Muffin Tin Meal: Panda Bears

It's been a while since I posted a Muffin Tin Meal post. That would be because we haven't had any recently, for various reasons. Today, I woke up thinking it would be fun to make a special lunch to go with our Panda Bear unit. Of course, it turned into a muffin tin lunch. Hubby did a great job finding items to put in the tin. We focused on Pandas and Chinese food.

I made the panda bear head by cutting off the bottom corners of a slice of bread. Then I added Fluff for the white face. Nutella was placed in the top corners for ears (no Fluff there) and on top in the shape of eyes and a nose.

In the other compartments there are:

Black raisins

White Marshmallows

Salad to represent the bamboo they eat

White rice

Orange Chicken (hubby found some in the freezer section of the store)

Unfortunately, they didn't really care for the chicken, which is a shame because it is one of my favorites from the Chinese restaurant.

Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen #99: A Chocolate Snake in the Garden of Eden

Time for Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen

(A weekly linky to share what you and your children have created in the kitchen.)

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The linky is at the bottom.

This week we were learning about Adam and Eve with My Father's World 1st grade.  It had been a while since I had made a muffin tin meal, so I decided this would be a fun subject to use for one. I had the children make their dessert, the chocolate snake, which is a recipe I found over at the DLTK Growing Together site.  Then I added a Pretzel and Broccoli Apple Tree that I discovered over at the Muffin Tin Mom blog.

This is how we made the chocolate snake.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup dry milk
1/2 cup honey
1 Tbs cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts (we used pecans)
1/2 cup raisins
2 Tbs coconut

I have two children who do not like raisins. So I let my oldest daughter Krystal work with Amelia to make a separate half a batch without raisins.

First we combined the peanut butter with the dry milk. In order to get it to blend well we needed to do a fold-and-smooch more than a stir.

Then we added the remaining ingredients one at a time, stirring to combine after each addition. (Don't you love simple recipes?)

Oh, I did have to chop the pecans.

I then divided the mixture evenly and we rolled out our snakes.

For the muffin tins, I followed the directions from Muffin Tin Mom to make the tree. It is quite simple. One slice of bread will make two trees. You flatten it with a rolling pin, remove the crusts, spread peanut butter on one side, roll it up, and cut in half. Then you put peanut butter on the outside, a section at a time, to help hold the pretzel sticks in place. A broccoli floret is added for the leaves and a red Skittle is the fruit. If you would like to see step by step instructions, you will find them over at Muffin Tin Mom.

I set the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in the center of the tin and then added fruits and veggies to  represent all the food God provided for them to eat. There are animal crackers and cheese flowers as well. 

Do you have your children help you in the kitchen?  What lessons do they learn? Do you have any kid friendly recipes to share?

I'd love to see your posts, whether you have done something this week or some time in the past. Just link up below. This is a weekly linky.

I am linking up to:

Melt in Your Mouth Monday
Try a New Recipe Tuesday at Home to Four Kiddos
The Gathering Spot at Mamal Diane
Friday Food Frenzy at Close to Home
Fantastic Thursday at Five Little Chefs
Foodie Friends Friday at Robyn'sView
Family Fun Friday at Happy and Blessed Home
Find a New Recipe Friday at Almost Supermom

And here is my Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen linky

Snack and Meals for My Father's World 1st Grade: Week 1-Week 9

I have not done a very good job keeping up with blogging about what we have been doing with My Father's World 1st Grade. We have put it aside for the summer, affording me some time to go back and try to organize my thoughts so I can share what we have been doing. I decided to start with a look back at the snacks and meals I gave the children during the first 9 weeks. The snacks/meals usually focus on the science unit or devotional story, though there is one week I focused on the proverb. I also tried to fit it in with number of the day.

Week 1:

Day 1- Ant(s) on a log to go with our science unit "Close to the Ground" and the devotional story Ants, Ants, Ants.  Technically, this was Day 2 in the manual for the devotional. If you want to do it for Day 2 it is easy enough to add another raisin.

Day 2: Fish to go with the devotional story Fishy Neighbors. Again, if you are following the manual, just add 1 more banana slice bubble.

We combined Weeks 1,2 and 3 into 2 weeks. I don't have a snack for Day 3 that goes with My Father's World. For Day 4 we were doing the devotional story Disappearing Tails, though it wouldn't be until Day 8 in the manual. 

Day 4: Gecko tails made from fruit roll-ups

We also had a #4 Muffin Tin with hot chocolate and 4 marshmallows.

Day 5: Bear lunch to go with the devotional story School For Bears. This would be on Day 10 in the teacher manual.  It would be easy enough to change this to include 10 of everything.  I had the girls group the fish crackers into groups of 5 as they had 15 of them. Could easily give children 20 to do 2 groups of 10.

Day 6: Flowers to go with the science unit Flowers. I believe I purposely made one different because we were reading the devotional story, Strange Creatures.

Day 7 (would be day 12 in the teacher manual, so this would work)- Symmetrical Butterflies to go with the devotional story, Monarch Miracle.

First the 7 raisins were the caterpillar. 

Then the children were to make symmetrical designs (we did a similar craft too). First they had to realize that 7 was an odd number, so they couldn't use all the raisins.

Day 8: This brings us to the start of Week 4. Our science topic was "How Flowers Grow" and I found these gummy suns. I was completely caught off guard, I thought they were going to be shaped like berries. When I saw they were suns I realized how well they worked with the topic. They got 8 because it was the number of the day, but it was really cool that there were exactly 8 in each pack. 

I also gave them a springy Muffin Tin lunch. 

Day 9: Bananas to go with the devotional story Monkey Business. I had the children slice their own into 9 slices. This would be Day 14 in the teacher manual, easy enough to change the number of slices.

Day 10: I gave them 10 chunks of cheese on 2 crackers. We were doing a frog craft to go with the devotional story, Eggs, Polliwogs, and Frogs, but I couldn't figure out what to use as lily pads besides crackers.

Day 11: I gave them a #11 Muffin Tin for lunch.

Day 12: I made spider web snacks and a spider web lunch. This would have been Day 18 in the teacher manual, it goes with the devotional story Caught in a Web.

I drew the web and spider legs on a paper towel and then added the cracker spider body and 12 chocolate chip flies caught in the web. I would have used raisins but Amelia doesn't like raisins and we'd been having them a bit more than usual. I was also going to do 10 on the web and 2 off the web for place value, but I didn't for some reason.

Lunch consisted of a spaghetti spider web and cut up chicken nugget flies. The spider is made out of a chicken nugget and 8 green pepper slices.

Day 13: I made the children a bat themed lunch to go with the devotional story Blind as a Bat. This is Day 19 in the teacher manual.

I cut a sandwich into a bat shape. It is flying above the broccoli trees in the night sky to get the 13 flies.

Day 14: I couldn't think of anything to go with our devotional story about sloths, so I just made a snack of the number 14.

Day 15: We started week 6 and I decided to use the Proverb for our lunch. Proverbs 16:24 says, "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." We read the book, The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco. But first, I gave them 15 Reese's Pieces for snack. Yeah, I know, not healthy. 

Day 16: I made the children a pig snack to go with the devotional story, Smart Pigs. This would be day 22 in the teacher manual.

I shaped a piece of ham into a pig with a pepperoni tail and gave the children 16 broken pretzel pieces to form into a fence.

I didn't have anything for Days 17-21 that I can find. Here is the snack for Day 22:

I gave them the grapes on the side and they had to put them on the vines, 10 on each bunch with 2 left over. We were in Week 7 and the science unit is "seasons." I felt grapes went well.

They also had a Seasons Muffin Tin.

Day 23: It was getting a little harder to have the number of the day and the topic match up. I just gave them some fish in a couple of bowls.

Day 24: I made a snack to go with our devotional story, Helpful Honkers. We were also still working on our seasons pictures, this day we made a fall picture, so I thought the geese went well. 20 flying in a V and 4 on land.

Day 25: We were working on our winter page, so I gave the children marshmallow snowballs, again broken up to show place value.

The next week, we started the rain science topic (week 8), and I made them a rain themed Muffin Tin.

Day 27 (yes, I was still trying to use our number of the day when I could): Pretzel sticks and peanut butter so the children could build beaver dams to go along with the devotional story Busy Beavers.

The next week we started week 9 and the science topic is "Thunder and Lightning." I gave the children pretzel sticks and peanut butter again (because they were really enjoying the combination) and they made lightning bolts.

For lunch they had a tornado muffin tin (everything is mixed up in the tin compartments because of the high winds).

And that is the end of our My Father's World 1st grade snacks/meals until we start back up in August.