Getting Grains In Little Tummies

My son loves this porridge recipe, so I thought I'd pass it on:

1 1/3 cup water
2/3 cups rolled oats
1 tbsp ground flax
1 tbsp wheat germ
1 tsp honey

Heat ingredients above, stirring until porridge thickens, then remove from heat.

Top with:

1/3 cup frozen blueberries
Cream

It's nice if the blueberries are still frozen because they help to cool the porridge.

This is a quick easy way to get some healthy grains and blueberries into little picky eaters :-)
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Birthday Party Idea

Here's an idea that a friend of mine just did at her daughter's first birthday: a time capsule!!

LOVE it. She just had all her guests write notes to her daughter to put it in the time capsule, but I think it would have been neat to take it a step further: tell your guests about it in advance to give them the opportunity to bring in something to add.

Soooo cool.... !!! My kids are past their first birthdays, but I may still consider this for another milestone birthday (such as ten).
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Try Bingo To Help Reading Skills

Here's an idea for a custom Bingo game that reinforces early reading skills:

Supplies:

• Card stock paper
• Scissors
• Pen

To make:

• Use two (or more) sheets of card stock as your Bingo cards.
• On these cards, draw a grid of squares (4x4 or 5x5 works well).
• In each square, write simple words that you think your child will be able to read.
• Cut more card stock into small squares that will fit in the squares drawn on the cards (these are your Bingo chips).
• Copy the words that are on the cards onto the chips as well, making sure that there are the same number of word chips as there are cards (so each player has the same word chips).
• Make an extra set of word chips - these are your "caller" cards.

To Play:

Turn a caller card over to reveal a word. Each player finds their matching word card and places it on its spot on their Bingo card. The first player to make a line wins.

My daughter and I play this all the time, and her four year old brother plays as well. He is actually able to match up the words based on the letters they contain, even though he can't yet read them all (he can sound out some simple three letter words). Because this reading practice is presented in the form of a Bingo game, they have fun without realizing they're "doing homework" ;-)


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How I Taught My Son Our Address

I made it into a song.

I used a random melody that begins and ends on the same note (so it makes sense to your ear) and sung the address over and over. He loved hearing it, and asked me to "sing it again, mama!! sing it again!!". Tonight as I was tucking him in for bed, out of nowhere he sang it, with the address correct.

(awesome)

I don't think he'd be able to recite the address without the melody, but that doesn't matter. What does matter (lol) is that I don't think he knows it's his "address"; as in, if someone asked him for his address, he wouldn't know to sing the song.

LOL, oh well, one thing at a time, right?
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Bratz Dolls Will No Longer Be Sold In 2009

Have you heard? This was news to me but here's a link from a CNN site:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/04/news/companies/bratz_dolls.ap/index.htm

Apparently Barbie and Bratz (or the makers of ;-) have been in a legal dispute and the Barbie side has won. After the current holiday season, Bratz dolls will be pulled from store shelves and no longer available for sale.

LOL If you were a collector/investor, wouldn't now be a good time to stock up?

Hmmm....
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