Cooking with Mama

Today I was on a mission to use up some Pantry items before the move. We got this huge bottle of amazing maple syrup and I would hate for it to go to waste. The piwi's were just about in the kitchen before me when they realized I was about to bake. Mini Piwi was scraping her 'helping chair' along the lino and Miss K has a was in the cupboard looking for the flour. Nothing like good assistants!

So today I experimented a bit to use up stuff. We made Blueberry Oatmeal bread and Upside down apple crumble muffins. When clean up time came the Piwi's mysteriously disappeared until they heard the oven timer go off! The apple muffins were popular with the Piwis and Daddy really liked the blueberry bread.

I am still working on my cooking blog but once it goes live the recipes will be here!

Dr Mini Piwi treats her toys

 

Mini Piwi is 31 months old

 To the untrained (and non toddler) eye, this looks like a tent filled with stuffed animals. It is, however, the waiting room for Dr Mini Piwi. This week she began giving everyone a 'check-up' using various toys and craft items she found. Here she is examining Jojo...

 and here is 'blue teddy' resting in the hospital tent...
She even managed to get her Big sister to bring the animals to her and explain their ailments. I joined in the fun after a bit, but not I sat quietly outside the bedroom door and just watched and listened to all the cute goings on...It is moments like this that make me so glad to be a Mama to these two amazing kids! It was toys they were caring for today but it made me realize they were asking the toys the how they felt and comforting them. It makes you realize that kids aren't just playing, they are rehearsing for real life.

 

 

Miss K's drawing lessons

'Perry the cute-a-pus' drawn by Miss K using kidsfront.com 

Both Piwis love to draw and paint. Miss K wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, both her parents have limited artistic abilities and NZ Grandma isn't able to fly 10000 miles for a lesson.

There are art classes in the area but we aren't able to commit to much this summer with the possibility of a move. I did what I usually do...turned to google.
I found some great sites that you can use to draw with your mouse or graphic pen -saves the cost of software and the risk of downloading dodgy applications!
A caveat though,  I learnt that not all of these are kid appropriate. Some require you to log in with an account so you can store the images and they have galleries of images that other people have created. Some of these are not G rated. The sites we liked...

Online Sketch pad is not specially for kids but the few user submitted examples are chosen by the site to be 'ok'.

Picturedraw is an doodle pad. It is fairly basic and you can save images to your computer. There are no user images on the site, but there are some google ads.

free-draw by Nick Jr, is for younger kids but still a lot of fun, you can print the art work

Paint Go!  This is similar to the Nick Jr site, but may be preferred by kids who don't want the Nick Jr themes

What Miss K really wanted was something to teach her how to draw different animals etc. Google delivered!

Billybear 4 kids has written lessons about drawing, an art pad, clip art...They have a lot of things about Internet security on the site itself and some lessons for kids to be safe on the Internet. I was however, not so thrilled with some of the banner advertising that popped up in the visits we made. I got wise though and just bring up the site that Miss K wants and then refresh it until a G rated one comes up before she begins her lesson. (wow who would have thought I'd be worried about ten years ago!).

kidsfront.com was Miss K's favorite. The how to draw section step by step drawing lessons. It doesn't require any reading like Billy Bear so younger kids could follow the visual steps. It too has several ads.

Miss K has enjoyed herself so much she now wants me to find lessons for unicorns, clothes and shoes..oh Google!....