Muffin Tin Monday!

Doing this is such fun! I forgot to plan in advance so we ended up with a theme of things that begin with a C (including cup of water!)

Yes it's very hot here.
And thank you to the lovely people who were so welcoming last week. :-)

Muffin Tin Monday

I have seen posts relating to the MTM blog carnival in several places, but most recently at Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile, one of the blogs I follow. The idea is simple - serve a themed meal in a muffin tin, then post a link to the blog entry concerning it at Her Cup Overfloweth if you want to be part of the carnival. I don't know whether this is meant to be just a fun thing to do or whether it's to try and encourage children to eat.

Froglet always has trouble staying in one place long enough to finish a meal (or even get halfway through it), so today I thought we might give MTM a try. This week was Choose Your Own Theme, rather fortuitously as it was such a last-minute decision to do it and I haven't done the weekly shop yet! So the theme I've picked is: Homemade.

Our muffin tin contains both Froglets meal and my own, as it's rather a large tin. Homemade brown bread with nuts in, homemade kumquat marmalade from our little tree, homemade snickerdoodle cookies - rolled in cinnamon sugar by Froglet - and homegrown salad: cress, baby nasturtium leaves (because the nasturtiums are still tiny), marjoram and oregano. Like I said, it was a last-minute thing!

Surprisingly, the salad was Froglet's favourite item. He wolfed down the marjoram, oregano and nasturtiums, exclaiming"these taste funny!", then asked for more. I had to explain that we couldn't take any more leaves off the nasturtiums as it might stress them too much, if they aren't already stressed. I only took one leaf off each plant.

As a method of getting him to concentrate and eat, it was unsuccessful, but he certainly enjoyed seeing all the things we had made and grown ourselves on his "plate". We will be doing this again, and if you have little ones maybe you'd like to join in too!

For lots of different themes, pop over to Her Cup Overfloweth and see what other mums have done.

Our gardens

When I was a child, I loved gardening. My parents gave me a small patch to sow my own seeds on when I was quite small - I don't remember details, but it was before we emigrated when I was 7. After that, I kept houseplants, gradually expanding my collection to a whole table full of Christmas Cacti, normal cacti, cyclamen and various fruit seeds. I even managed to grow a tiny date palm from a date stone. It didn't live very long; my avocado plant did much better. And I was forever breeding my cyclamen and harvesting the seeds to grow new, tiny plants - so cute. I recently read that cyclamen are really hard to keep, and indeed the ones I've had as an adult have all given up the ghost within a year, but back then I must have had a seriously green thumb because they rarely died.

One month ago, we owned two pots of cacti (belonging to The Engineer), some succulent I was given but don't know the name of, an aging ornamental fig which was losing all its leaves, an Easter cactus which resolutely refused to flower at Easter (or indeed at all) and two small and unambitious money trees. All fairly easy maintenance, as long as you're happy for them not to do anything much!

When we started teaching Froglet about plants and flowers, I suddenly remembered how much time I used to spend - and enjoy spending - on my plants. Then we started doing up the window boxes, which have been allowed to grow weeds for the past three years, and I enjoyed that. Froglet and I planted seeds given us by my mother and grandmother, and that was great too. How did I come to forget that I used to love gardening?

I have no idea - possibly it happened when we moved to a new house, with less room for plants in my room, right at the time I had my first boyfriend. Boys being more interesting than flowers to a 15 year old, they were all relegated to the conservatory. The Engineer, reading over my shoulder, has just commented "and now plants are more interesting than me".

Indeed. (No, not really!) I've definitely revived the interest now though. As I write, our spare dining table is full of seedlings. Nasturtiums, sunflowers and cress are sprouting alongside various recycled containers housing two avocado pits - one of which is actually starting to grow -, three potato eyes waiting to be planted outside, a birch seed, two unidentified berries from a shrub I thought was pretty, apple and pear pips, kumquat and passionfruit seeds, a mango pit, and three carrot tops which I am vaguely hoping might eventually flower and produce seed (a forlorn hope I know, but it's worth a try and in the meantime they make pretty plants).

Outside, a large container has just today been planted with old potato eyes. Various seeds and bulbs are producing flowers or shoots, the ants are delighting in the new fuchsia bush and strawberry flowers, and the oregano has really taken to its window box, which it shares with a slightly less enthusiastic marjoram plant. (Incidentally, fried mushrooms are very good with oregano as well as parsley).

Froglet is, I think, slightly bemused by the sudden interest in greenery, but he is enjoying it too. Today he watered all the plants outside (knocking over several of the seedlings in the process), and we've got a spray bottle for watering the indoor seedlings.

I have been saying for months how much I wish we had a garden where he could run about outside without my constant supervision. Now I find I wish we had a garden where he could run about while I look after my plants. But gardens are few and far between over here. Maybe one day.

/ck/ and /ee/

*Photos coming later!

Thought I might post about what we did a few weeks prior to starting this blog. At the time I wasn't theming the lessons so much, so we just worked around the sounds. Not all the activities took place on the same day!

/ck/ as in duck.
1. I drew a picture of a duck with the words "ck as in duck" below it, and then a list of words with ck in them. I tried to pick words he would find interesting, like muck, truck, track and kick, and avoid words with other odd sounds such as chicken. He sounded them out with me.
2. I made a matching game with pictures and words, again using the words he is interested in and that are drawable! Then I filmed him matching them up, for the grandparents to see. The cards can be used for a memory game too.
3. We made a page for his lapbook, letting him cut out my duck picture to stick on it, and looked through some old magazines from the recycling pile to find objects with ck in them, which he cut out and stuck on too. Then he watched me write the names on.
4. We did some writing in a wipe-clean book my mother got for him. I encouraged him to trace over the letters c and k but in the end he just did whatever letters he wanted.
5. I read him various stories including the amazingly out-of-print Pumpernickel tickle and mean green cheese. So glad we own this!
6. A themed meal, including blackcurrant juice, crackers, pumpernickel bread, dill pickles and cheese of course. I think we had this twice, Froglet being a big fan of picnic-style meals.
7. Baking! Snickerdoodle cookies, a new recipe to us but, as it turns out, wonderful for baking with kids. Froglet helped measure and mix, and then rolled the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar for me.

/ee/ as in tree.
1-4. The first four activities were the same as above, but with a list of ee words, which of course included "wee"! He was pleased with that. The matching game this time used some ee words and some of the old ck words. I didn't film this one though.
5. Reading: the Sneetches
6. We planted some cress seeds, and some pear and apple pips.
7. Sound-of-the-week tree - we haven't actually done this yet although I have bought the construction paper for it. The idea, from SOTW, is that you cut out a tree with bare branches, and then stick a new leaf on each time you learn a new sound, with the sound written on it of course.
8. Food: Leek soup. This was not a success. Froglet isn't always such a huge fan of soup, and not only did he not like this one, but neither did The Engineer. Egg and cress sandwiches (grown from the seeds we had planted) didn't go down too well either: he's not keen on scrambled egg, although he did like the cress. But not to worry. Cheese, a perennial favourite in our family, also has the ee sound in it!

The lessons continue even though I'm now teaching /er/, as when something relevant comes up I draw his attention to it, or sometimes he points it out to me! Today we are planting a seed garden in a tray. But more on that later.

Bits and bobs

I don't seem to have had time to post recently, not sure why. We have been very busy with gardening and so on, so maybe that's it.

I have about 5 minutes until Froglets programme finishes, so this will be brief.

Nutmeg sleeps beautifully, drinks well and is learning to grab her dangly toys. The potty training is going ok, but as we're not being very serious about it I don't expect her to really be potty-trained any time soon. We put her on the potty during every nappy-change, for about 2 minutes, maybe more if I can tell she really does need to do something. As a result, messy nappy changes have been incredibly few, in fact I think the last one was on Friday. All nappies are always damp though, and judging from the time she spends au naturel I would have to put her on the potty every 20 minutes to avoid that!

Froglet is looking forward to his grandparents visiting later this week, but we are keeping him busy in the meantime. He has been learning /er/, as described in my last post, and is very much enjoying our work on the weather. So far we have learned a bit about clouds, made a very basic rain-catcher with a glass and a wooden spoon, started charting how much rain has fallen each day, and watched a lot of YouTube videos about tornados and water spouts. Froglet is a big fan of YouTube, although usually he only gets to watch aerobatics displays.

And that's the end of my time. More will follow, with photos.