Taste Testing Tuesday is here once again! Today we’re trying some canned fruit. Sometimes fresh fruit just isn’t readily available or canned fruit is simply easier to pack in a lunch. Canned fruit can by purchased in larger cans to serve more people or in individual cups size servings. Whatever your reason, canned fruit is good to eat! There are quite a few kinds of canned fruit to try but today we will be looking at 4 kinds for our taste test.
#1.) Peaches.
#2.) Pears.
#3.) Mandarin Oranges.
#4.) Grapefruit.
I have to say I think these are ALL delicious! Give each one a try and see what you think. Remember, you can make your taste test even more fun by making a chart and adding a face in each box that shows what you think about each type of fruit. A smiley for “Yum!”, a straight face for “It’s ok.” and a frowning face for “Umm, no thanks!” For an example, here’s the one we used when we taste tested carrots in an earlier blog post.
Other canned fruit you might want to use for your taste test could be pineapple, cherries, apricots, mixed fruit, plums, prunes, etc. Sooooo……drum roll!! Which type of canned fruit wins?! 🙂 Each person’s favorite might be different and that’s ok! I hope you have fun with your Taste Testing Tuesday today! (Ha! Say that fast 5 times! LOL) 😉
Happy Memorial Day! How do you celebrate Memorial Day? There will be many picnics and parades planned across our nation in celebration today. While we enjoy the day, let’s stop and consider those who gave their lives in service of our great country. May we truly be thankful for the freedom we have yet today and appreciate those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for us.
When I was in school, the first thing we did each morning was to stand, face the American flag, place our right hands over our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance together. Is that done in schools now? I wonder if children are still being taught the Pledge of Allegiance? Do they know the words to the Star Spangled Banner? I would like to suggest that if these things aren’t being taught in schools anymore or if you are home schooling your children, that you take on the responsibility to teach both things to them.
I am saddened by the lack of respect for our great country that I see in some people today. And I am touched and thankful each time I am some place where our national anthem is sung and I see see children and adults that remove their hats, look at the flag and sing the words as best they can. In fact, it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear/sing the Star Spangled Banner. This was made more real to me when our own son was in the Army and he was in harm’s way in Iraq…all to protect our country and freedom.
I know our country has a lot of problems and there is much disagreement on how things should be run, but can we lay that aside today and just be grateful to those that have kept our freedom available to us with their very lives.
I appreciated finding this picture which might help you in teaching and explaining the Pledge of Allegiance to your kids.
Here is the first verse to the Star Spangled Banner, which is usually all that is sung:
Have a wonderful Memorial Day and may we each continue to love and support our great nation…and love and support each other! 🙂
This blog post might have a little different twist on what a Dream Board for Kids is. Depending on the child’s age, you can do this activity in different ways to match the child’s ability. All you need is a piece of paper or poster board, some used magazines (that are ok to cut pictures out of), scissors and glue.
The idea is to pick a theme for the child’s board. For example, it might be a board about animals they would like to own some day or animals that they like. Let your child look through a magazine for pictures that fit the theme. Cut them out (good practice for using those fine motor skills!) and arrange them on the piece of paper. When they are in just the right places, glue them down.
A title could be added to each board or left off…whichever way the child likes it. Depending on what type of magazine you are using, what type of pictures will be readily available. For instance, a cooking magazine will have lots of pictures of food. A board with all types of food they would like to eat is a good theme too.
You can leave space between the pictures or let them overlap. Here’s a Dream Board of fun activities they might like to try someday.
Making a Dream Board gives you the opportunity to ask questions about what your child likes about a particular picture. If they chose a picture of people using paddle boards, you can ask why they like that idea or what do they think would make that a fun activity. You can gain insight into what your child thinks is fun and even find some activities that you might like to try to do together.
Maybe a Dream Board could be about a picture they found of a house they like. They could add pictures of furniture or what a kitchen might look like, etc. If you have a gardening magazine, your child could cut out pictures of plants and flowers they like and then arrange them in the shape of a garden. How about pictures of birds? How many different birds can you find? The ideas are endless! If you start looking through your old magazines and see what type of pictures are there, the ideas will come to you. And Dream Boards are great for sharing with others too, like grandparents. 😉 Your child will be proud to share what he/she made and to tell all about why they used each picture.
This is a fun, simple and inexpensive activity to try! I hope you’ll enjoy doing it with your favorite kids! 🙂
A hobby we have enjoyed for many years is watching the birds around our house. Our kids and grandkids have also enjoyed watching the birds that come to our bird feeders. We have fun trying to figure out what each bird is. There are many books available that can help with that and now there are even apps for that purpose. Look for books and apps for your area of the world.
You don’t have to be fancy to put out birdseed to feed the birds. We have used regular bird feeders before but now the tree that we used to hang them from is no longer there. So we have improvised and we still have lots of birds showing up! As you’ll see in the pictures, we are using an old piece of Tupperware that we were going to throw away. Lol We hope to make a better setup, but this is good for now.
What do you feed birds? Here are a couple of charts that can help you decide, but if you want to just buy one type of bird seed I would recommend the Black Oil Sunflower seeds. Many kinds birds will eat those. You will notice a half of an orange in the pictures and that is there to attract the Baltimore Orioles.
Different places in the U.S. will have different birds that live there. And you might have some birds only in the summer and others in the winter and some that live by you year-round. We are in northern Ohio. I’d like to share some pictures of some of the birds that have visited us this year. 🙂 The pictures aren’t spectacular because they were taken with my iPhone through a window, but it will give you an idea of what some birds look like.
#1.) House Finch. This is a male house finch and a female house finch. The male is a brighter red color while the female is more brown. They live in Ohio year-round.
#2.) Dark-eyed Junco. They are a dark gray on top and have white underneath. Juncos live here during the Winter and then migrate to Canada for the summer months.
#3.) White-crowned Sparrow. Notice the black and white stripes on the top of its head. These spend the winter in Ohio but then in the Spring they migrate on up to Canada where they spend the summer. The last day for us to see them here this year was May 17th.
#4.) Northern Cardinal. This beautiful bird is the state bird for Ohio and Indiana and maybe other states too. The first picture with the bright red bird is a male Northern Cardinal. The second picture is of a female that is also beautiful but in a different way. The females beak can be bright orange. Northern Cardinals live in Ohio year-round.
#5.) Black-capped Chickadee or a Carolina Chickadee. It’s very hard to tell the difference between the two kinds of Chickadees so by looking at the map of where each type lives, we can guess that it’s more likely for us to have a Carolina Chickadee here. They are a small quick bird and they don’t seem to stay at the feeder for very long at a time.
#6.) You’re right, that’s not a bird! Haha! But he does come to our bird feeder quite often. We jokingly call him an Alvin-bird. (After Alvin the Chipmunk) Don’t be surprised if you have some unexpected visitors to your feeders! We also have had squirrels, raccoons and even a groundhog show up!
#7.) Common Grackle. I try not to be partial to certain birds, but these guys can be rather annoying. They are a big bird and they scare the other birds away from the feeder which of course seems rather unfriendly. But they are just birds and they get hungry too so I try to be nice to them. 😉 Their body is black and their heads seem to be “shiny” looking. (Iridescent)
#8.) American Goldfinch. I just love these little guys! The male is a brighter yellow than the female but they are so pretty that it cheers me up to see them. They like to come to a feeder with thistle seeds in it, but we don’t have one yet this year. I was happy to see them come to this feeder too. 🙂
#9.) Song Sparrow. There are several types of Sparrows and this one is called a Song Sparrow. Notice the stripes on its chest and belly. That’s one difference between them and some other Sparrows. They live in Ohio year-round.
#10.) Mourning Dove. This is a little larger bird and they make a cooing sound that sometimes is mistaken for an owl. They also live in Ohio year-round.
#11.) Eastern Towhee. Here is a favorite of mine. They are supposedly common around us but we actually don’t see very many of them. The map shows them to be in southern Ohio year-round, but in our area only during the summer.
#12.) House Sparrows. You can also see the Eastern Towhee here again, but look at the other 2 birds. The bird the farthest to the left is the male House Sparrow and the other one is a female. We have a LOT of these around! The male has black around its eyes, down its throat and a patch on its breast. They will sit in the feeder and chatter away at each other and I enjoy watching them.
#13.) Brown-headed Cowbird. This is a pair of Brown-headed Cowbirds. Again, the male is the darker colored one and the female is lighter. Notice the body of the male is black while his head is brown. These are in Ohio year-round. An interesting fact about them is that they will lay their eggs in another bird’s nest and their babies are raised by other birds. Sometimes the baby Cowbirds are bigger than the birds raising and feeding them!
#14.) Tufted Titmouse. They are another favorite of mine. They seem dainty and I like the little crest on their head, kind of like a Northern Cardinal. They are quick and don’t stay at the feeder too long, just like the Chickadees. They visit us year-round.
#15.) White-breasted Nuthatch. Sorry this is a bad picture, but these little guys are super fast and I’ve had trouble getting their picture. They are very fun to watch as they will walk down a tree head first! They are a blue-gray color with white on their breast and head and around their eyes. They are here year-round.
#16.) Red-breasted Nuthatch. This bird looks similar to the White-breasted Nuthatch but notice that it has a black stripe on the side on it head passing through its eye area. They are usually a little more pale orange on their breast than this one is. He is smaller than the White-breasted Nuthatch, but he will walk upside down on trees too and they both have long beaks. They winter in Ohio, but spend their summers in Canada.
#17.) Blue Jay. These are beautiful birds with their blue and white coloring, but they can be a bit loud and bossy to other birds. They have a dark line around their throat which makes them look like they are wearing a necklace. 🙂 They live in Ohio year-round.
#18.) Brown Thrasher. Here is another bird that I like to watch. They started out staying mostly out in the yard away from the house but gradually came closer and closer until now they come right up into the feeder. They are a large bird with rusty brown coloring and a long tail, long beak and stripes on their breast. They are in Ohio only in the summer.
We have other birds visiting us that I haven’t been able to get a good picture of and some of the birds here don’t come up to our feeder. We’ve seen American Robins, Northern Mockingbirds (big favorite!), European Starlings, Barn Swallows, Chimney Swifts (some of these live in our chimney each summer!), Red-winged Blackbirds, Baltimore Orioles (beautiful orange and black birds), Chipping Sparrows and probably more I’m not thinking of at the moment.
It’s amazing to me to watch a bird crack a seed open, break the shell off and eat the kernel by just using their mouth! We would use our hands, wouldn’t we? A very sweet thing that you might see especially in the Spring, is a male bird feeding a seed to his female mate. 🙂 It’s hard to get me stopped once I start talking about birds, but I’ll let this be all for this time! I hope you will try feeding the birds in your area and you will have a new hobby to enjoy with your kids! 🙂
Happy Tuesday to you! It’s another Tuesday for having fun doing a taste test! Today we are looking at some Chobani Greek Yogurt drinks. Our local store only had 3 flavors today so that’s what we had to use for our taste test.
If your kids are so busy playing that they don’t take time to sit down and eat, this might be a good suggestion for a way to get a little more goodness in them. Shake it up, open it, stick a straw in and down the hatch it goes! 😉 Let’s look at our flavors…
#1.) Mixed Berry. This one has blueberries, raspberries and blackberries in it. It’s a cool light purple color. 😉
#2.) Pina Colada is a pineapple coconut flavored drink with pineapple juice in it. It’s a pretty yellow color when you pour it in a cup.
#3.) Peach. As you might expect, this one has peach puree in it and is a nice light orange color.
I believe Chobani also makes their Greek yogurt drinks in other flavors such as Mango, Strawberry Banana, and Cherry Vanilla. Maybe you can find these flavors in your local store. Ok, does everyone have a little taste of each flavor in a cup now? Let the taste testing begin! 🙂 Do you like the Greek yogurt drink? Which flavor is the best? Of these 3 flavors I would say I like the Peach the best, then the Pina Colada and lastly the Mixed Berry. My favorite one is the Cherry Vanilla, so I hope you can find that one and give it a try!
Do the words “Grocery Shopping With Kids” strike terror in your heart or make you groan inside at the thought of trooping through the store with kids in tow? If so, I HEAR YOU! We had 4 little kids once upon a time! 😉 I have a few tips I’d like to share with you that might make your grocery shopping adventures go a little more smoothly.
#1.) If there are any relatives that live close by and would love to spend time with your kids, see how they feel about watching the kids while you shop. Lots of grandparents would jump at the thought of a little more grandchildren time. 😉 But that isn’t possible for all moms (that wasn’t an option for us) so let’s talk about things to do in the store when the kids are with you.
#2.) Make your grocery list ahead of time! Trying to “wing it” when buying groceries is a feat unto itself, let alone trying to remember what all goes into a Reuben casserole while keeping track of the little ones! A list is great for helping you remember what you need to pick up yet.
#3.) If your child is a baby, go at nap time. Tuck them into their car seat and hopefully they will fall asleep on the ride to the store. With car seats nowadays just popping off the base, you can carry a sleeping baby into a store and put them in a shopping cart where they will hopefully snooze while you buy food. (Taking a tired toddler to the grocery store is NOT recommended!)
#4.) Teach your kids from a baby on up to ride in the shopping cart. If that’s the way you’ve always done it, that is what they will expect each time you go shopping. Yes, I know they will eventually “graduate” to walking along with you, but save that time for when you have to! Lol The first time you take them out of the shopping cart and let them walk, will be the last time they will want to sit in the cart. 😉
#5.) Look for a certain color. Depending on the age of your child, there are different ways to play this game. Maybe today is the day for RED and you have your child point out things that are red. Or you start with one color and as they find that color, you move on to another color. For kids that are a little older, you can have them find some of several colors in every row of the grocery store. Or how about finding 10 red things before moving on to blue. You can add your own little twist to this activity however you’d like to play it. One example might be asking, “Can you find a red pepper?”
#6.) Look for numbers. Start with the number 1 and after they find it, move on to 2, then 3, etc. It’s a great way to practice recognizing numbers. You can go as high as your child can and then start over. You might be able to take them to the next higher number by pointing it out to them. The big signs hanging up to show you what is in each aisle might be helpful along with price tags.
#7.) Looking for the letters in the Alphabet. This is along the same idea as finding numbers in order. Begin with the letter A and as each letter is found, they can move on to look for the next letter. This can help with letter recognition and also help kids remember what order the letters of the alphabet go in. Letters are EVERYWHERE in a grocery store! 😉 Finding Q, X and Z might prove interesting! Looking at the picture above, I made it all the way to the letter J! 🙂
#8.) Getting kids interested in what you are buying can make the trip more interesting to them. For instance if you pick up a box of spaghetti, you might say “Now what else do you think we need in order to make spaghetti for supper tonight?” If they don’t know already, they will learn when you show them what else you need. Placing the ingredients for a meal close together in the cart can also reinforce what things go together. I know, sometimes you are just glad to get the items IN the cart, let alone together! 🙂
#9.) Let the kids help with making the decisions about what to buy. “We need to buy some apples today. What color of apples do you think we should get?” Be careful asking things like “What should we buy today?” because that can leave you wide open for some suggestions you might not want to purchase! LOL Asking what color or flavor of a particular item might be a better idea. 😉
“Which flavor of juice should we try this week?” could work. You can leave that question more open or narrow it down more to “Apple juice or orange juice?”
#10.) Teach your kids about picking out nice produce and let them suggest which ones to buy from what you tell them. For example, maybe you like to buy bananas that are a little more ripe, so you would show them the difference between yellow bananas and bananas that are too green yet.
#11.) Kids that are a little older can help with finding the right items you are looking for. Perhaps you buy a certain brand of dog food, but you want to buy the Lamb & Rice instead of the Chicken flavor. Show them where on the package to look to find the right kind you want to purchase.
#12.) This idea takes a little preparation ahead of time, but you can give your kids a scavenger hunt for inside the grocery store. For kids that can read, you can write the words. For younger kids, you can draw a picture. Ideas for the scavenger hunt could be an apple, a banana (any produce works), a box of crackers, a box of cereal, milk, a magazine, toilet paper, etc. The idea would be for the kids to help each other find all the items and cross them off their list. I would tell them they have to stay with you as they look for the items! No running off across the store!
#13.) Of course, there’s the old “If you are good in the store, you can have a special treat when we are done.” The treat doesn’t have to be something you buy. It could be they get to stay up an extra 15 minutes or you’ll read an extra chapter in the book you are sharing.
#14.) Helping to take things from the cart and lay them nicely on the conveyor belt at the checkout could be another fun thing to do, but you be the judge if that is more help than you need! Haha! Kids that are a bit older can really be a help with that.
#15.) Kids generally act up or get grumpy at the grocery store because they get bored with shopping, they are too tired or they get hungry. Some stores have places where they have a free snack available for kids. If your store doesn’t do that, you might want to try having some fruit snacks or little boxes raisins stashed in your purse to bring out if you need them.
While grocery shopping with kids might never be your favorite thing to do, I hope some of these ideas might make it a little easier for everyone involved! From one mom who took 4 kids to the grocery store by herself regularly to each mom facing this today, you’ve got this! You are awesome and you will muddle through! Hugs to you! 🙂
I saw this cartoon on Facebook yesterday and thought it was worth sharing. 😉
Reading is such an important part of a child’s learning experience! In this day and age of electronics, reading can be pushed aside for other forms of entertainment. I hope we will each do all we can to promote reading as a fun activity. 🙂
I came across the cutest little garden project today that kids (and adults!) will love to do! Just had to share it with you here! It’s from the Burpee seed company. Look at these adorable little guys!
We found a surprise visitor hanging out in our garage yesterday! It was not a person. I will give you a few hints and see if you can guess what it is. It’s an animal…it has 4 legs and a tail…it’s dark green and it doesn’t make much noise but it did hiss at us when my husband, Grandpa Rick, picked it up. They move very slowly…can you guess what it is? Do you need another clue? It carries its house with it. Now I’m sure you guessed it right! Look at the picture below to see who surprised us…
A turtle!! Did you guess a turtle? It pulled it’s head and legs inside it’s shell. We think it’s a painted turtle but I actually don’t know much about turtles. The biggest mystery is how did it get inside our garage? Hmm…the garage doors are usually closed unless we need to bring the tractor out. Maybe it snuck in when Grandpa Rick mowed the grass.
Since it couldn’t survive if it stayed inside our garage, Grandpa Rick picked it up using his heavy gloves. Turtles can carry a germ called salmonella so we need to be careful about washing our hands after touching them. Also, we didn’t know if the turtle might try to bite him, so it seemed the best idea to wear gloves while moving it. We found a nice spot of grass away from where it might get stepped on or run over and set it down.
I think it was glad to be back in the grass instead of on the hard cement, but it was still rather scared of us. We must look pretty big to it! It tried to hide down inside the grass but you can still see most of it. Notice it’s one back foot and its cute little tail!
We went away and left it alone so it could move onto it’s next destination. This morning it was gone. So long, turtle friend! It was nice to meet you! We hope you have a good and happy life free in nature! 🙂
It’s Taste Testing Tuesday time once again! Gather ’round for another exciting tasting adventure! 😉 Let’s checkout raisins today and some delicious ways to eat them. So what is a raisin? A raisin is just a dried grape. They can be used raw or in cooking and baking. Raisins come in a variety of sizes and colors, but the most common are the brown raisins and the golden raisins. You can buy the general type of raisins or you can buy organic raisins. So how do people like to eat raisins? Straight from the box is a great way!
There are vanilla yogurt covered raisins.
And even Chocolate yogurt covered raisins.
Have you ever tried “Ants on a Log”? It’s simply a banana sliced in half lengthwise, topped with peanut butter and then a few raisins added on top for the “ants”. 😉
Trail mix is a popular way people like to eat raisins. You can pretty much mix together whatever nuts and dried fruit and candies that you like and call it Trail Mix. The one I made has walnuts, pepitas (pumpkin seeds), almonds, pecans, dried cranberries, raisins and M&M candies. It’s a nice mixture of sweet and salty, crunchy and chewy, and (minus the M&M candies) fairly healthy.
Here are a few other ways to use raisins…my mom used to bake them in cookies; some dry cereal has raisins in it, like Raisin Bran; oatmeal is really good with raisins; they are great in salads, especially in a broccoli salad; and cinnamon raisin bread is a favorite of mine! A funny story my husband tells from when he was a little boy is that he used to stuff his cheek full of raisins and then spit the juice on the ground like he was chewing tobacco. Haha! (Ok, so that’s kinda yucky, isn’t it?!)
Here’s our little plate, ready for taste testing!
I hope you’ll have fun doing a taste test with raisins and maybe you’ll find a new fun way to eat them! Leave a comment and tell me what is your favorite way to eat raisins! 🙂
The Kids Niche 