Whole Happy Food Detectives

Whole Happy Food Detectives

If you are like me, whenever you hit the supermarket, health food store, Farmers' Market, or what ever your choice, you have one or more little ones in tow. For a year and a half I had three in tow. Not easy but you make it work. Now I have my two youngest and there are still challenges on the shopping scene. All the marketing done for children specifically, can make walking up and down the aisles of any supermarket with your kids a nightmare. All the little toys that are hung sporadically at eye level, the brightly colored wrappers and familiar characters promoting low nutrient foods can be all your children are begging for from one aisle to the next. 

For a long time I saw this as the bane of my chore-fulfilling existence. Really, food corporations and supermarket managers know that any parent doing food shopping with their children is just trying to survive and are bound to give in to some whining and begging in order to avoid a complete melt down. Really sneaky, guys. 

But instead of seeing a trip to the supermarket as a tricky obstacle course that I had to get through by distracting the little ones and sharply snapping, "No! No! No!" every 5 seconds, I began to think this is a seriously awesome opportunity to teach them so much. I decided I could use this as a chance to teach them about healthy foods, especially finding and choosing them, and about marketing tricks. (Yup, marketing tricks. And believe it or not, they get it!) Sometimes I forget that if you give them the language and a decent, kid-appropriate explanation, they catch on fast. 

I want to empower my kids to be able to spot whole, healthy foods on their own. Essentially I wanted to help them become Whole, Happy Food Detectives. This is a chance to take another step in that direction. 

Here is what I started doing:

Tip #1 Tell them that sometimes food companies try to trick them! 

You can assume that when we go shopping, we are looking for the healthiest choices we can find. That is a given. Cool packaging does not mean healthy food and no kid wants to feel like they are getting duped. Not even my 4 year old. So when he asked for a box of Capri Sun juices I told him, sorry, not going to happen. His response was, "But there is a cool surfer guy on it!" (insert sad puppy dog eyes right here) So,I told him the truth. "That cool surfer guy is on the package to get your attention and to get you to buy it." Its true, isn't it? If Capris Sun or similar juices marketed for kids had to stand on their ingredients alone, no one would buy them. High fructose corn syrup is often the main ingredient. No thanks. And corn syrup, aka GMO. No thanks again. Plus some flavors have HFCS AND plain ol' sugar, too. In my humble opinion, there is nothing healthy about a juice drink like that. Therefore cool surfer guys are needed. So, for the kids, just break it down:

• Tell your little one there are a lot of things in that product that are not healthy. 
• Even though it isn't super healthy, the company still wants you to buy it, so they make it look pretty or cool to catch your attention.
• When you see bright colors, a character or cool surfers, its a clue that the company MIGHT be trying to trick you...
• ...So check out the ingredients! 

Tip #2 check out the ingredients and measure.

Your little one doesn't have to be able to read to check out the ingredients! We have worked out a little system. We simply measure with our fingers. If the ingredient list is really long, Brother knows it is probably not a good choice. When he finds something with a short list, there is a good choice I will let it into the cart. 

Measuring the ingredients for cheese balls. I think he was being a little conservative here, but he was pretty clear they were NOT making their way into the cart. :) 

Measuring the ingredients for these freeze-dried fruit snacks. They have ONE (yes, one) ingredient so they are Momma approved. 

Tip #3 Find items with organic ingredients.

Easy peasy! This can be like a scavenger hunt game! If I tell the Little Man he can pick out a cereal, a snack, the ketchup, whatever... but it has to be organic, you bet he can hunt it down. 

If kids can spot the McDonalds golden arches and recognize it, then it should be no problem to spin things to the other side of the spectrum and make sure they recognize the USDA Organic label. My little man can spot that label anywhere. 

Tip #4 Find Non-GMO ingredients

My stripped down definition of GMOs is that they are grown from seeds that are not healthy for us. This is how we've described corn and things made from corn. So, if the kids want a corn cereal or corn chips, it has to have "the butterfly". 

                                           

Finding "the butterfly" means that the product is free of genetically modified ingredients. and verified as such by the Non-GMO Project. The non-GMO project has a lot of information about GMOs as well as finding and purchasing non-GMO products. 

I should point out that organic foods can not knowingly contain GMO ingredients, so the organic label is also a safety net to buying and eating non-GMO foods. 

Nothing says you can't turn your little ones into healthy food detectives. I can tell you in all honestly that both my olders use all the strategies listed here and they have made an impact. I have seen my oldest on her own,measure the ingredients of a snack with her finger and whisper, "Wow, that seems like a lot," showing that she is very aware and becoming a conscious consumer of food. On multiple occasions my son has pointed out marketing "tricks" and has told me that if I looked, I would find that wasn't a very healthy item. 

Do they still ask for ice cream and crunchy cheese snacks with a picture of the very cool cheetah on the front? Yup, they sure do. They are still kids, afterall. This is just the beginning of a long, long journey. I definitely don't have all the answers and I might not be getting everything right. My biggest hope is that I am starting this little mob of mine off on the right foot, though.

Here's to hoping....!

Thank you for reading! 

Fall Math Fun

Fall Math Fun 

This is a little project I did with Brother. I used the falling Autumn leaves to teach him tally marks and displaying data on a bar graph. It was a really fun project and he totally rocked it. So proud of my little guy! 

The night before I did some prep: I created the bar graph and decorated a sheet of paper to use for keeping track of our data collection. 

The next morning, on our way to school, we took notice of all the leaves changing color. I led the olders to the question of: What fall color is most common for the leaves in our neighborhood?

Our guesses were red and brown.

After we dropped Big Sister off at school, we used our walk home to begin data collecting to see if any of our hypotheses were correct. We decided to collect 30 leaves. We took only a few samples whenever we came across a big collection of fallen leaves. 

In order to keep track of how many leaves we had collected, we used tally marks. This is a lesson we have revisited more than once and this was a perfect way to apply it. Brother still needs lots of support when counting by 5's but who cares. He will totally get it soon enough.  :) 

Once we had all of our data collected, it was time to sort. Brother made piles of each color.  We then talked about the parts of the graph and showed him a sample of how to put information on a bar graph. 

Then my little mathematician went to task and graphed all the information he had collected. I lent him support for the taller bars but he did most of the work, and accurately even! 

The end result, as you saw above, is this! We could easily tell that our guesses of red and brown were correct and we noticed that we just don't seem to have any orange leaves in our neighborhood. Brother thought this was really fun and I could tell he felt very accomplished once he saw his finished project. 

This is an easy project to prep and a lot of fun for your little ones. If you decide to give it a try, I hope you will let us know which fall colors are most popular in your neighborhood!

Thank you for reading!!! 

Sending my healthy eater out into the world and this mom is freaking out

Sending My Healthy Eater Out Into The World and This Mom is FREAKING OUT

Ah, the end of summer is approaching. (Sniff, sniff) I really don't even want to think any aspect of what the end of summer will bring, but I have to. The main thing I need to think about is my little girl starting Kindergarten. Now, that topic has about 1,000 subtopics  that could each send me into a panic but that is also more than I could handle in one post. However, something that has really got my anxiety level shooting through the roof is the idea of sending my healthy eater out into the great wide world. Sure I plan on sending her to school with a big, pretty lunchbox filled with all the whole, healthy foods she is used to eating here at my kitchen table. Yes, of course, I am already going nutty on Pinterest searching for ideas to keep her lunches fun and exciting. But in a lunchroom where other kids might have orange powder covered chips and brightly colored juice boxes, the stress is not as much about what color lunch box to get and how do I make a cute little mouse out of an apple slice, some raisins and a cleverly slices piece of kale. My stress is really, truly about my complete panic about whether I have laid enough ground work to keep my healthy eater eating healthy! How does her lunch box, that I will work painstakingly on, mind you, going to complete with her classmates Lunchables and bologna sandwich, chocolate milk, bag of chips and Oreo cookies? I am not going to lie. I am consumed with this problem. 

Look, I have been fueling my daughter's little body with the most whole, organic foods I could find and afford since before she was born. My interest in nutrition took a big leap forward once my husband and I wanted to start a family. I tried to make all the right moves, I breastfed, made my own babyfood, I bought organic. We began our CSA organic farm share because we had children. I mean, really, I tried so hard to keep my daughter and all our children as toxin-free as possible and fueled by the healthiest food I could get my hands on. And now, I am just going to send her to the wolves. Maybe, I said maybe, that is an exaggeration, but I don't think so. Her lunchroom will be full of lots of strategically packaged goodies, lunches and juices, with their clever designs and mascots corporations choose simply because they will draw kids in and make them scream and kick until their desperate parents leaves the supermarket with a shopping cart loaded with their products. On one hand, it will be my little girl against Corporate America. Does she stand a chance? 

But on the other hand, it will just be a case of her vs little Susie who says, "Eeew, what's that?" when she sees her kale chips.  Have I given my little girl enough confidence to say, "Oh, they are kale chips. They are delicious and super healthy." Or is she going to come home, hating my guts for making her and her healthy lunch the oddballs. 

I suppose I need to accept that there is a balance. I think that balance is between continuing to do all I can to inspire all of my kids, including my soon-to-be Kindergartener, to eat healthy foods and accepting that she is about to make her own choices, good and bad. That doesn't make me feel all that much better but I believe that is the situation as it currently stands. Sigh. 


If you are a parent with some of these same worries, I wanted to write a post for you with all the answers on how to quell these feelings and anxieties, but I can't. All I can do is tell you that you are not alone. If you have some answers, oh,please, do share. But if you, too, are just full of worry how starting school is going to effect your healthy little eater, feel free to share that as well. Maybe our shared experience will reveal some great wisdom but if not, it will at least be nice to know we aren't alone. 


Thank you for reading, peeps! You all rock. 

 

Whole Happy Bird Watchers

WHOLE HAPPY BIRD WATCHERS

This morning we decided to stretch our legs and head out around the neighborhood. To add a fun twist to our walk, I introduced the little ones to a preschoolers version of bird watching! 

I created this colorful bird watching checklist for the little ones. We went over each item and then set out to see what we could find! (No need to leave a comment on my awful illustrations. lol! My children, thankfully, are very forgiving.)

We set out on our way and the little ones went right to work looking for neighborhood birds. Finding a bird nest was proving tricky but Big SIster and Brother stopped under every big tree to have a look. 

It was a perfect day! Everyone was so happy to be outside! Maybe it was just me but it seemed like there were even more birds out this gorgeous morning than usual. I am so grateful they obliged us. 

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My little bird watchers were diligent in tracking their findings.  

We had a really fun walk, got in some early morning exercise and had some practice being careful observers of nature. It was a great start to another perfect summer day! 

Lastly, I will leave you with this. No matter how passionately they plead with you that they do not need to use the bathroom before the walk, MAKE THEM GO. Or else, walk home with a kid like this. For 5 blocks. 

Thanks for reading you guys! Hope you are having a great summer! 

Homemade book of found treasures

HOMEMADE BOOK of FOUND TREASURES

We are a family that likes to hike, camp and just generally be moving outdoors. So, we try to keep our kids as outdoors and active as we can. I mean, The Dad and I need them to keep up, for goodness sake! (Just kidding. Kind of.) Like most parents, we get the young'ens on neighborhood walks as early as they start walking. Sure, they just start with just a half a block at first but they slowly build their strength and interest up. I try to think of fun, engaging ways to keep their interest peaked before, during and after a walk so that they are excited for our next outing. When my oldest was in the early stages of the "pointing and naming", I brought some treasures home from a neighborhood walk and I made this simple, homemade book for her. She loved it. It taught her some outdoor vocabulary and it was one of her first experiences as a young reader of "reading" her book to Daddy.  

After our walk, I laid out all of our souvenirs to see everything had collected . It is likely you might return with 300-some odd items. (Kids love to collect!) I picked the best samples of what we had and tried for a decent variety. Once I had the final cut, I took out a piece of foam board for each treasure. Then, I cut the piece of foam to fit into a sandwich-sized baggies. 

I attached the little treasure to a piece of foam board with either glue, tape or both depending on the item.

I wrote the name of the outdoor treasure below it.  Then I put each piece of foam into it's own baggie and sealed it. 

The treasures we collected were a rock, bark, an acorn, a leaf and a stick. 

For this book, I poked holes right underneath the sealing strip of the baggies and then looped string through the holes. I tied them tightly and PRESTO! A homemade book! 

We only read this book over and over. It didn't take long before Big Sister was reading this one on her own. 





Thank you so much for reading! 

Egg Timer FLashcards

Egg Timer Flashcards

We are working on telling time to the hour, so to reenforce our learning AND get excited for the Spring I made these "Egg Timer" flashcards. They are super easy to make and a big help for the little ones when it comes to telling time to the hour. 

To begin with, I made some copies of of clocks. I just happened to find one on one of the kids' worksheets. I found some old giant pastel index cards. I used the backs of them since the backs don't have lines. I needed markers, scissors and a glue stick. Once I had everything together I cut out a large egg shape out of each of the 12 index cards. Then I cut each one in half in unique zig zag patterns. 

Next I outlined each egg shape's top and bottom with marker. Not necessary, I just do it to look a bit more eye-catching to the kiddies. 

On the top half of the egg I glued the clock and then assigned it a time. We have a teaching clock here at home that uses a red minute hand and a blue hour hand, so I used the same colors for this project to in order to be consistent. On the bottom half of the egg I just wrote the time that corresponded to what I drew on the top. 

Once I had a complete set, we were ready to practice. You can work with just 3 at a time, half the set or the whole thing. We stretched all the clocks out across the top of our workspace and picked one time at a time. Each child took a turn matching it to the correct clock. 

We have been getting excited about the Springtime and these pastel egg timer flashcards lend to that excitement, plus support learning to tell time.  Hope they work for you!  :)  

Signs of Spring

Searching for Signs of Spring 

On every Spring "sneak preview day" that we have had in between these last very chilly winter days, the kiddies and I have been out on neighborhood walks and hikes searching high and low for signs of Spring. As a way to summarize all their new learning and discoveries we put all the signs of Spring they could think of on a chart to review. 

The kiddies got a kick out of using markers on the big chart paper. 

We used everything we have learned so far in our phonics lessons to help us write the words that went with the pictures. 

Playing Store

PLAYING STORE

I have been using a homeschool math curriculum for both of my olders for over a year. I have been very happy using the Saxon homeschool curriculum for Kindergarten and 1st grade math. Below is one of the lessons in the Kindergarten curriculum that I recently did with Brother. I wanted to share it because it is such a great idea for helping children with learning ordinal position, writing money amounts and counting with pennies. As an extra bonus, its pretty fun and both of my olders like to continue playing store long after the lesson is over. 

 We picked 10 items from around the house and used post its to label a price on each one. Brother picked a price between 1 and 10 cents. I gave him a little guidance to be sure he picked each value just once. 

Writing some of the digits is still a challenge for Brother but he is working very hard. I think the organic coconut oil ended up being very reasonably priced. 

Once all the items were labeled, I challenged Brother to put them in order from lowest value to highest. He wasn't sure where to begin so I asked him where we started when we count, 1! After that it fell into place pretty easily but if it doesn't, I would start at the beginning to help him catch on by counting 1 cent, 2 cents, 3 cents.... 

The next day Brother set up all his items in a "store" and I gave hime 10 pennies. He and I took turns be the customer and the shop keeper. 

When buying an item, he counted out the correct amount of pennies. Then we would figure out if he had enough money to make any other purchases. 

 I loved this lesson when I did it with my oldest and I was happy to see this lesson come up again with my son. It is an easy lesson to extend by using higher values for the prices, introducing other coins and many other ways.  Brother had so much fun with this lesson and had a great deal of success, too.  Win, win! 

Farm Animal Flashcards (German Language)

Who's Your Momma?

(Wer ist deine Mutti?)

The little nuggets go to German Language class once a week. They have some talented and hard working teachers and learn so much in just one day a week. I try to take whatever their lessons were from their one day of class and stretch them out over the next week to help the kiddies review and practice. And to be honest, I usually learn quite a bit myself. 

This week my little ones learned about farm animals and how to name adult animals and their babies. Thinking about a way to supplement that lesson I remembered I had a set of farm animal cards that I purchased over a year ago and actually never used. I made some color copies, did a little cutting and pasting onto card stock and then separated the pairs uniquely to ensure the proper two would be reunited during play. 

I used:

• photos of mother and baby animals
• card stock (I used all one color but one way to support your young learners could be to set each pair on a different color card stock.) 
• scissors
• glue stick 
• a marker for labeling

HOW EASY IS THAT?

The beauty of this little project is you can change it to meet any needs. I am thinking about doing a small set with CVC words and matching pictures. 

Fair warning: I love to use card stock because it is heavier that construction paper but it is far from indestructible. If you really want to extend the life of these cards I would suggest laminating them or covering them with clear contact paper. I do not have a laminator (yet!) but I am more of the mind that these little projects serve a particular purpose. We will use these over the next few days, I will put them away. Then we will use them again next week... but then they will get tucked away for a while.  So I extend the life of something like this a bit. However, if I don't, eh, no biggie. Its worth it. 

Valentine's Day Mail Play

VALENTINE'S DAY MAIL PLAY

After playing over at their grandparents' house one day, my olders told me how much they really loved that their Grandmother set out paper and envelopes and they could do some letter writing play. I thought it was a great idea and they enjoyed it so much I created a Valentine's Day letter play here at our house. I really love that this activity encourages pre-writing and writing skills, creativity, imagination play and is a perfect opportunity to describe how the mail system works! Plus it was so much fun that the kids were engaged for over an hour!

Set Up:

I wanted to be sure that the olders had all sorts of choices: choices of writing tools, paper, envelopes, decorations. Prior to beginning play, I gathered together a variety of pencils, colored pencils and crayons. (I try to avoid markers, even the washable ones. They still tend to just get on everything in our house.) 

I put together all types of paper, different sizes, different colors. I chose a lot of pink and red for the Valentine's Day theme. 

I save envelopes from anything I can. If I have extra Christmas cards or thanks you's after a party, I used those saved envelopes for this activity. I even save the return envelopes from junk mail, too. It all works! In this tray I also included return address labels. I get tons sent to me through fundraiser mailings and I save them all. One set of address labels included square decorative stickers. We decided those would be our stamps.  :) 

 I put out a bowl or two of stickers the kids could use to decorate their Valentine's Day mail. Who doesn't love a chance to cover something with stickers!? 

The night before I transformed an empty box of baby wipes into a mailbox. I wrapped it in brown packing paper and painted it. I cut a slot in the top and cut a small door in the back so we could empty the mailbox.  Not my best work but the kids were happy with it. A shoe box would also work nicely if you wrapped the top and bottom separately and just cut a mail slot in the top. 

After all that there is nothing left to do but PLAY! 

 If you try this activity with your little ones, I hope they enjoy it as much as mine did!