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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

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+.

Muffin Tin Monday- Easy Apple Crisp

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We decided to celebrate the beginning of fall with some of JDaniel’s favorite comfort foods and a super easy and wonderful apple crisp.

What are some of his favorites?
 He loves carrots and cauliflower (aka while broccoli), sweet potato french fries, and grilled ham and cheese.
The apple crisp recipe is based on one I found in the Clearbrook Fire and Rescue Community Cookbook. It takes seconds to make and really is delicious!
Easy Apple Crisp Recipe
Ingredients
4 cups of sliced apples
1 ( 4 serving) package of butterscotch pudding ( I used pumpkin spice I found in my pantry.)
1/4 butter
1/2 tsp. of cinnamon
1-1 1/2 cups fo Raisin Bran
Directions:
1. Combine apple slices with half the pudding and place them in a greased shallow baking dish.

2. Cream butter with remaining pudding mix and cinnamon.

3. Add cereal.

4. Sprinkle over the apple mixture.

5. Cover and bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

6. Eat!

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday!

Reminder: The Wilton Muffin Tin Starter Kit Giveaway ends tomorow night. There will be three winners.

 
 
 

At the Beach- Myrtle Beach South Carolina

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We left on Sunday for a few days at the beach. We have been to other hotels in Myrtle Beach, but this was our first time at Dunes Village. We loved it so much we plan to go back next year.

The weather was overcast the whole time we were there. We loved the cooler weather and lack of sun beating down on us.

It looked like this most of the time we were there, but it didn’t rain.
JDaniel loved running and searching for shells. I keep thinking about the theme song from Chariots of Fire when I watched him run.
I am not sure what was happening in this picture. I just love that JDaniel’s arms are out and my husband’s are on his hips.
 We spent hours digging in the sand just like a construction machine.
Some days we would head down to the beach for a walk and end up sitting and playing in the sand.
JDaniel loved the indoor water parks. There was one in each of the hotel’s buildings. JDaniel loved the sub and the waterslides. My husband and I weren’t thrilled with going down the slides over and over again. JDaniel was up for going down them four and five times in a row. With fewer people in the waterpark in the fall we were able to climb the stairs and do just that.
He loved when the buckets would dump on my head. He encouraged Dad to help the buckets dump.
Ocean Learning Sites- Links 4 Moms
Mostly he just loved being in the water. We were alway near him. He had no fear of the waves or the water.
This post is linked to Picnesday.

Read.Explore.Learn.-How Did That Get in My Lunchbox?

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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. 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:
If you have children that want to know where food comes from, How Did That Get in My Lunchbox? The Story of Food by Chris Butterworth is the book for you.
It highlights were all the food comes from in a child’s lunch. Foods like apple juice, chocolate chip cookies, bread, and tomotoes are covered.
JDaniel is very big into asking why and where right now. He loves to know all the steps it takes to make something and where exactly it comes from.
What did we do?
Field Trip to an Apple Orchard
We drove out to Nivens Farm about twenty minutes from our house. It was a cloudy day and the weather was cool and comfortable.
The trees were bursting with apples that hung low enough for JDaniel to pick them.
He loved twisting the apples off and putting them in his bucket.
My husband would be so proud of us. We washed of the apple JDaniel sampled from the bucket before he ate it. This handwashing station was the perfect height for him.
While JDaniel snacked, we wandered through the pumpkins.
When he finished his apple, we wandered around in the corn maze. We both loved the purple flowers that were growing right beside the corn.
After the maze walk, JDaniel needed to rest for a moment. This tube was the perfect spot to sit down and hang out for awhile.

Waiting is Hard!

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When I went to pick Jdaniel up from his first day of preschool, he was one of only three children sitting on the rug staring at the door.

I wasn’t late. I was five minutes early. Apparently the other parents came very early to pick up their children.

His eyes lit up when he saw me in the doorway. I don’t’ know what he was thinking, but I know what I was thinking when I had to wait.

I know what it is to wait.

My mom was one of the first ones to pick up when I was in preschool and early elementary school.

Things changed when I was in third grade and my parents divorced.

Balancing working full time and motherhood was hard.

We went to school with her so, my sisters and I would just walk down to her room at the end of the day and wait for her to be ready to go.

My mom would drop us off for CCD (religion classes) and we would wait for her to come when class was over.. I remember asking if I could wait outside for her to come so the teacher wouldn’t know I was still waiting.

There were other times when I had to wait too.

It was hard to wait! It wasn’t that I was impatient. It was that it didn’t make me feel important.

Sometimes people run late due to traffic or unforeseen events.

Sometimes people run late because they try to run the last errand on their to do list.

It happens!

It may happen to JDaniel.

I hope it won’t be a habit of mine.

I so want to be the mom that is waiting outside the door for my child to be released back into my care.

I so want him to know that he is important. I so don’t want him to leave him to his thoughts and wonder why he had to wait.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

P.S. Many of you have mentioned you played rather than waited for your moms. JDaniel has to sit on a line on the carpet and wait to be called to the door to be picked up. I won’t worry so much about being late if I knew he was playing.

Parking for Handicap Toy Vehicles

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JDaniel notices everything and hears everything too. Two weeks ago he heard me say that we were going to have to park further away from the store than I wanted to, because the only spots close in were handicap spots.

No sooner did we get out of the car than he wanted me to show him the handicap spots. I showed him the signs on the spaces and in front of them that show that they are for people with handicaps.

On the way home he wanted to know what handicaps were and why people had them. It turned into a long conversation. He wanted to know why God gave people handicaps and could people get better from them.

After we got home he didn’t mention handicaps again. It was as if he had sorted out everything he needed to in his mind about them and had moved on to something else.

Last week we put a set of cubbies up in Jdaniel’s room to hold all of this vehicles. I was really tired of having them parked all over his room.

I asked JDaniel to put the cars, trucks and construction equipment on the shelves and went to do something else.

When I came back, two of the bottom cubbies were empty. I asked him why there weren’t vehicles in them.

“They are for the handicapped Mom,” he replied.

I had to hold back a chuckle. I love that he was thinking about those vehicles with special needs.

I didn’t think we have any handicapped vehicles. Apparently he has decided that we don’t either. He has started storing vehicles in the cubbies, but it any start to have special needs he will know where to park them.

What do you children do that makes you want to laugh, but you know it would be inappropriate to?

Pausing Life for a Moment- We need to pause in the afternoon

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Pause Life for a Moment

JDaniel has stopped taking naps. He would still take them if I wrestled him down and forced it, but then he would be up until ten o’clock chatting in his bed. So, we have stopped with naps.

He still needs to slow down in the afternoon and read, rest or play upstairs. We are calling this time “quiet time”. It isn’t always quiet and he spends a whole a lot of time wanting to know when the kitchen timer is going to beep. (When it beeps, he is released from being sequestered and can come downstairs.)

JDaniel sometimes sits at the top of the stairs and sings to see if I will do anything.

No, he is allowed to continue to sit at the top of the stairs. He just can’t come down the stairs.

When he does he is guided back upstairs and strongly reminded to stay upstairs or he will lose his snack.

(Snack is greatly desired in the afternoon at our house.)

Last week when he called down to ask if it were time and I replied that it wasn’t, his small voice muttered, “You have to be kidding.”

I suppressed a laugh. I knew the words he had just muttered where mine.

I wrote a few weeks ago about my words spreading to my son and here was a reminder that they had not only spread but had been planted in his memory.

When had I said those words? I couldn’t remember then and I still can’t.

I could hear his feet shuffling over my head as he moved from the hallway to his room almost in defeat.

I don’t think he thought the timer would ever go off.

One hour of time seems like a lifetime to pause from being with me to have time to play, read, or rest on your own to him. Yet we both need some “quiet time” even if it seems like a will never end for one of us.

Do you have a “quiet time” at your house in the afternoon?

 

Three Attempts to Make a Dessert

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So, we were asked to bring snacks to our community group on Sunday. It meets from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to discuss the sermon and it is always nice to  have a snack for the group members and their kids.

We are going to be at the beach on Sunday and won’t be there, but the host family served everyone dinner last week. I really wanted to do something for them.

I forgot to send them a thank you note. I thought this would be an easy way to show them how much we appreciate them. It won’t take long to bake something and take it to their house early.

It has not been easy.

Why?

I made a chocolate Bundt cake this morning and even though I greased the pan it stuck to it. Really stuck to it. I tried to loosen it with a knife, but it remained in place. The only way to get it out was pry it out in big chocolaty chunks.

Jdaniel wandered into the kitchen and commented on how yummy the kitchen smelled. It did smell wonderful. Chocolate cake can really fill a kitchen with a wonderful scent.

Guess we will have cake crumbles for dessert at our house.

Then I thought I would throw together some brownies. I read the directions carefully and again greased a pan. They were so soft and moist that they kept falling apart when I tried to cut them and put them in a cookie tin. Some made it into the tin. They aren’t in nice pretty squares, but they taste wonderful. I tested them out while Jdaniel was upstairs playing.

Guess the ones that fell apart will be brownie crumbles we can have for dessert.

Finally I took out a package of slice and bake sugar cookies I had purchased for a muffin tin project. These had to come together. We didn’t have any other things to bake in the house.

Whew! They came out of the oven looking and smelling great!

Guess we don’t be having sugar cookies for dessert at our house.

I don’t usually have this much trouble with cakes or cookies. I guess God decided what they really need for snack on Sunday is cookies and we really need to have chocolate crumbles.

I think my guys will thank God!

Read.Explore.Learn.- 1,2,3 Count with Me

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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. 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:
 
 

123 Count with Me is a companion book to the alphabet book I shared with the last week. It has the same wonderful channels for tracing the featured number and the fun flaps. In this book the flaps reveal the object need to complete each page’s number set.

I like that you can work on adding one with this book. JDaniel loves the channels and the flaps.

What did we do?

Counting

We did three games with leaves.

 

The first game is one JDaniel came up with himself while my husband and I were trimming bushes on Saturday. He lined up “big” leaves and counted them.

 

The second game required a number line of chalk numbers in the driveway and some of JDaniel’s “big” leaves. I would call out a number and he would put a leaf on it.

 

The third game used the number line and “big” leaves. JDaniel arranged the correct number of leaves on each number. It was a little windy on Saturday and the leaves kept blowing away. Sometimes counting is hard work.

 

 

 

 

Vehicle Exploration! Fun for Two Generations!

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There is nothing better on a Sunday afternoon in South Carolina then to go to your town’s Touch a Truck event. You can wander up and down the closed off main street, climb, explore, and take in the amazing attributes that the various pieces of equipment possess.

Driving a mini front loader fills a preschooler with unexplainable joy.
Discussing the road grader with your dad creates a bonding memory.
Getting to experience shifting gears and checking out each button is heaven.
Boys both young and slightly aging love to take it all in.
Some of the slightly aging boys may need time to explore on their own.
It seems exploring and playing on construction equipment is something boys never outgrow.
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday and Things I Can’t Say’s Magic Moments.

Back to School Traditions Thank You and a New Traditions Link Up News

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I want to thank all of you that participated in the Back to School Traditions link up! It was wonderful to be to see all the first day of school pictures and to learn about your traditions.

Back to School Traditions is the first of a series of fall link ups I will be offering.

The next traditions event will be Halloween Traditions. The event will include four link ups. They are Halloween Costumes, Halloween Foods, Halloween Crafts and Traditions or Memories. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for this link up that begins Oct. 24th and ends Nov. 2nd.

During the Halloween Traditions link up period I will also be hosting a giveaway for the reader with the scariest purse. So, you may want to snap a shot of your purse now just encase you  think you will win, but you might get the urge to clean it before the end of October.

There will be similar categories in the Thanksgiving and Christmas link ups later in the fall!

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