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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+.

JDaniel Says He is Moving to His Own Apartment

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JDaniel is moving so he has told me to an apartment. A few weeks ago he went to see the apartment his Nana is moving to. She has been living in a cottage in a retirement community and has decided to move into one of the community’s apartments since my father in-law passed away. JDaniel must have loved her apartment. (It is awesome!)

On the ride back to our house JDaniel announced he was moving. When I asked him where he was moving, he told me to an apartment with Joe. Joe is one of JDaniel closest friends. He is also two and probably not ready to move out on his own. Well, I said to him, “I think you will have to wait until you go to college.” I don’t think he has any idea what college is and that he won’t start college for fifteen years. He does know he really wants to live in an apartment. He also knows what he wants to take with him. I have found him piling the things he needs to pack for his move.

Today he announced his friend Jake is going to move in with him and Joe. Jake he told me is going to do the cooking. “What will you and Joe be doing?” I asked. “We will play,” he announced. Thank goodness Jake is moving in with them. Jake’s mom is an amazing cook. If Jake can cook like his mom, JDaniel and Joe won’t resort to eating a lot of fast food and instant mac and cheese.

Great Posts I Came Across This Week- July 3

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Each week I travel around the internet visiting blogs. Here are a few posts that I loved, learned from, or gave me great ideas:

 

Mom Related Post:

Katie Dailies wrote a wonderful post called A Love Affair With The Library. It is wonderful to find people that love the library the way my family does.

Living Montessori Now has a great post called How to Teach Your Preschoolers Manners Using Montessori Principles. It has great tips.

Child Related Posts:

The Cow Queen found a way to find alphabet letters and enjoy a visit to a farm at the same time. You need to see her fun letter pictures in her post Farm Alphabet and Making Hay.

Counting Coconuts has a number of 4th of July learning activities I would love to try with JDaniel. The math activity with star and the flag looks so cute. Her post is called Fourth of July Activities.

Crunchy and Green have a great Patriotic Sensory Bin post. I am dying to put together a sensory bin.

Toile in the Family has a great post on how she made a lemonade stand for her family in a post called W is for Wages.

A Beautiful Mess has a recipe of DIY Fourth of July Chalk that looks great. She has pictures that illustrate each step in the process. I need pictures.

 

Recipes:

 

Red Couch Recipes has a wonderful post on how to make Watermelon Rice Krispies.

 

Let’s Dish has an amazing recipe for Homemade Three Musketeer Bars that will make you drool.

 

Be Different… Act Normal has the cutest Independence Day Cupcakes to make. I love Uncle Sam.

 

Teaching Tiny Tots has a great recipe for Broken Glass Jello that creates red, white, and blue stars. This looks so cool.
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A Garbage Truck Can Be A Parade Float

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We read a number of books about the Fourth of July this week. Grandma Drove the Garbage Truck by Katie Clark was our favorite by far. Grandma usually runs the office and her sons drive the truck and collect the garbage. On July 4th all three of her sons are sick and it is up to Grandma and her grandson Billy to collect the garbage before the parade. There is a problem. Grandma can barely see over the steering wheel of the truck and she doesn’t drive well. She gets her mailbox, one neighbor’s roses, and another neighbor’s clothesline wrapped around her truck in her attempt to collect garbage. She also ends up at the front of the parade with a ribbon for Most Creative Float. JDaniel thought this book was really funny.

I decided to make JDaniel a garbage truck and have him decorate it. He had a blast.


JDaniel painted it with Bingo markers.

He added stickers to decorate his truck.

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Xcellent Yankee Doodle Cupcakes

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We are trying low sugar desserts at my house this summer. The first one we tried making were these Yankee Doodle Cupcakes. These look and taste yummy. Both JDaniel and Danny loved them. I took them to a play date JDaniel had with his friend Jake. Jake and his mom loved them too.

 

Ingredients:

 

1 box of yellow cake mix

 

12-oz can of diet cherry cola

 

1 tub of fat-free cool whip

 

1 tsp. of blue sugar-free jello

 

1 tsp. of red sugar-free jello

 

 

Directions:
    1. Mix the diet pop with the cake mix.

 

    1. Pour into a greased or sprayed baking pan or 24 cupcake pan.

 

    1. Bake according to box directions, but check often.

 

    1. Mix together half the cool whip with 1 tsp of blue jello. Frost half the cupcakes.

 

    1. Mix together half the cool whip with 1 tsp of red jello and frost the remaining cupcakes.

 

  1. After cake or cupcakes have cooled, top with cool whip and jello mixture.
  2. Enjoy!

This recipe is based on a recipe I found on 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet.

 

 

 

Check Out My Interview on Spell Out Loud!

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I am happy to be featured in a post on Spell Out Loud! The post is on planning Muffin Tin Mondays called Chalktalk with JDaniel4’s Mom. She did such a nice job with her interview. Please click here and check out her post.

 

Popsicle Holders: Ways to Stop a Popsicle From Dripping Down Your Arm

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At playgroup a few weeks ago my friend Valerie shared all the ways she has tried to keep popsicles from dripping down her three daughters arms. I decided I would try them out on JDaniel and he was very willing to be a guinea pig in this experiment.
The first thing we tried was an old sock. I recently drove over this sock with the vacuum cleaner and that made it available for the experiment.

The sock worked really well. It absorbs the drips and keeps your hand clean.

 

Next, we tried a cupcake cup. Valerie suggested I silicon cup, but I don’t have any of those.

This worked well too. I think it worked because we weren’t outside in the heat. A melty popsicle would probably drip down the edges of the cups when it is tipped.

Next to last we tried a paper bowl.


This didn’t work well at all. We were outside and the liquid rolled out of the bowl when JDaniel tried to finish off the popsicle.

 

Finally, we tried the plastic wrapper the popsicle came in. We don’t have a picture of this. JDaniel didn’t like the way the wrapper felt in his hand. He asked for the sock and then ended up holding it one hand while the sock was on the other.

P.S. JDaniel calls them popsissles not popsicles.

 

 

Muffin Tin Monday- Very Berry 4th of July

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Muffin Tin Monday- Very Berry 4th of July

My blog theme for the week is the 4th of July. I used to celebrate holidays on the week they happened. After thinking about it, it made more sense to share my holiday ideas the week before the holiday. This is JDaniel’s 4th of July tin a week early.

JDaniel has a berry good time dipping blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries into the strawberry yogurt. Why is the cereal there? I started using breakfast cereal as sprinkles on his oatmeal in the morning. Now we have “sprinkles” on yogurt too.

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Embracing Reading in the Summer and All Year Round

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ABCs of Exploring Books with Children: Activity Ideas from R-Z

I have always been fortunate that my two years old has loved being read to. From the beginning, I read to him. He didn’t like to sleep much as an infant and I had a lot of time to read to him. It seems that I read Good Night Moon a million times. I started reading it in funny voices or singing the words to familiar tunes.

 

Now that JDaniel is two I still read to him a lot. He has been “reading” to himself for about nine months. He isn’t really reading he talks to himself about the pictures and retells the parts of story he has memorized.

 

How am I trying to keep him interested in books:
    1. I have surrounded him with books that he loves. We have books in almost every room of the house and in the car beside his car seat.

 

    1. We make going to the library an adventure. A library visit is a mission to find books on the shelves that he loves, capture them in our library bag, and bring them home. Right now that means checking a lot of books out of the library about trucks, front loaders, and trains

 

    1. The library’s summer reading program has excellent prizes. I mentioned earlier this week that JDaniel earned a pass to a water park and free Ice Dream from Chick Filet-A. Even someone that wasn’t a reader might have been motivated for the prizes.

 

    1. JDaniel can see that we enjoy reading. He sees us check a book out of the library for us to read. We can be found reading when the other parent is playing with him. Right now he models a lot of what he sees.

 

    1. I picture walk (tell a revised version of a story while looking at the details in the pictures) him through books that have too many words, but pictures that will interest him. As he gets older we will revisit these books and read the actual story.

 

    1. We have one of his stuffed animals join us in reading. Later I tell him the animal wants to hear the story again. When he doesn’t want to read with me, he likes to read with them. If JDaniel has a sibling, I would have him read to them.

 

    1. We talk about books we’ve read as we go through everyday life and encounter things we have read in books.

    2. We act out stories with toys.

    3. We go to the library’s website and reserve books that we have loved and want to read again. When we go to the library and they are there, it is so exciting.

 

  1. Visiting a bookstore on a field trip to read is fun too. Sometimes they have story hours. JDaniel loves to read the book someone else is reading.

  2. Journaling about what you like and don’t like about books is also a great idea. It helps you remember the books you have read and enjoyed. I hope to start this with JDaniel when he gets older.

    You may have your own great ideas. If you have some you would love to share, please leave a comment. I am always looking for new ways to encourage reading.

 

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