Valentine’s Day Lunch Snack Ideas for Kids

Posted in food & flavor & recipes, holidays by Rosemary Lynn

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I’ve already started adding fun Valentines-themed snacks to my kid’s lunches.

The top picture is of heart-shaped strawberries.

Okay, okay… they’re not obviously hearts upon first glance, so I did mention to my girls ahead of time that they were getting strawberry hearts in their lunch bags. Just in case my artfulness didn’t shine through right away.

Anyway, to make quick strawberry treats that vaguely resemble hearts, follow these steps:

Wash strawberry.
Cut top off of strawberry.
Cut berry in half.
Cut a triangle out of the top center of the berry.
Cut off the edges of the top at an angle.
Ensure children they’re getting lovingly carved hearts and not mangled fruit pieces.

You can also toss those extra strawberry pieces into a bowl of cereal or oatmeal, by the way.

And onto the next photo…. I used a tiny {about 1-inch} cookie cutter to cut hearts out of American cheese slices and flour tortillas.

I cut out about twice as many tortilla hearts as cheese ones because my oldest likes to assemble her own cheese sandwiches out of the pieces.

The last photo doesn’t have anything heart-shaped, but instead includes something red.

I tossed a few red M&Ms {leftover from Christmas} into a container of nuts. Cashews, specifically, since I think they taste better than peanuts, and there are kids in my daughters’ classes with peanut allergies.

My girls will eat the nuts without any extra incentive, but I felt the dash of red color just added a little fun.

And if you’re wondering about the containers I had the cashews in, these are the ones I use:

My girls love getting snacks in these little triangle containers. They’re technically condiment containers, but they’re easy to open {even for my 2yo} and they hold plenty of food.

Not a LOT of food, mind you, but a handful of nuts or raisins or goldfish or about 5 or 6 grapes. Enough for a snack.

Oh, and I also cut apple slices and used the same heart shaped cookie cutter to remove the seeds, thus putting a heart in the middle of the circle slice. But I forgot to photograph those. I’ll try to remember next time. :)

Please share any fun Valentine’s snacks you’ve made for your own kiddos!

**********EDIT: Aug 2015**********

Aaaaaand….. now that I’ve been making heart strawberries in a way that’s SO much easier for a while now, I should probably update this post! ;)

Anyway, after I wrote this, I discovered that it was way easier to just cut the strawberry in half and use a small heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the heart. Takes two seconds and looks amazing! Plus – the cuteness factor means my kids eat more fruit! (Even at school!!!)

Check it out:

And you can see that I used one of the larger heart-shaped cutters for the sandwiches. Since peanut butter and (strawberry) jelly can get a little messy, I sometimes cut out the bread first and then fill them instead of making the sandwich ahead of time and then cutting out the heart.

Happy Eating! (Or happy school-lunch making!)

25Jan2015

Flower Shaped Cinnamon Buns

Posted in food & flavor & recipes by Rosemary Lynn

These flower shaped cinnamon buns make breakfast a little extra special. :)

And it’s pretty quick to do with the help of store bought cinnamon rolls.

I popped those babies out of the can, formed a flower near the top of the pan {one roll in the center and 5 around it to act as petals} and then cut the remaining 2 rolls in half to use for the stem and leaf.

I was pretty happy about how much it actually resembled a flower even before I added the colored sprinkles.

Once you pull the buns out of the oven, add some colored sugar sprinkles right after spreading on the icing – otherwise the icing will start to harden just enough for the sprinkles to not stick. You have to be kind of quick about this step, so pick out your colors ahead of time.

Now, I made these for my mom on her birthday because she is a gardener and she likes flowers…. but while I was sprinkling on the bright colors, I realized it would also make an impressive centerpiece for any springtime or Easter breakfast or brunch.

Well, that is, it would make an impressive centerpiece if you transferred the buns to a platter instead of being all lazy like me and serving it right on the cookie sheet…..

Either way: enjoy!

And if you’re a big fan of sprinkles, check these out:

Jack O’ Lantern Cinnamon Buns

Milk Sprinkles

Sprinkles Cookies

10Jan2015

Make Cute Animal Shaped Mini Sandwiches and Cookies and Stuff

Posted in food & flavor & recipes, toys & games & gifts by Rosemary Lynn

These little sandwich shapers are ADORABLE!

The full name for these cute, little sandwich cutters are CuteZCute Animal Palz Mini Bento Sandwich Stamping Cutter & Egg Shaper.

Which is quite a mouthful.

But they do so many fabulous things I can totally get why they had trouble giving it a shorter name!

I’ve used them for a bunch of different things and they really add a great element of fun to my daughters’ lunches.

You can use them to imprint on bread, tortillas, watermelon, cookie dough, and probably a bunch of things I haven’t even thought of yet.

Plus the set also has the tools to make pocket sandwiches. I’ve found that you can actually get a little bit of both peanut butter and jelly inside of them, but my 4yo actually prefers just plain peanut butter.

Oh – and I have used them to imprint on slices of cheese. But I don’t recommend that.

Here are some meals/snacks I’ve made with them:

And there are tools in the kit to also shape hard boiled eggs, but I haven’t tried that yet.

I do really love this Sandwich Stamping Set. I’ve kept the box because everything has it’s place inside of it, the directions are on the back of the box, and it fits nicely in the pantry.

I have to keep an eye on the pieces, tho… they have a habit of walking off. Especially when my 2yo sees me using them. :)

2Jan2015

How to Make “Snowy” Floridian Reindeer Footprints

Posted in holidays by Rosemary Lynn

How to Make Snowy Floridian Reindeer Footprints from RoamingRosie.com

These fun “Snowy” Floridian Reindeer Footprints were inspired by a conversation with a friend.

He was telling me about how they used to make reindeer footprints in the snow on Christmas Eve when they lived up north, which reminded me of when one of my other friends made Easter Bunny footprints with flour across her living room floor last year, and I realized………

Whoa.

I could totally make reindeer footprints with flour!

And glitter!!!

And my kids were even more excited then I was once they saw them.

You see, I’d had quite a few conversations with my 4yo about Santa. One of her main concerns was how he was going to get into the house without a chimney. Which was clumsily explained away with some mutterings about him climbing through windows or something.

That led to her insisting that we not only cover the lawn with the “reindeer food” that she got in school {a combination of oatmeal and green glitter meant to attract the attention of the flying reindeer}, but that we also leave open the window and glass door blinds to make sure that Santa could see inside.

And after all of her worrying, I thought it would be nice to leave some “proof” behind that Santa – and his reindeer – DID, in fact, make it to our house on Christmas Eve.

I used flour to represent the snow that stuck to the reindeer feet when they were up north where it’s cold, and the glitter was because the reindeer are magical.

How to Make Snowy Floridian Reindeer Footprints from RoamingRosie.com

What I did was mix together some flour and glitter, and then sprinkle it over the front walk with a small mesh colander.

To Make the Reindeer Footprints, you’ll need:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup fine silver glitter
small mesh colander
cardboard cutout of reindeer feet

And I would totally upload a reindeer foot template if I had one, but as you can see in the photos, I simply took a thin piece of cardboard, drew a couple of circles on them, drew a triangle in the tops of those circles, and used a box cutter to very carefully cut out the shapes.

Grandmas wasn’t fully convinced that that’s what reindeer footprints would actually look like, but I thought it was pretty spiffy.

Anyway, mix together the flour and glitter, and cut out your cardboard template ahead of time. If it’s not going to rain, you could make the footprints late Christmas Eve – especially if you think your children will awake before you on Christmas morning.

To transfer the footprints to a sidewalk/patio/balcony/etc., scoop the flour mixture out of the bowl with the small colander and shake it gently over the template until the cutout hole is covered. Lift template and there’s your footprint!

Ours lasted for about 4 days. And there’s still a bit of glitter floating around. :)

Roaming Rosie Signature

24Dec2014

“Thanks a Latte” Teacher Christmas Gift Tags

Posted in holidays by Rosemary Lynn

Thanks a Latte Gift Tag for Teachers: FREE PRINTABLE from RoamingRosie.com

This is really one of those posts that should have been finished waaaaaaaay before Christmas, but, well … it wasn’t. Things are, you know: busy.

I’m sure you know.

And there will totally still be some Christmas-themed posts appearing after Christmas, too………

Anyway, when I was shopping around for a gift for my daughter’s teachers, I was having a hard time deciding what to do.

I thought a Christmas themed mug filled with coffee would be nice… but what if they didn’t drink coffee?

I kept the mug idea, but added some tea and hot cocoa to the coffee. And candy, of course.

But what about a gift tag?

There are a ton online, but none said exactly what I wanted.

So I made my own.

Thanks a Latte Gift Tag for Teachers: FREE PRINTABLE from RoamingRosie.com

Here you can see that I got these adorable snowman mugs {at Target} and filled them with Starbucks VIA Christmas Coffee packs, a couple flavors of individually wrapped tea bags, and some hot cocoa mix {with mini marshmallows}.

I also stuck in a couple of candy canes and 3 or 4 Lindt chocolate balls.

Then I put the whole thing into a “cookie bag” and tied it off with some curled ribbon, tying the tag onto one of the ribbon strands.

It looked pretty cute, and I’m kinda kickin’ myself for forgetting to photograph the finished gift.

Thanks a Latte Gift Tag for Teachers: FREE PRINTABLE from RoamingRosie.com

Anyway, if you need a tag that mentions “latte” {for coffee} and “tea,” then these are for you!

Thanks a Latte Teacher Christmas Gift Tags

Oh, and I purposely didn’t add an outline shape to the tags on the PDF printable. That way you can cut them out in the same shape I did, or as squares or circles or whatever compliments your gift.

Enjoy!

Roaming Rosie Signature

22Dec2014

Easy Christmas Craft: Toilet Paper Roll Ornament Painting

Posted in activities for kids, holidays by Rosemary Lynn

Easy Christmas Craft Toilet Paper Roll Painted Ornaments

Painting Christmas ornaments with toilet paper rolls was another fun craft for my kids that was super easy to set up.

We just used the rolls to stamp red and green circles of paint onto a piece of white paper, and, once the paint was dry, we colored in the “ornaments” with colored pencils.

And hung the finished product of the fridge.

Easy and super fun.

But then, paint is always fun for kids.

Easy Christmas Craft Toilet Paper Roll Painted Ornaments

My suggestions include: covering your creating space with newspaper to catch extra paint, put some paint into tiny paper plates, and suggest making patterns with the colored pencils when they color in the “ornaments.”

And don’t forget to check out these other Christmas crafts:

DIY Lifesize Cardboard Gingerbread House

Felt Fashion Christmas Tree

Easy Christmas Craft: Paper Cone Christmas Trees

Crystal Snowmen

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22Dec2014

Easy Christmas Craft: Paper Cone Christmas Trees

Posted in activities for kids, holidays by Rosemary Lynn

Easy Christmas Craft: Decorating Paper Cone Christmas Trees at RoamingRosie.com

Decorating these paper cone Christmas trees was a fun craft for my kids and easy for me to set up.

I simply took some green construction paper, rolled it into a cone, added some tape to keep it in shape, and snipped off the bottoms with scissors to make them stand.

Easy Christmas Craft: Decorating Paper Cone Christmas Trees at RoamingRosie.com

I covered their art table with some scrap paper, set out the trees, some glitter glue and some sequins, and let them at it!

I actually had set out a bowl of gold and a bowl of red sequins, but my 4yo mixed them both together. She thought it looked better. :)

And I did help them a little with the glitter glue, just to make sure there was enough of it on the tree.

The sequins {our little ornaments} stick to the glitter glue, and when the glue dries, the glitter is still there, so it looks a little like a snowy garland.

Easy Christmas Craft: Decorating Paper Cone Christmas Trees at RoamingRosie.com

Ours are by the big Christmas tree right now. :)

And don’t forget to check out these other Christmas crafts:

DIY Lifesize Cardboard Gingerbread House

Felt Fashion Christmas Tree

Easy Christmas Craft: Toilet Paper Roll Ornament Painting

Crystal Snowmen

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10Nov2014

Pretend Play: Raking Autumn Leaves

Posted in activities for kids by Rosemary Lynn

Pretend Play: Raking Autumn Leaves ...... a fun fall activity for kids!

This is such a wonderful fall activity!

My girls have had – and are still having – so much fun with this Pretend Play activity of Raking Leaves.

And it’s so simple, too!

I bought 3 bags of 50 leaves each at the dollar store, and we already had the rakes – although I think we bought them at the dollar store in the spring.

Pretend Play: Raking Autumn Leaves ...... a fun fall activity for kids!

I do suggest using plastic rakes because they’re safer for indoors. We also have metal and wooden rakes, but plastic worked best for this.

Also, I prefer doing this activity on the carpet, but it does work on the tile and wood floors. To be honest, though, I found raking the leaves up on carpet with the plastic rake to be somewhat soothing. Meditative, even.

To store the leave we use a basket that we already had, but you could also use a plastic baggy. {That’s what I plan to store them in at the end of fall.}

Pretend Play: Raking Autumn Leaves ...... a fun fall activity for kids!

Another thing these leaves are perfect for is throwing.

Rake up a pile and toss them into the air!

Seriously: these are made of fabric, so they kind of flutter down gently. The whole reason I decided to do this with my kids is because they adore the Elefun Game so much. And, really, the Elefun game isn’t perfect. The butterflies/fireflies come out too quickly and there aren’t enough of them, but my girls still love catching them AND collecting them afterwards.

But that’s why I bought 150 leaves for this activity – so there would be enough to entertain both of them. Plenty to keep them busy with raking and throwing.

And organizing.

My 4yo would make piles of the leaves, sorting them by color and counting them. And my 2yo made piles that were her “birds nests.”

The options are limitless.

Pretend Play: Raking Autumn Leaves ...... a fun fall activity for kids!

And, like I said, this activity can be extremely affordable. I already had the rakes and the basket, and I bought the 3 bags of leaves for a buck a piece at the Dollar Tree. The plastic rakes can also be found in the outdoor toy section or garden section of places like Target or Kmart even Walgreens – at certain times of the year.

BUT, if you’re having trouble finding the items you need, here are some Decorative Fall Leaves and a Gardening Tool Set from Amazon:

And please let me know if your Little Ones enjoy it – and if they come up with any games of their own!

And check out these other Pretend Play ideas, too:

Pretend Play: Makeup

Pretend Play: Post Office and Mail Carrier

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22Aug2014

Introduction to the ALPHABET ACTIVITIES for Kids {Start Here}

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities, free worksheets & printables by Rosemary Lynn

Welcome to my Alphabet Activities section!

My kids and I have been practicing the alphabet through Letter Days, exploring one letter a day through food, games, activities, and worksheets.

I originally began posting about them on Squidoo (which is now HubPages), and posted about half of the alphabet there. But that site keeps changing their format, so it’s just easier for me to redo everything here, to start from scratch. Besides, I’ve created new worksheets and edited the format of the old worksheets to make printing easier. Not only that, there’s new stuff here you won’t find there – which is why I didn’t include the links to the old articles.

For each letter, I’ll be posting about activities and recipe ideas and also a list of all the free worksheets I’ve made. The worksheets posted below are all in PDF format and are free for home and classroom use – so enjoy!

What is a Letter Day?

I would usually spend one full day doing projects on a letter, or spread it out over a few days. Although even if we did just one Letter Day, we’d still continue discussing that letter for the next couple of days.

To begin each Letter Day, we glue a letter into our alphabet binder. We have two binders that are quite full, with all of the paper activities separated by A-Z dividers.

I almost always do at least two construction paper crafts that include making a letter into something (an H into a horse or a Q into a queen, for example) and a letter sorting activity where my girls need to separate capital from lowercase letters onto two shapes.

I do cut the paper down, though, before we do the projects. I make them 8.5″ by 11″ and then use a 3 hole punch after we’re done to help them fit in the binder.

I used to cut out the construction paper pieces ahead of time, too, and just let my girls glue them on and sort the pieces however they liked. My girls are older now, though, so they can cut more of the pieces themselves. It’s up to you how you’d like to do it, depending on the age of your children.

We also do worksheets that include tracing letters, tracing lines, mazes, color matching, letter searches, and much more.

Sometimes we do a traditional craft indoors, sometimes we run around outside and dig in the dirt. And we pretty much always cook and/or bake something.

But whatever game we play or whatever food we eat, we always talk about the letters. If we’re eating gnocchi because it’s Letter G day, we take the time to find the letter G on the gnocchi package.

We usually do collages, too. But not always, so I don’t plan on including them in each post. When we started, my daughter wasn’t able to cut out shapes yet, so I spent some time cutting pictures out of magazines after she went to bed.

The finished collages looked like this:

We used apples, angels, artichokes, and an accordion for letter A; a bison, butterflies, babies, and bells for letter B; and cars, camera, cherries, and cats for letter C. Now that she’s cutting out shapes quite well on her own, though, I’m considering starting the project all over again, but letting her cut out the pictures this time.

Plus, since my girls love being outside and drawing with chalk, we also practice our letters with tracing and coloring in chalk:

Most of these projects use supplies that we have around the house or that are easy to find. Construction paper is a biggie.

Here are some of the things I’ve mentioned in this post, including construction paper, a paper cutter, a 3 hole punch, and page dividers:

But where do I find all of these projects and worksheets that you’ve mentioned?

I’m so glad you asked!

They’ll all be listed right here and under the Alphabet Activities category. I haven’t finished editing all the photos yet, but they’ll be listed here as I post them. Plus, at one point my old computer died and I lost a lot of photos. So now my oldest is a great deal older when than when I started these projects with her, and since we’ve had to redo some of them for the photos (and it’s taken me awhile to get around to posting them) you may notice some age gaps between the photos of my various blog posts. But taking three or so years to post something is just an everyday part of #momlife, right? Right??

Anyway, this is the best page to bookmark (or Pin) if you want to take full advantage of everything, since this is where you’ll find the list to all of the Letter Day activities and worksheets.

… and drum roll please …

The Alphabet Activities and Worksheets

Letter A: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter A: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter B: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter B: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter C: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter C: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter D: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter D: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter E: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter E: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter F: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter F: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter G: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter G: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter H: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter H: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter I: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter I: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter J: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter J: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

Letter K: Alphabet Activities for Kids

Letter K: Free Alphabet Worksheets for Kids

*more soon*

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Enjoy!