoolers

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Mar
24

Dancing Our Math!

Posted in Child Development, Music and the brain, Things to do

Arkansas is a wonderful place for dancing. Specifically, doing the “Arkansas Traveler Dance” in an Our Time class. It’s a memory-making time of whole-class fun that lays the foundation for mathematical success!

The dance follows a pattern. We circle round the room, tap our toes, go in & out, and swing our partners. Then we repeat those steps, in that same order each time. You’ll find patterned dances throughout all of our Kindermusik classes!

You can dance your patterns at home, too. You can also look around you and point out patterns to your child. Look for patterns in nature (such as zebra stripes), on the your clothes and soles of your shoes, and all around (floor tiles, wall paper, ceiling tiles…) The elements of our daily routines follow a pattern. Eating is a great example: breakfast, lunch, dinner – repeat.

With preschoolers, you can create and extend patterns. Move to a pattern: jump, step, jump, step. Create a food patterns at snack time: cracker, raisin, cheese cube, cracker, raisin… Children love stickers and rubber stamps and they are perfect for making a pattern on paper.

Recognizing patterns and adding to them lays the groundwork children need to understand mathematics. Later in school, this foundation helps them understand things such as why a particular method of calculation works (or doesn’t) and the reason one side of a triangle is always related to the other two sides.

“Mathematics is an exploratory science that seeks to understand every kind of pattern–patterns that occur in nature, patterns invented by the human mind, and even patterns created by other patterns. To grow mathematically, children must be exposed to a rich variety of patterns appropriate to their own lives through which they can see variety, regularity, and interconnections.” – Lynn Arthur Steen, On the Shoulders of Giants

-posted by Miss Anita, who as a former first and second grade teacher, knows that patterns are the foundation of math (and of language!)