From letter lessons to art project to new, unexpected breakfast recipe.
Some days we choose a letter to focus on and I devise a bunch of projects and fun activities to help Mini Whipped learn about the chosen letter. Before breakfast the other day, we began talking about things that started with the letter E. We toured the house on an “E” word hunt. For some reason, focusing on the eggs in the refrigerator reminded me of an old art project I loved that involved blowing out the egg centers and painting the shells. Mini Whipped took her usual place perched on the counter and stared dumbfounded as I broke the shells gently with a thumb tack at each end and showed her how to blow the whites and yolks out of the shell.
After she took a few turns, we were left with a bowl of eggs with broken yolks and clean shells to paint after breakfast. Usually, the little lady turns her nose up at scrambled eggs but since the yolks were forcibly burst through the small hole in the egg, we had no choice. Mini Whipped loves quesadillas so I decided to try to distract her from the egg’s scrambled form by sandwiching it inside a folded flour tortilla. I am a bit more partial to tacos so my scrambled eggs were paired with corn tortillas. A little cheese, black beans, sour cream and cilantro and we had ourselves a completely unexpected, scrumptious breakfast.
If you are a parent with little kids, you may be interested in the book that first led me to our “letter day” activities. When Baby Whipped (7 months) was born, my extraordinary mom gave us a book called Extraordinary Parents: Choosing Your Child’s Future by Lynn Fielding. The title is a bit of a turn off as it sounds like a calling to be one of those intense mom’s overly focused on every moment of a child’s over programmed life. But, it has interesting information about getting your child started on learning early in order to set them up for success in school and later life. Most of all, I have enjoyed the ideas for educational games, which Mini Whipped (age 3) loves.
Egg Shell Painting
Make a small hole with a pin on the top and bottom of your eggs. The bottom hole will need to be slight bigger to get the egg through. Put your mouth around the top hole and blow. It is pretty hard, you will have to blow a few times and forcefully enough to break the yolk through the bottom shell. Run water through the egg to thoroughly clean the inside of the shell. You can then paint the shells or decorate them. You can also make ornaments. Use a long needle and some thread or yarn and knot the bottom (or tie a bead on the the bottom) and push it up through the bottom hole and the top hole.