Whats cooking???

Another way that I've found extremely useful in keeping the little one busy is to involve her in regular household chores, it could range from hanging out clothes, drying vessels, folding clothes and off late, baking...

Though I have tried the "bake a cake from scratch" with her, but the cake generally turns out hard and dry probably because there is no uniformity in the mixing of the ingredients.

She does everything from putting in the cake mix and oil and water and even cracking the eggs (messy). She loves greasing the cake dish - calls it the "fun part"

Sharanya has always tidied up after herself, two reasons... first - that responsibility thing, second and the most important thing - I don't have to clean up after her...

Our yummy vanilla cake baking

Sharanya wanted to bake this for her friend at school, lets hope they like it...

The girl with the green thumb

... hopefully

Some days ago we used an egg carton to grow seeds. We filled half the egg carton with soil, put in some coriander seed and topped up the soil. Technically they should grow out in a week (it says so in one of the sites to grow herbs), but in our case (don't tell Sharanya) NEVER! You may ask why... Well, you see, when i suggested growing a coriander plant to Sharanya, what I didn't remember is that I had roasted the coriander seeds i had at home. But we planted it anyway... because i thought I'd buy some seeds and replace it... haven't done it yet.

Anyway, what we intended to do once our plant sprouted was to transfer it into a pot and let it grow. What I hoped for was, Sharanya to take responsibility, and she's not disappointed me at all. She waters her egg carton plant everyday (Boy i feel guilty now)

Anyway to make up for my mistake, i dried some tomato seeds so she may plant it... in a pot this time. And since she loves making a mess and playing with mud... this was a dream come true for her. Here she goes... again

Putting in the soil

In goes the dried seeds

top it up with more soil

... and water

PS. I've soaked some chickpeas to replace the coriander seeds... shhhhhh

Clowning around...

So yesterday Sharanya and I were watching Mister Maker and he made a pop up card that gotsharanya really excited... So here goes... (we didn't get it right in the first attempt...)

What you need for a pop up clown card is:

What??? The photo didn't help... well here goes - Card Paper, glue, googly eyes, crepe paper and coloured paper (the hero).

Fold the card into half and draw the clown

Leave out details like the eyes and nose and stick on googly eyes, crush and roll a piece of crepe paper for the nose. Add some stars or glitter and decorate the clown's cap

Now for the important part. Take a strip of coloured paper and fold it like a fan, this becomes the clowns frilly collar.

Stick it on below the clown to one side of the fold like in the picture below...

Put some glue on top of the coloured paper you have stuck and then close the card...

Open the card... and voila!!!

Don't worry if the first try doesn't work... ours didn't either... It looked like this -

Sharanya is trying to redeem it by putting a cherry on top... by the way its supposed to be a cup cake...