Ryvita Crackers

If you are watching your weight and/or carbs, a great crunchy treat is a Ryvita cracker. They are readily available at HEB in the specialty cracker section, and are about $2.49/box. They last quite a while.

http://www.ryvita.com/usa/

Some of our favorite toppings are:

• smoked salmon cream cheese and cucumber slices
• Laughing Cow flavored cheese wedges and cucumber and tomatoes
• peanut butter and honey or jelly
• apple butter
• ham or turkey
• tuna salad
• egg salad
• pimento cheese
• brie and apricot preserves

Tuesday 6/17/08

Outside: Today we harvested Swiss Chard, a tomato, and two cucumbers despite the heat and dry soil! We enjoyed side walk chalk, painting the wood and brick fences with water, and playing in water boxes with eye droppers and scoops. We looked at our giant sunflowers and their flowers that should open soon. The sunflowers are taller than our teachers!

Cooking: Jaden helped Janie make bean and cheese burritos. Several friends worked together to set the table for breakfast and lunch.

Community Time: We reviewed colors in Spanish and English, reviewed a diagram of a butterfly lifecycle, looked at pictures of caterpillars in Ranger Rick magazine and learned how caterpillars have evolved to disguise and protect themselves from birds, learned the names of the animals in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?, and read Miss Spider's Busy Day. We learned a new song, "I'm a Texas Star".

Fine Motor: drawing with beeswax crayons, practiced writing either the first letter of our name or our entire name (depending on age), Legos, beeswax modeling

Pretend Play: playing with stables and horse figurines, ironing silks, cooking in the pretend kitchen

Breakfast: whole wheat cheddar cheese toast, bananas, milk

Lunch: black bean burritos, mixed vegetables, Luling-area watermelon, milk

Snack: gelatin with fresh fruit, animal crackers, water

This is Addie--Olivia got to ride her yesterday!

Notes: Olivia and a neighbor are attending horse camp this week at Sonshine Stables. It has been wonderful, and "horse" play and figures are really popular in the play here at our preschool as a result. Don't forget to bring your bike or scooter to school on Friday!

Hyland's Homeopathic Products

We discovered Hyland's products when Leslie had her first child, Olivia. Since then, Hyland's products have been stocked in our medicine cabinets and used with all four of our children. From teething tablets to ear infection/swimmer's ear drops, Hyland's offers a wide range of natural products to promote health, aid in the common cold and help soothe cranky babies. Janie has used Hyland's Flu tablets during pregnancy when she couldn't take any other medications and felt better in a few days following the correct dosage.

We've used the following Hyland's products with our kiddos our for ourselves.

Children's Remedies:
C Plus Cold Tablets
Calms Forte 4 Kids
Teething Tablets
Teething Gel
Earache Drops

Adult Remedies:
Complete Flu Care
Seasonal Allergy Relief

Hyland's is available at most pharmacies. We've found that HEB and People's Pharmacy offer a wide selection of products. Check out Hyland's for your little ones.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

We baked oatmeal raisin cookies with the children last week and we received rave reviews! Below is the recipe for these tasty cookies, courtesy of Allrecipes.com. We altered the recipe a little by making the cookies slightly larger, thus yielding a thicker, breakfast-style cookie.

3/4 cup butter [softened]
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cup oats
1 cup raisins

Mix together butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing until creamy. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gradually add in dry ingredients. Once dry ingredients are incorporated, fold in oats and raisins.
Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes. Portion dough into 36 balls [large]. Cookies will spread out slightly when baking but will be thicker, like a breakfast cookie.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10—12 minutes or until golden brown. Store in an airtight container.

Variations—This cookie would be delicious with chopped dried apricots, craisins or toasted almonds added to the dough.

Ella Jenkins' Music for Children

We recently discovered Ella Jenkins' wonderful CDs at our local library. She has been singing with children since the 1950s! What a treat, and the children who attend our preschool love her. In particular, we have enjoyed her call and response CD, and the children are really demonstrating their recall skills! Some of her work was released on CD by the Smithsonian, and in 2004 she was honored with a lifetime achievment award at the Grammys.

www.ellajenkins.com

Self-Serve Healthy Snack Boxes for Kids

Leslie's children are almost 8, 4 1/2, and 2, and they are always hungry. To make things easier for the kids, she has established a snack box in her pantry and in her refrigerator. The snacks are healthy and in child-size portions. The kids know that they can get something when they need it, and mom knows they are choosing something healthy. These boxes also come in handy for packing lunches during the public school year.

A clear plastic shoebox is used for the snack boxes. Make sure the box in the refrigerator is at child level.

Some ideas for the refrigerator snack box

baby carrots and ranch dip

mozzarella string cheese or cubes of cheddar

yogurt cups or sticks (Gogurt)

small bags of leftovers such as homemade chicken nuggets and bean burritos, or a slice of cold pizza

washed strawberries

mixed fruit (pineapple chunks, watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes)

celery sticks, or celery sticks and peanut butter sold in the store

cucumber slices

pepperoni slices or hard salami and cheese cubes

pudding--make sure that the pudding doesn't contain trans fats

100% juice boxes--4 oz

small water bottles

In the pantry, larger boxes or bags of dry snacks are portioned into individual ziploc snack bags.

Some ideas for pantry snack box:

bags of Goldfish crackers, Triscuits, or Wheat Thins

cups of apple sauce, especially sugar-free berry applesauce

pretzels

Chex Mix

peanuts

craisins

raisins, small bags or small boxes

homemade snack mix (usually the end of boxes of dried cereal, prezels, Goldfish, peanuts, maybe a few semi-sweet chocolate chips)

fruit leather

Fritos

dried apricots

sesame sticks (from the bulk section of the store)

shelled sunflower seeds (from the bulk section)

pumpkin seeds (tamari-flavored are great in the bulk section)

Flourless Chocolate Cake

If you are watching your carbs, or just looking for a rich and delicious dessert, this is for you! Great with a strong cup of coffee at the end of a scrumptious meal. We used Ghirardelli chocolate and Cafe du Monde coffee with chicory. The kids really loved this--they thought it tasted like a really good brownie.

Flourless Chocolate Cake (modified from whatcookinginamerica.net)

8 ounces dark chocolate (65% to 70% cocoa), broken into pieces (we used Ghirardelli)

1/2 cup butter (we used salted butter)

6 large eggs, room temperature and separated

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup Splenda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon powdered (confectioners) sugar, for garnish

raspberries and whipped cream, for garnish

Prehead oven to 375F. Add chocolate and butter to a microwave safe dish. Microwave on 50% power for 1- 1 1/2 minutes until the chocolate and butter can be stirred to combine. In a second bowl, stir together egg yolks, sugar, Splenda, and vanilla. Add the chocolate/butter mixture to the egg yolk mixture. In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Pour batter into a 10 inch springform pan. Bake for 20 minutes. Cake will inflate, then deflate while baking.

Once cooled, run a knife around the pan to loosen the cake. Remove springform side. Cut cake into twelve wedges. Plate cake, dust with powdered sugar, and garnish with raspberries and whipped cream.

Ideas for variations: currants, almond extract, orange zest, use chocolate bars that contain espresso or orange essence, chopped dried cherries, stir in a tablespoon of espresso powder, chiles, cinnamon