Muffin tin meal=people and faces

Someday we'll have more than muffin tin meals and tot school, but for now that's about all I have time for while we are getting our schedule down for starting school.

This week was people and faces--so for lack of creativity we went to the park to watch all the people and faces while eating their mtm. We also got some new muffin cups that are teddy bear shaped.

From left to right, water, spring roll, mandarin chicken, rice, orange chicken, and a fortune cookie

We love Panda's express!

Tot school ==#1

Green flyer is 39 months old
Blue flyer is 13 months old
(but no pictures of him this week)

Tot school was very low key this last week. We have been trying to enjoy the last of summer, and getting organized for the start of full time school again.

Monday:
I found this idea somewhere, and thought it would be fun for Green flyer, and he loved it. It was the first tray he picked out. It's a felt elmo face that he puts together. He'll need more practice with it though, he couldn't quite get things lined up the way he wanted them.

I was very brave to let him pour this water, but he didn't really make a mess at all. This wasn't a planned tray...somehow he ended up with a glass of water and asked to pour water, so I let him. He did this activity for about 15 minutes. We have a lot of impromptu trays at our house (where he comes up with an idea), and I like to try to let them do it if possible.

Tuesday:

This is the fish painting for our fishy school collage.

Green flyer had a great time shredding zucchini, and it turned into a great life school lesson. We made zucchini bread out of it.

Wednesday:

We finished the fishy school collage. Green flyer loved squeezing the glue and making the fish swim along the glue line. He really enjoyed this activity!

That's about it! We'll have more next time! If you want to check out what others did for tot school go here.

Fishy school

We did our own variation of this back to school craft from "no time for flash cards". It looked so fun and the kiddos certainly had fun doing it!


First they painted fish with the bubble wrap (using a rolling pin was recommended, but I have only 1 rolling pin and 2 kids so I'll invest in another rolling pin someday, but for now a glove worked)

Then they decorated a blue poster with stamps, and glued on the fish!

It was a great creation!

The Workbox system--weekly workboxes

This workbox system is awesome! I finally feel like we have a way to get through school each day with some organization, fun, and less frustration. I decided to do Sue Patrick's workbox system and follow it to a T because everything she talks about--the visualization, the schedule cards, and the independence is exactly what A8 needs! She needs a clear path to follow each day through her school work, I can't always be sitting right there next to her, and she knows exactly how much work is to be done at the beginning. It's very satisfying for her to see the boxes disappear, and since I've only been filling about half the boxes she keeps asking for more.

A8's workbox setup, her desk is to the right:

Box 1: KIt's world word scramble(American Girl, in leiu of her waiting for her AG doll to come to the door) , she was to use the computer for this one.

Box 2: Kumon Multiplication book, and to show an example I took the picture with the number on the front

Box 3: "M is for Melody" lapbook, she is to make the pockets for the instrument families

Box 4: Practice page of cursive writing

Box 5: Work on the "white" or "blanco" color page.

Box 6: American Girl Charissa lapbook, finish vocabulary flaps.

Box 7: Hooked on Phonics, Master Reader. It has taken us a while to get through this Master Reader! I think she'll finally get through it now with the workboxes.

And, here are her schedule strips. She follows each step starting with #1.

We're loving this system. And, by fall hopefully I'll have this setup going for A3, I just wanted to really get it going with A8 completely.

Muffin Tin Meal--celebrate/party

Today's muffin tin meal was pretty sweet! The theme was celebrate/party and what a perfect week for that theme because we are celebrating a very special birthday this week. It's A7's birthday, and a very special one too! It's her #8!!! That means we have a very special occasion to go along with this birthday, she's getting baptized too. So, she's very excited this week, and she was even more thrilled to see a muffin tin meal with all her favorites in it.

I'm pretty proud of myself with this one because we didn't have a lot of her favorite foods on hand, and we needed to get a lot of things from the grocery store. But, I knew we needed to make due with what we had so here it is:

This is all of A8's favorites: A graham cracker with chocolate frosting and sprinkles, easy cheese (she loves this stuff), wheat thin crackers, Watermelon, Purple (her fav color) m&m's, and peanuts. A3's muffin tin was pretty much the same thing, but his had cottage cheese instead of easy cheese.

By the way, this isn't the first MTM we've done, but it's the first one I've posted about so some of you may not know what it is. We started them a month ago, I just never got around to posting. I'll also tell you that I wasn't so hip on the Muffin tin meal idea at first, I actually thought it was kind of odd. But, now that we've done it a few times, I can't believe how fun it is! It's fun to be creative, the kids love it, and it's a great way to present food. The kids are always asking now if it's muffin tin meal day yet? So, if you want a fun twist for you lunch, dinner, snack or even breakfast, give it a try!

To see more muffin tin meal ideas go here.
Michelle over at


hosts this Muffin tin meal, to learn more about it go there.

Tot school

A3 is currently 38.5 months old
A1 is currently 12.5 months old

Our week in tot school last week:

Marbulous! This game is always fun to send the marbles down the tubes and hear them clunking as they go down. Here he is sending a whole bunch at a time.

Here's A1 scooping pom pom balls and putting them into the egg carton

Our new puppet theatre (found at Ikea for 25cents!)

Here A3 sorted the trains, cars, buses, and planes

That's about it for last week.