Deirdre, Author at JDaniel4s Mom

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

Getting Ready for Mother’s Day with a Breakfast Sundae

May 7, 2012 By Deirdre

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day and I am hoping that by doing a practice run with JDaniel on how to create a breakfast sundae a week early he will be able to help my husband create one for me. Doing a test run also gave us a chance to do a taste test.

I plan to have muffin tins filled with the same ingredients we used in the dry run in the fridge ready to go the night before Mother’s Day.

What was in the tins?

The green tin contains coconut flakes, raisin bran like cereal, honey nut loops, dried fruit, chocolate chips, and almonds.

The brown tin contains kiwi slices, baked apples, slice grapes, blueberries, sliced strawberries, and cantaloupe.

If you try making breakfast sundaes at your house, feel free to fill your muffin tins with the topping that you like best.

Here are some other topping ideas:

raspberries
blackberries
honeydew melon
granola
mandarin oranges
fruit cocktail
golden raisins

JDaniel tried using chopsticks to move the ingredients into his waffle cone bowl filled with vanilla yogurt to build his breakfast sundae. They were difficult to use with the little pieces of food he tried to pick up. The little piece kept falling out.

Getting Ready for Mother's Day with a Breakfast Sundae

A large spoon did a much better job. JDaniel was able to use it to scrap the cup that contained the baked apples out easily. I will have to let you know next week how the guys do on Mother’s Day. I am looking forward to this simple and tasty treat.

If you like this food creation, here are some more food creations you will love.

Sunflower Snack for Mother’s Day

Fun and Healthy Mother’s Day Bouquet

Star Wars Breakfast for Lunch

Fruity Marshmallow Cloud

What are you hoping to get for Mother’s Day from your family?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Tweak Tweak (An Elephant with Many Questions)

May 4, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

The little elephant in the book Tweak Tweak by Eve Bunting reminds me of JDaniel. His mama tells her to tweak her tail when she has a question and just like my guy she is filled with questions.

Does she want to know what the frog is doing? She is jumping says his mom. The little elephant wants to know if she can jump. Her mom tells her that she can’t but, she can stomp.

As she goes on her walk with her mom she wants to know if she can do the same things monkeys and many other animals can do. Each time her mom points out that he can’t do what they can, but she can do special things that elephants can do.

Her mom also tells her she can walk with her mom, ask questions and learn. Oh! and remember the way home.

What did we do to extend concepts from the book?

Elephant Puppet for Retelling

An old cd with felt ears and wiggling eyes makes a perfect elephant puppet. After reading Tweak Tweak, JDaniel stuck his finger through the hole in the center of the cd to add a trunk to the puppet.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Tweak Tweak (An Elephant with Many Questions)

This is so much fun to play with!

It was a lot of fun to watch the elephant’s nose wiggle up and down while he retold the story. I like pretending to be the elephant too.

Elephant Foot Letter Searching

JDaniel used this elephant’s foot to search for letters in his favorite book.

The toilet paper tube was really too large for isolating letters. I will need to think of a smaller tube for this activity.

Sandpaper and Yarn Letter Practice

JDaniel had fun trying to place pieces of yarn onto sandpaper with the letters of the alphabet written on them.

Here is the E for the elephant he used.

Cooking with Kids: Simple Cinco de Mayo Apple Enchilada Dessert

May 3, 2012 By Deirdre

Today many of you are celebrating Cinco de Mayo! We love celebrate

JDaniel and I had the best time putting this apple enchilada dessert together. It was really delicious and took no time to cook. That is our favorite kind of recipe!

Cooking with Kids Cinco De Mayo Recipe

What could be easier than putting canned apple pie filling into a flour tortilla with a preschooler’s version of a dash of cinnamon? We were able to fill six flour tortillas with the apple pie filling that came in a 21-ounce can.

After folding each tortilla, it was placed into a lightly greased baking pan. Then we poured a mixture of 1/2 cup of the following: margarine, white sugar, and brown sugar that had been heated on the stove on top of it.

The apple enchiladas are baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

We then topped them with vanilla ice cream and strawberries.

They were delicious! If you are looking for a quick and delicious dessert for your Cinco de Mayo feast, these apple enchiladas would be perfect.

Examining His Learning Choices

May 2, 2012 By Deirdre

Yesterday Nicole of By Word of Mouth Musing shared how she made change in the way her children were learning and where they were learning. As a mom I think it is really hard to know sometimes what way or place is the right one for your children.

If you were taught in a certain way, you may lean toward that way for your children. If you really didn’t like that way of learning you may not.

I am not at the stage where I have to make the choice of what school to send JDaniel to for elementary school, but I have always assumed that he would go to our neighborhood public school. Both my husband and I went to public school. I taught in public schools for twenty years. It is still probably where he will be, but it doesn’t have to be.

There are lots of other options for him. He can go to a Christian school or generic private one. There is always the option of home schooling although I think home schooling moms have a special gift that I don’t think I have.

This year he has been attending a neighborhood preschool that meets in a church near our house. He has only gone two days a week. It was hard to him at first. He knew only one other child in his class. JDaniel clung to this child claiming he didn’t need to make any new friends if he had Jake. Finally just this spring he has opened up to making new friends and talking to his teachers. He hadn’t been interested in sharing with them either.

He has fabulously loving teachers that have encouraged him to meet other children in the class and open up and share. It just wasn’t something that interested him.

Yes, he is one of those children. If he is interested, he dives in with both feet and wants to know everything about what he is interested in. I know there are a lot of four years olds that are just like him. If he isn’t interested he doesn’t always want to learn it.

The teachers have provided him with a lot of opportunity to learn or refine his knowledge of colors, numbers, and letters. He knows most of them. He has known them for a couple of years. Colors like orange, gray, and pink don’t interest him or am guessing that is what is going on. Some of the numbers aren’t interesting to him so he skips them or maybe I just thought he knew them.

He is only four and he has lots of time to learn all of his numbers, letters, and colors.

This year I backed off working on teaching him a lot at home. We covered skills as they came up in our everyday life and concepts we found in stories. I knew his teachers were covering them at school too.

After hearing from them recently that he has some things to work on, I have decided to do some home schooling with him this summer.

He is not the type child that wants to play school with me even if gets to be the teacher so, we will be learning things as they tie to books that he likes and as things come up. I will pull out a few workbooks I have gathered and he will get explore concepts on the iPad. He loves getting to use the iPad.

As for next year JDaniel will be going back to the same preschool next year for three days a week and on the rest of the days we will be learning at home through fun and everyday life.

This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday and Pour Your Heart Out!

Pause Life for a Moment- By Word of Mouth Musing

May 1, 2012 By Deirdre

I am thrilled to have Nicole of By Word of Mouth Musing sharing her thoughts with us today. Her blog is one I love to visit. Her writing is honest and truthful. She loves her family and she shares the joys and challenges that come from being a mom. After reading her guest post below, I know you will want to visit her at By Word of Mouth Musing. While you are there you will want to explore both of her blogs. Yes, she has two blogs! Her welcome page will guide you both of them.

Pausing Life For A Moment …

In this world, there are never enough hours in my day.

Always being pulled this way and that.

Second guessing myself every day on my decision making.

Tomorrow I will make a change, slow down, take a moment …

always tomorrow.

BUT …

One day, I sat back, and I thought – if not now, then when?

And I made a change, I slowed things down and worked on the moment …

And how did I ‘create’ this life changing moment? First, I need to revisit my past …

I was one of the Moms who crossed off the dates in her planner for how many days were left in the school year until my kids didn’t race out of the door in the morning.

Lamented the end of Summer since my kids would once again be gone for hours and hours on end.

And the volunteering … room mom, PTA, fundraising, auctions, fashion shows, crafts, parties, even teaching Sunday school. Volunteering at their school did not bring more joy to my children, they just saw a cranky Mom who was overwhelmed with commitments.

I spent many days wondering how to make a change. Many nights awake, wanting a better fit for my family. With a husband who traveled, a life that seemed to be consuming me, and children who I was sure were just in diapers last week – I had a lot of pause for thought.

Then one day – we just didn’t go back to school. I faxed a letter to the school board, withdrew my then six and ten-year-old’s, ordered curriculum and fudged our way thru the Summer. In the Fall, the first day back at our local schools, we put our family on a plane to Panama and had the best field trip evah. All this with never having met a home schooler, and still convinced they lived in the Australian outback with long braids and pinafore dresses, raising chickens and grinding wheat.

It worked out that it wasn’t so easy to pause life, but I could definitely be more present in my life – and in the lives of my kids. And since I couldn’t turn back time or stop the clock, I decided I would be there for as many moments as time would allow.

Now, believe me, there are days, many of them, where life still is crazed. (and cocktail hour arrives sooner rather than later) For the most part, life is filled with plans and activities of our own choosing.

The girls take some classes out and about, they have social lives, and we travel as often as we can. For example; If Dad is hosting a meeting at the Newark airport, it is not on our wishlist. A beach resort in Mexico, on the other hand, has our names on it. My time is also busy with My Blog and its deadlines, guest posts, writing commitments, and conferences … but this busy is rather self-imposed. After all, the world would hardly notice if I stepped off this somewhat indulgent ‘treadmill’.

But I feel present. I feel in touch.

I am slowing it down because I cannot stop it moving forward.

And I cannot go back.

I am always thrilled to write a guest post.

Being asked to write for someone else’s blog home, lets me know that someone is listening.

Someone else is reading alongside me and wants to share my words with their readers.

It makes me feel I am making a difference and that I matter.

So thank you for having me here.

It means a great deal to me …

and as always

Three Child Friendly Spring Salads

April 30, 2012 By Deirdre

Three Child Friend Salads in Muffin Cups

Spring is a wonderful time of year to create simple salad meals for lunch or dinner. In the first muffin cup, JDaniel was served a tomato and strawberry salad. The second cup contains a sweet and sour slaw. The third cup contains a carrot and raisin salad.

Each of the salads is super easy to make. JDaniel helped me grate the cucumber for the slaw and the carrots for the carrot raisin salad.

I think I mentioned before that JDaniel is not a super huge fan of celery. I decided to serve it with a spinach dip thinking that he would spread the dip on the celery and then eat it. He really loves spinach dip. Well, he tried it on the celery and decided that he liked it served on his finger instead.

The salads were a big hit with him. He inhaled them and asked for more.

How can you make the salads featured in this post?

Here are the recipes:

Strawberry and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

2 cups of strawberries
2 cups of grape tomatoes
2 tablespoons of honey

Directions:

1. Cut the tomatoes and strawberries into small pieces.

2. Drizzle honey on the tomato and strawberry mixture.

3. Serve.

Sweet and Sour Cucumber Slaw

Ingredients:

2 large cucumbers, finely grated
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

Directions:

1. Toss all the ingredients listed above.

Carrot and Raisin Salad

Ingredients:

4 large carrots, finely grated
2 tablespoons of mayo
3/4 cup of raisins

Directions:

1. Toss all the ingredients listed above.

These salads were made to be served to JDaniel and me for lunch. You would have to double or triple the ingredients to serve these spring salads to your family.

If you like this muffin tin meal, here are some more you will love:

Road Trip Muffin Tin

Starfish Muffin Tin Meal

4th of July Muffin Tin Meal

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.

Earth Day Craft for Kids- Wearing a Newspaper Hat

April 29, 2012 By Deirdre

We just celebrated Earth Day on Sunday and so I thought I would share with you a wonderful hat JDaniel and I made of newspaper and some odds and ends.

JDaniel wasn’t interested in wearing it for the picture so, I placed it on a rocking horse we keep in the guest room. I think he looks very dapper in it.

This hat is so easy to put together and it only has three supplies needed.

You need two sheets of newspaper, masking or duct tape, and odds and ends (feathers, ribbon, paint, cloth bugs, etc..)

How do you put together your newspaper hat:

Place the pieces of newspaper on top of each other with the top piece at an angle.

Place the newspaper on your child’s head and smooth it down around their head.

While the newspaper is molded down to the crown of their head, wrap the tape around the newspaper where the brim should be.

Take the newspaper off their head and roll the outside edges of the newspaper toward the tape band.

The hat should look like a bowler hat now.

Decorate the hat with odds and ends.

When God Needs Bubbles, JDaniel Will Send Them!

April 25, 2012 By Deirdre

“What do you want for Easter?” JDaniel’s Nana asked him when we were visiting her right before Easter

“I want a bubble machine!” JDaniel replied.

“I am going to give your mom the money for it and you can shop for one when you get home,” Nana answered. My mother-in-law doesn’t drive anymore so, she tends to get her grandchildren’s moms to shop for her.

A few days later we went to the bubble maker section at Target. Yes, they have a bubble maker section. It is filled with bubble guns, wands, along with machines.

I placed all of the options out on a low shelf for JDaniel to look over. There were eight different options. That was probably too many to look through. The decision took a while.

Finally, he decided on a bubble laser gun. The gun required batteries so I guess it counted as a bubble machine.

JDaniel was so excited that he couldn’t wait to hold it in his arms. He held it all the way home in its packaging.

When we got home we unpackaged the laser gun and began a search for the right size batteries. We found one in the spot we keep batteries and had to “borrow” one from an unused toy.

Once the laser gun was loaded and ready to go, we took it outside for a test drive. It produced a plethora of the most beautiful bubbles. They had hues of yellow, red, and blue that you could see as the bubbles floated around the yard.

There was a small dilemma for JDaniel. Do you put down your bubble gun before you run after the bubbles or just carry it with you?

Some of the bubbles quickly floated to the ground and popped. Others drifted across the yard and seemed to disappear in mid-air. Some of the bubbles floated up into the air and seemed to float on forever.

JDaniel decided that those bubbles were going to God. “God must need to see bubbles today!” he announced.

Later when the little boy next door came out he and JDaniel had the best time taking turns chasing bubbles and running the bubble laser gun.

When some of the bubbles started floating up again, JDaniel told him about how God needed to see bubbles today. The boy next door told JDaniel that the bubbles were just popping as they floated up in the air due to pressure.

JDaniel didn’t buy his explanation and continued to announce to the bubbles floating up into the sky, “You are heading to Heaven!”

Guess what little science experts from next door started doing after a short time? He started making the same announcement.

I loved sitting on the driveway manning the bubble tray filled with bubble liquid hearing two little boys shouting, “You are heading to Heaven!” to bunches of bubbles as they ran all over the yard.

It was a truly special afternoon! I bet God loved hearing their words and seeing the beautiful bubbles too.

This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday!

Pausing Life for a Moment- Saturday Morning at Home

April 24, 2012 By Deirdre

JDaniel and I usually run errands or attend an enrichment event on Saturday mornings. It gives my husband some down time after a busy week at work and Jdaniel loves to go places and explore new things.

This past Saturday he wanted to stay home, ride his bike, and collect sticks. The pollen count as been down lately and Saturday continued the downward trend. I thought it was a great day to stay home.

What wonderful morning we had just being outside! JDaniel tore down the streets on his bike with training wheels. He gathered sticks that had fallen in a big rain and hail storm earlier in the week. I loved getting to walk down the street behind him and trim the hedges in the backyard as he gathered. My husband got out the house too and worked on his push mower.

When it was time for lunch, JDaniel declared that it was the perfect day for a picnic lunch on the deck. While he dug out a blanket to spread on the deck with my husband, I boiled hot dogs and assembled lunch plates of red grapes, hot dogs, and potato chips.

The overcast sky created a cool and refreshing time to be outside and eat together. It was a great time to chat and gnash and chat some more. It was heavenly! No one rushed off after lunch we all just sat together for awhile.

It was a wonderful morning of pausing the Saturday routine and enjoying just being home together.

Since JDaniel was a baby, I have treated almost every Saturday morning like it was a weekday morning. I keep busy in the building his experiential background and/ or running errands leaving my husband home to read the Bible, catch up on mail, or do house stuff.

Saturday was a wonderful change in that routine. I am so glad we paused and handled the day differently.

Next week JDaniel has a birthday party on Saturday and the following week I have a blogging event to attend. We will be busy on Saturday morning once again.

I have to admit that in three weeks we are supposed to go to science event at a local science center. Right now it is on the schedule, but after the wonderful morning we just had I am thinking we may just stay home.

Earth Day Meal for Muffin Tin Monday

April 22, 2012 By Deirdre

I need to confess that this in not one of my best muffin tin meals. Things just didn’t come together the way I pictured them in my head. That happens sometimes.

An Earth made of blueberries and green grapes looked amazing in my head. My husband tried to guess what this creation was and couldn’t. Even after pointing out the Florida he was unsure. Telling him it was the Earth seemed to help, but it was still too abstract for him.

So what do you do when your Earth does work, you deconstruct it. The fruit salad Earth became fruit in a muffin tin. Some of the fruit was used to top blueberry yogurt which isn’t really blue by the way. Some went into its own cups and some was used to make blueberry jelly. (I am just kidding.) The jam came right from a jar and was spread on English muffin earthlings. I guess without eyes, a nose and a mouth the Earthlings may look a little abstract too.

I placed homemade granola in the cup between the Earthlings. It was placed there mostly because JDaniel helped me to make it. He is loves to snack on it or have it appear in a meal.

JDaniel didn’t seem to care about how the meal looked. He just dug right in and enjoyed it. Maybe on Earth Day Earthlings really want to eat their favorite foods. It doesn’t matter if they are in abstract or deconstructed forms. It seems to work that way at my house.

Here are some other Earth Day ideas I think you will like:

Recycled Planter on a String

Earth Day Crafts for Kids- Coffee Filter Earths

You will find more Earth Day ideas on my Earth Day and Crafts from Recycled Materials. Please take a few moments and look over the wonderful crafts, food creation and activities I have saved on them.