Dump Cake

       

Yum!  We made dump cake this week – I’d forgotten about this until I ran across the recipe when I was looking for something else.  (The something else was a good recipe for zucchini bread – if you have one, please share it in the comments!)

This is such a simple dessert to bake, M was able to do almost all of it when he was only 2 years old!  My 9” x 13” pan is missing (I think it’s in the shed being used for an oil change pan – yuck!), so we used a slightly larger baking dish.  The fruit didn’t quite cover the bottom like it should, but if you use the correct size pan it should be just fine.

Ingredients:

• 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple
• 14 oz. can of cherry pie filling
• 1 yellow cake mix
• 3/4 Cup of butter or margarine

First, grease your pan.

Then dump the crushed pineapple in and spread it around the bottom.

Dump the cherry pie filling in and spread it over the pineapple (we ended up just mixing our fruit together to cover the bottom of our dish). 

Next, sprinkle the cake mix on top of the fruit.  Use the entire mix, and smooth it out with a spoon as much as possible.

Then slice your butter and lay it on top of the cake mix, evenly, trying to cover as much of it as possible.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. 

Try not to eat the entire delicious thing in one sitting. ;)

***NOTE***Previously when we made this, instead of slicing the butter and placing it on top of the cake mix, I melted the butter in the microwave, then mixed it into the cake mix in a separate bowl until all the cake mix was moistened and crumbly.  Then we sprinkled it on top of the fruit.  It was less time consuming than slicing all that butter AND we ended up using less butter that way.  I only remembered this after I had half the butter already sliced! 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – July 9, 2010

This is the last preschool post for a while…  M is not excited about much that’s been out for him lately and I need to take a break and rethink some things.  And, well, it is summer. :)  So this wrap-up is for a few things we’ve done that he’s actually enjoyed over the past several weeks.

Math Skills:
I made some quick number cards and we used them with these little number rods I found at a thrift store:We did them in a very Montessori-ish way, going slowly and making sure to count each section of each rod, then naming the number of both the rod and the card.  M seemed to respond well to having “rules” for doing this.


Then we made a triangle with them:Unfortunately I didn’t get a full set of the number rods.  I plan on making some Montessori bead bars so we can continue this kind of activity with 10’s and 100’s. 

M worked on his fine motor skills, lining up flat glass marbles on craft sticks numbered 1 to 6 (then he lost interest):

Literacy Skills:
At Michael’s they have small painted wooden pieces for 25 cents each.  I picked up a handful and we’ve been using them to make up stories (this fabulous idea came from Jill at The Shafer Family): We use them in a variety of ways – sometimes one person begins with a piece and then the next person adds a piece and a bit of the story and so on.  Sometimes M just wants me to make up a story with all the pieces (or Daddy, who is a master storyteller!).  Sometimes we close our eyes and pick one piece out of a container and have to make up a story as we go along.  We’ll also be using these for phonics sorting.

I put our pipe cleaner letters out with a pan of flour for M one morning.  He spent a good 20 minutes running his fingers over the pipe cleaners and then drawing the letters in the flour.  The flour is so soft and cool – I think he really enjoyed this!

Fine Motor Skills:
M sorted seashells in a tray with tongs (idea from No Time for Flashcards):

He practiced some folding skills with his new Kumon First Book of Folding:

Then we worked on more folding and taping skills to make these cute little puppets from a recent issue of High Five:
And M used a small spoon to put marbles into this tray:   He LOVED this, which was a bit of a surprise to me (not sure why).  The tray is from some old board game of my husband’s.  I love how the clear blue marbles shine when the light hits them just right.

Sensory:
This sensory bin was another morning activity (planned to give me a few minutes of peace in the mornings).  M had a blast with it.  I put some water in a tub, and added a few drops of dish soap.  I added in a whisk, a baster, a strainer, and some small scoops:
It didn’t take long for the whisk to whip up some bubbles:
Finally, I gave him a straw and he had a lot of fun blowing into the water to make very big bubbles:  

Science:
One day I found M in his room with my set of small screwdrivers, taking apart flashlights and anything else he could think of. :)  He is definitely a budding scientist or engineer.

Creative Play:
For your amusement, here’s some self-portraits taken by M with my camera (I didn’t know about these until I uploaded the pics):   
I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out for some great school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

3-D Nature Art

M has a “nature basket” that he just adores.  Anything interesting that he finds outside is lovingly placed in his nature basket.  Quite often it’s mainly full of leaves and I empty it every once in a while (he doesn’t seem to notice).  This time, however, it had lots of really cool things in it – a group of leaves still clumped together on a stem, several pieces of bark (he’s taken to sawing the bark off of our fire wood), some maple seeds, and some tiny pinecones.  I decided these were keepers and set up an art activity for him one morning.

Here’s what we used:
His nature basket, an egg carton, and some playdough that we need to use up so we can make a new batch.

(As an aside, this playdough has been around since Valentine’s Day – seriously!  And it is still in perfect condition!  I am loving our homemade playdough.  I know I posted our recipe at sometime… I’ll have to look for that link!)

M was really excited about this project, even more so than I expected him to be.  He rolled small portions of the playdough into balls and set them inside the egg carton sections, pressed them down a tiny bit, and then stuck his nature treasures into the playdough:
We didn’t have enough playdough for 2 of the sections, so he decided to leave the two sections in the center empty.  We've noticed he's very symmetrical with things like this - is that odd for a 3 year old?

Here’s what his final product looked like:

And the view from the side:
M was very proud of it, and I absolutely love it!  It looks so neat sitting on a table in our breezeway.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up - Dinosaurs

Goodness, we did our dinosaur theme way back in February, and I am just now getting around to writing about it.  I’m sure I’m not going to remember everything we did.

Some of the activities for this theme were homemade, because I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for online (or anywhere else for that matter) for a reasonable price… meaning free. ;)  My drawing skills leave a lot to be desired, but I am sharing the printables I made anyway, in case they meet a need for someone else, or give a better artist than I an idea of something to make!  I’ve linked to them where appropriate.

I’ve tried to organize the activities by skill set, but many of them overlap, so bear with me!

First, Sensory:
I put together a little rice and noodles sensory bin for M and placed some of his toy dinos in it along with some scoops.  He had fun just playing with them.

Math Skills:
We worked on counting with this printout from Prekinders.  I wrote in the numerals and the dots and M counted them, then matched them up. 

I also pulled out this dinosaur and egg file folder game that I made a long time ago (from here), for some easy color matching:

I turned two boxes into Triceratops and we took turns rolling the die, then feeding our dinos leaves with the tweezers.  The first to run out of leaves was the winner.  M really enjoyed this one!

He was just beginning to show an interest in measuring, so we measured dinosaur bones!  I had him mark the correct answer with a paperclip for fine motor work.

He always enjoys the shape crafts I’ve made for him.  This little Stegosaurus turned out awfully cute. :) 
And we sorted some little dinosaur cut outs by color:  
Fine Motor Skills:
M used a q-tip to paint the tiny dots on this page from Making Learning Fun:

I printed out some shapes (one is a dino, the others were just for fun) from Preschool Express.  To do this activity, M poked push pins into the cork board along the outlines on each paper.  This is a great workout for that tripod grasp.

And he did a dinosaur lacing carhttp://www.scribd.com/full/32089331?access_key=key-13l1pf4kzdo43w4xs505d:
Sorry I don’t have pictures of the finished work for some of these!

Literacy Skills:
We stamped out big and little letters on these dinosaur sheets from Prekinders.  I put a variety of upper and lower case letters in a pillowcase and we took turns pulling one out then finding it on the pages and stamping it out. 

And we put together upper and lower case letters on dinosaur puzzles.  I made these and despite the poor artwork, M really enjoyed this.  It was good for working on that mama and baby letter matching as well as reviewing the names of some dinosaurs.

Art and Poetry:
M used his toy dinos to make some dinosaur footprint art.  Some trucks got in on the action too. :)

I found a cute dinosaur poem from here and made some little stick puppets to use while we say it.  This is a great poem for working on ordinal numbers.

Science:
I found this very informative, albeit somewhat dry, little book about dinosaurs at Target.  We looked through it and talked about how some dinosaurs were plant eaters and some were meat eaters.  Then we matched up some of M’s toy dinos with the pictures in the book and talked about their long funny names.  It’s so cute to hear him say brachiosaurus and stegosaurus. :)

The following was not really a science activity, although we did use it to review the names of dinosaurs.  I noticed that M had many sets of matching dinos in his enormous box full of dinos.  So I set some up on one side of the room, and put the matches on the other end.  M had to pick one up and look at it, then set it down and run to the other side of the room to find its match.  This worked on memory skills, matching skills, and was just a good large motor workout.  He loved this!  
I found some life cycle cards here, and wanted M to sequence them.  He had a bit of trouble with this so I quickly made some numbered squares for him to use.  Somehow this helped and he was able to describe the sequence perfectly!

And, last of all, we had fun killing off dinosaurs with molten lava in a volcano. :)  The things I find myself doing (and having fun doing) as the mom of a little boy never cease to amaze me.
Stay tuned for a post about the dinosaur books we loved!

I’ll be linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up – check them both out for some great activity ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)