Tag Archives: shopping with kids

MAKE-A-MEAL MONDAYS

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A maid taking soup from a pot

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Do you notice how lots of people who blog have catchy titles for different days.

Mailbox Monday

Wordless Wednesday

Follow Me Fridays

So, from now on, I’m going to be doing Make-A-Meal Mondays.

Every Monday, I’ll post a recipe that is a favorite of ours…and one that your child can help you prepare…I’m a big fan of kids in the kitchen!  Encouraging your child to participate with meal planning and preparation is important because:

  • Children master skills and tasks when helping in the kitchen…which builds their self-esteem.
  • Fussy eaters are more likely to eat meals they have helped prepare.
  • Children learn about where food comes from when they help shop for ingredients and use those ingredients in making the final product.
  • The time you spend participating positively with your child helps create a life-long parent-child bond.
  • You can utilize the shopping experience to develop pre-literacy skills…make the list with your child and draw a picture of each item next to each word…then let your child hold the list and check off each item as he or she helps you put it in the shopping cart.

The last few weeks, most of the country has been hit with severe weather…icy rains, blizzards and freezing cold temperatures.  I think a cup of hot soup would be a welcome addition to any meal this week, so here is a favorite of ours and one of the recipes that appears in SHOW ME HOW! BUILD YOUR CHILD’S SELF-ESTEEM THROUGH READING, CRAFTING AND COOKING.

The soup commercial on television says it all…eager smiling children sitting around the table in the cozy kitchen, mother wearing an apron, stirring a big pot on the stove.  The only thing missing is the delicious aroma of homemade soup.  With this recipe, you and your child can make that happen in your home.

ALPHABET CHICKEN VEGETABLE SOUP

You will need: 1 quart chicken broth, 2 Tb diced onion, ¼ cup dry alphabet noodles, 1 cup diced cooked chicken, ½ cup sliced carrots, ½ cup cut green beans, ¼ cup corn kernels, parsley (optional), and a large pot with a cover.

1.     In a large pot, mix the broth, onions and noodles and bring to a boil.

2.     Lower heat to simmer and add chicken, carrots, beans and corn.

3.     Simmer on low with the cover on for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4.     Garnish each serving with parsley, if desired.

5.     Makes about 4-5 cups of soup.  You can refrigerate or freeze the leftovers.

6.     TIP: You can substitute other vegetables if you like…peas, lima beans, zucchini…use your imagination…or whatever you have available. J

7.     You can season with salt and pepper if you wish…but go easy…as a nation, we tend to use too much salt which has been shown to create all kinds of health problems.

And just to remind you…this is the last day of the SHARE THE LOVE BOOK BOGO EVENT going on right now on my website

You can grab a copy of the book that contains 100 EASY CHILD-FRIENDLY HEALTHFUL COOKING ACTIVITIES AND 100 SIMPLE ECO-FRIENDLY CRAFT PROJECTS at the regular cover price and you will RECEIVE ANOTHER COPY FREE!

Head on over to my website to get all the details…but please hurry…this SHARE THE LOVE BOGO BOOK EVENT goes away at 11:59pm on Monday night.

Please stop by tomorrow for TIMELESS TUESDAYS…I’ll be sharing some of my favorite quotations.

Just Leave Me Alone…I’m Reading!

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Title page of the sixth edition of the novel L...

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I held my mother’s hand as we approached the impressive façade of the eight-story building, my older sister excitedly chattering about the dress she was going to buy to wear at her junior high school graduation.  Located in downtown Brooklyn, Abraham &Strauss was a well-known department store with floors and floors of the finest merchandise. 

Taking the elevator to the eighth floor, we entered a paradise for book lovers!  Wall-to-wall books…and in between…tables and tables of books.  Admonishing me to stay there and find something to read, my mother and sister left for the dress department.

I know you are probably shocked and horrified that any mother would leave a nine-year old girl alone in a department store in New York City.  Looking back on the experience, I’m also surprised that she did…but it was another time…over 50 years ago…and people felt a lot safer, even though perhaps they weren’t.

So I wandered around, happy as a clam (are clams happy?), picking up this book and that book and just reveling in the ecstasy of having so many books at my disposal.  I finally choose LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott, one of my favorites.  I sat down on the floor and proceeded to read the entire book from cover to cover.  When I am engrossed in a book, the world outside of the book ceases to exist for me.  Is it that way for you?  I had no watch…time stood still for me until I finished the last page and closed the book.   And crawled out of my quiet little cubbyhole under one of the tables.

THERE SHE IS!!!!  I saw my mother and sister running towards me.  Several policemen, uniformed store security guards and sales clerks were with them.  Later, my mother explained that after several hours of shopping for my sister’s dress, they returned to the book department, but couldn’t find me (I am very petite and at age nine, I was pretty small…I had found a little cubbyhole under one of the tables).   Store personnel and the police were called in to help search throughout the entire store because they believed I had walked away from the book department.  Walk away from a book department?  It’s obvious they didn’t know the real Vivian!

I’m sure my mother never did that again…but at no time during the experience was I frightened or concerned.  I didn’t think I was lost in the store…I was lost in the world of the book…and I was very happy there.  And, although I wasn’t afraid that day, the fear of getting lost or being separated from a loved one is one of the most common concerns of young children.  Here’s another great children’s picture book that you can read with your child that will help open a discussion about this issue.

DON’T WORRY, I’LL FIND YOU written and illustrated by Anna Grossnickle Hines

Sarah and her mother go to the mall to buy Sarah some new clothes.  The little girl insists on taking her doll, Abigail.  After a long and tiring morning of visiting lots of stores and trying on lots of clothing, Sarah puts Abigail on a chair while she tries on shoes and forgets to take her doll when she and her mother leave the store.  Passing a toy store, Sarah remembers that she has left her doll behind and she hurries back to the shoe store without telling her mother.  Although she finds Abigail right away, she soon realizes that she has lost her mother.  Remembering her mother’s instructions to “stay put”, Sarah goes back to the toy store and waits there.  Meanwhile, Sarah’s mother has been checking all the stores and soon mother and child are reunited.

I’m sure Sarah’s mother was tempted to scold her daughter, not only for walking away on her own, but also for bringing the doll, even though she had been advised by her mother to leave the doll at home.  Instead, she chose to commend her daughter for obeying her instructions to stay where she was in case she got lost.  In the future, Sarah will be more likely to follow other rules she is given and, even though she was frightened, she was able to keep some amount of control in the situation by following her mother’s instructions.

Three great tips to talk about during the discussion with your child after reading the story:

1.     Your child should know his name, address and phone number.  Teach your child your first name also.

2.     If you get separated, STAY PUT!

3.     Seek help from a uniformed person or a woman with children.

Stop by tomorrow for one last “getting separated” picture book suggestion and a couple of fun-filled activities.

WE ALL NEED A CHEERING COMMITTEE AND PARENTS ARE A CHILD’S MOST IMPORTANT FANS!

Avoiding holiday shopping temper tantrums

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We’ll all be shopping more in the next few weeks.  If we take our preschoolers, there is always a possibility of a temper tantrum.  WHAT!  NOT MY CHILD!  NO, NO, NOT EVER!…STAMPING MY FEET WITH STEAM COMING OUT OF MY EARS 🙂

Realistically speaking though, here are three easy discipline tricks that really work.

  1. Make a game out of what must be done: Sing a silly song, make funny faces, say the ABC’s in a high/low voice.  This works for things like buckling up the seat belt of the car seat (don’t all children hate that), leaving the toy store, putting on a jacket or hat.
  2. Be matter-of-fact: Don’t ask, “Do you want to put on your jacket?” or “Shall we put that toy down because we are ready to leave?”  Just say, “We are ready to leave and we are putting on our jackets.” (and maybe start singing a song about now we are putting our jackets on, jackets on, jackets on, etc.)  Or, “It’s time to leave the store and put the toy back…which shelf are we putting it back on, the top shelf or the bottom shelf?” (always make sure that when you give your child a choice, BOTH choices will lead to the goal YOU have in mind)
  3. Warn, distract, and then proceed with what needs to be done: Children like to know what the plan is…and they need to realize that what you say goes and that there is no discussion or negotiation.  It helps, if possible, to give a warning.  For example, when you need to leave the store, give your child a warning in a friendly upbeat tone of voice, “One more hug for mister bear and then we will put him back on his shelf and go and get a drink at the water fountain on our way to the car.”  After the hug, help your child put the bear back, scoop him up, head towards the water fountain, singing a song about bears or water or whatever.  Or, if you are at the library, you might say, “You can turn two more pages and then we will take our books to the librarian to check out so we can go home and read one of them.  Again, scoop up your child (if there is any question he disagrees about your plan to leave), and head towards the library checkout.  Let your child know you understand how he is feeling, “I bet you wish you could stay in the library all day, but it’s time to check out.  You can hold the library card and give it to the librarian.”

One of the hardest things about dealing with preschoolers is that they are easily distracted and often cannot stick with one thing for very long.  This distractibility is a blessing in disguise, however.  No matter what they are involved in: looking at a book, playing with a toy, having a temper tantrum…they can almost always be distracted from it if your are able to turn their attention to something else.  I am not really a very good singer, but when my children where little, I sang ALL the time…when I buttoned up their jackets, put them in the stroller, washed their hair.  Silly songs, happy songs, high songs, low songs…it really worked!   I can remember only one temper tantrum…one of my children (I won’t say which one) wanted a candy bar as we were checking out at the grocery store (don’t you LOVE how they put all those tempting sweets right at child-level?) and, being busy putting up the food on the counter and trying to watch the register read-out as the items were being scanned, I “ignored” my child’s rising whine of “I want a candy” and soon I had a 2 year old laying flat on the floor, kicking his feet.  Had I been paying attention and intervened at the start of this candy demand, I think I could have distracted him and avoided the temper tantrum altogether.

For more parenting help during the holidays, you can check out Katherine Lewis’ blog carnival: