The World According to Claire

Favorite Game

• Hat, Toes - Put something on your head and yell HAT! Immediately move it to your feet and yell TOES! Any object will work, a real hat, a piece of chicken, your book, that rock mom thought was too big for you too pick up...

Favorite New Skill

• TWO! - Cary around two of something and announce TWO! Two toothbrushes, two brooms, two books, etc

Favorite Food

• Anything red that can be stolen off the counter while wearing a white shirt. Strawberries are the best!
  

Favorite Toy

• The step stool daddy left in the kitchen. It's a chair, a table, a push toy, an excellent way of reaching strawberries on the counter

Favorite Books

• Which ever one mom or dad just finished reading for the second time. Just firmly push it back into a parents hand to signal repeat. Especially "The Giving Tree" (TREE), Mother Goose Treasury (GOOSE!), Curious George Treasury (Not sure what the word is but she says something for it)

Favorite Activity

• Tied between "Oooutside" and "AAA" AAA means attempting to write the letter A in crayon or asking someone to write letters. Right now she does a very good upside down V and is starting to get a slash across the bottom.

Multipurpose words

• Wheel - Anything circular including mommy's nose. Anything that creates movement like the rockers on the rocking chair
• DinDin - Any meal that is eaten in CHAIR

Whole Wheat Waffles Take 1

Corn, dairy, soy, nut free.

• 1 c Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 c Unbleached White Flour (Bleached can contain corn)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 c water
• 1/2 c light olive oil (or other safe oil)
  
• 3 eggs
  

Combine all ingredients until smooth. Let sit 5 minutes while the waffle iron heats. Cook according to iron instructions. You will need a higher browning setting to get the same results as normal waffles. (Even then these will not brown great.)

• Freeze great! Reheat in a toaster oven or a pan with a little oil.
  
• Can substitute 2 teaspoons baking powder for the baking soda and cream of tartar if not worried about corn
• Can substitute rice or soy milk for water and they may brown better
• Next time I will be experimenting with increasing the eggs to 4.
  

Please Don't Teach My Child

Sometimes a really good book can turn your entire view of the world upside down, black becomes white, up becomes down, good becomes bad. I just finished reading "How Children Learn" by John Holt. My view of teaching and learning will never be the same.

Please don't teach my child. Answer her instead. I don't care how many times you point at a block and say blue. If she doesn't care about it's color you can't make her. Plus, quite frankly from my attempts to do just that, it's pretty boring from an adult point of view. If you aren't doing it for fun she's not going to think it's fun either. The last thing I want is for her to start thinking learning is boring. If you want to help her to learn stop pointing and look where she's pointing instead. I was totally set in my head that she should start learning colors. If I hadn't been paying attention to what she was doing I would have never realized what she really wanted to learn was letters! She's got a good part of the alphabet down with sounds and all I did is start saying and writing them when she asked. Who knows what she'll want to learn next but I'll be listening for the question.

Please don't quiz my child. Asking her what color the block is doesn't help her learn. It doesn't even tell you what she does or doesn't know. It just tells you if she's in the mood to respond to your questions or not. When you ask a question with a clear right or wrong answer one of two things will be true. Either she already knows the answer and wonders why you are acting like she might not. Or she doesn't know the answer and doesn't appreciate having you point out her ignorance. If you want to know what she knows stop for a minute and listen to her. I guarantee that if she knows something... and is interested in it you will hear all about it. Thanks to my daughter I know about every circular object (Wheel) in the house, including my nose. I know about every plane (ANE!) that passes over head and every letter printed in the sidewalk ("A A A") on the way to the park. If you stop and listen you will be amazed by how much she knows.

Please don't correct my child. Give her time and she will figure it out on her own. So she calls the purple pajamas blue? To us adults it looks like she has her colors confused. From her point of view she has figured out that blue is a color and colors are used to describe things you see. She's also figured out the general range of color blue applies to. Especially if she can't yet pronounce purple, blue is a really good word to pick. Oh, and by the way... technically she is right. Purple pajamas are blue, just with red mixed in too. Imagine if your boss sat over your shoulder and corrected every mistake you made the second you made it. Would you ever learn to figure things out yourself? Would you even feel like doing anything at all if someone pounced on you the moment it wasn't perfect? You ask, "How will she learn if we don't help?" Well the same way she learned that blue is a color. Watching and listening to the world. At some point she will notice everyone else using the word purple and then it will come naturally.

Please don't teach my child. Stand back and let her learn.

Sweep Cat!

Claire's first two word sentence is officially "Sweep Cat!" Even though it sounded more like "Sweet Cat!" She was walking around the house with her little broom saying "Sweet Sweet Sweet" while making sweeping motions. When she got to the cat her little face lit up and with much enthusiasm she yelled out "Sweet Cat!" and proceeded to do just that. The cat was not pleased with this turn of events.

Pineapple Carrot Muffins Take 1

Claire is allergic to something. We're still trying to figure out exactly what. Right now we're avoiding corn, dairy, soy, nuts and chick peas. Because of this I have to cook a lot of food from scratch. For example, even if I found a dairy/soy free muffin must liking it contains baking powder with contains corn starch which would have me up all night with a very unhappy child. Here's today's experiment. Please read the comments at the end before trying the recipe.

Pineapple Carrot Muffins

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. (350 if using convection.) Grease a nonstick muffin pan. (I use light olive oil and a pastry brush.)

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour (ran out of pastry flour or I would have only used it)
• 5/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon coriander

Whisk together all the dry ingredients.

• 1/2 Grated Carrots
• 20 oz can pineapple chunks
  

Drain the pineapple and save the juice. Finely dice the chunks. (Next time I'm using crushed but I'm leaving the chunks for now since that's what I tested.) Measure 1 cup of diced chunks. Eat the rest or feed to impatient toddler hanging off your knee.

• 1 Large Egg (Eggs are not dairy.)
  
• 1/4 cup Maple Syrup
• 1/2 cup Light Olive Oil or Canola Oil

Whisk the wet ingredients together. Add enough water to the pineapple juice to equal 1 cup. Whisk into the wet ingredients. Add the dry ingredients, carrots and pineapple chunks to the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined. Spoon into 12 muffin tins. The batter will fill come almost to the top. (They did not overflow when I baked them... but I give no guarantees.) Bake until a toothpick inserted in a middle muffin comes out clean. (A few dry crumbs stuck don't count.) I think this will be about 20 minutes but at this point I had a very hungry toddler trying to cling to my neck so I'm not sure. Eat immediately or freeze. Muffins get stale after a day.

Comments:

• Got the toddler and husband seal of approval.
  
• Next time I'm using crushed pineapple. (Those of you who know me will realize that when I say dice I meant that I individually cut each chunk into 8 equal sized pieces. Yes I am that crazy. If you only have chunked pineapple just go over all of it with a knife for a while. Then maybe you will not have an impatient, starving child clinging to your neck.)
• Needs more carrots. They were way to understated in this version.
• If making for a toddler's breakfast preprep the ingredients the night before. Do NOT combine wet and dry ingredients until it is time to bake. I need to experiment with mixing the wet ingredients and letting them sit over night in the refrigerator.
  

How To Eat Pot Pie

(Shhh... Claire here... Don't tell mom I borrowed her computer.) Toddlers of the world I am here to warn you of one of the great parenting tricks, pot pie. It looks like steaming, flaky goodness but it is really a fraud. Parents use pot pie to hide things you don't like. They hope if you don't see it or if it's covered in warm gravy you just might eat it. However, despite these sneaky parents pot pie can still be a good meal. Here's how to have your pie and like it too! First, immediately eat off the flaky crust. It's the good stuff they are using to hide the bad stuff. If you save it till last it will just get soggy. Revel in eating each last bite while your tentative parents watch on praying you'll eventually get to the nutritious part they hid underneath. At this point careful dissection is required. Carefully sort through what was underneath. Every time you find a pea hold it up in the air and declare "PEA!" Then eat it with much enthusiasm. These are good! When done with a single pea chant "Pea Pea Pea" over and over while pointing at the pie pan. If you are really lucky a guilt ridden parent will fish a few more out for you. When you find a piece of carrot hold it up in the air with a look of complete disdain. These are evil. They may look good but they are not. Now glare at your parents while holding the carrot over the edge of your tray. If they do not get the hint and take it away immediately fling it on the floor and continue eating. For the first couple of carrots you may want to fling with out warning. That may teach them to leave out the carrots next time. Finally if you come to the meat you will have two options. If you are lucky there will be real hunks of meat. Enjoy those but don't comment on them. If your parents were "pressed for time" they may have gotten lazy and all you have is ground meat. In that case ignore it. They can do better. A couple meals without you eating any protein and they'll know it's time to up the quality. It's perfectly fine to leave it all on the plate. Just remember you have to fling the carrots. We will not tolerate evil!

Just One More Book Daddy

Every evening Claire and daddy have story time. It's a great way to make sure they have some quality time during the work week. Recently daddy started letting Claire pick out the books herself. He'll sit in the chair and say bring me 4 books. She'll go to the shelf and bring him a book. Then he'll say bring me 3 books and she'll bring him another, etc. When she brings the last he picks her up and starts to read. Two days ago she caught on to the pattern. Now she brings the first three books one at a time. When it's time for the last book she picks up two and brings them both back.

Child Directed Learning

I've been playing with the concept of child directed learning. That's where I follow Claire's lead on what she wants to learn. Even if I provide a new activity for her I try to leave her free to do what she wants with it. It's actually harder than I thought it would be. Today I decided to brave the finger paints again. While I was digging everything out Claire grabbed the colored pencils out of the drawer and motioned for me to open them. While I set up she happily dumped them out over the paper for finger painting. When I was ready I quickly picked them all up and put them away telling her it was time to do art. (Um... mom... I was trying to do art. Can I please have the pencils back!)

Since she hates getting her hands messy (unless it involves eating) I decided we would try stamping. I gave her a dish with 4 different colors of finger paint and 4 pieces of carrot to dip in the paint and stamp. She took one look at the setup, gave me a look and promptly flung the carrots on the ground. (Paints and food mom??? What are you thinking? And I don't even like to eat carrots.) Realizing there might need to be a little parental direction I picked up a carrot, dipped it in the paint and stamped it on the paper. At this point she was intrigued. She grabbed the carrot and proceeded to dip it into all of the paint. A little voice in my head was screaming "Ahhh, don't mix the paint like that. I gave you a carrot for each color." But I kept my mouth shut. It was a good thing since she produced lovely tie dyed circles and probably had more fun then if mommy had told her the right way.

We both enjoyed ourselves till the very end when she decided she was done and wanted to run through the house holding things covered in paint. I had to revert back from cool mommy to evil mommy as I forced an end of project clean up. Child directed learning stops the moment the fingerpaints start heading towards the couch!