Sorting M&Ms

Wildman was home sick for a day and half last week thanks to the second ear infection of his life.  This makes 5 absences from school so far this school year.  I’m now on a first name basis with the school nurse, Brian.  For as excellent as our public schools are I could do without the germs that come with it.

Wildman’s teacher sent home some make-up work on Friday.  One of the assignments involved coloring a worksheet based on recognizing the color sight words and then sorting out mini bags of M&Ms.  She sent home a bag for Cutie Pie too.

Needless to say, the boys wanted to do this work right away!  They worked together to color in all of the color circles correctly.  It was so cute watching Wildman help his little brother color in the correct circle with the correct color.

The boys both loved the sorting part of the assignment.  Wildman did his first and was surprised to discover that his mini bag of M&Ms did not contain the colors brown or red.

Cutie Pie’s bag was a little bit more evenly distributed among the six colors.

The ultimate joy of this assignment came at the end when they got to devour their candies!  I’ll have to remember this fun sorting exercise for later.  I’m sure they’d love to do it again.

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Cooking with Kids: Bird’s Nests

Wildman has been showing a lot interest in helping out in the kitchen lately.  I’ve been putting him off for about a week because I’ve been in a hurry.  Cooking with kids tends to slow the process down greatly.  I really enjoy doing it but sometimes it’s just not on the agenda especially when there are a million and one things to be done.  Anyway, I didn’t want to squash his curiosity so I made time for cooking.  Today we made what could be the easiest and cutest recipe ever: bird’s nests!

Ingredients:

1 cup of chips (semi-sweet, white, butterscotch- anything will do!)

3 oz. can of lo mein noodles

Candy to be used as eggs

For this recipe, we used what we had on hand: chocolate chips.  We also used mini M&Ms left over from Christmas for the eggs.  I think this recipe would be adorable for Easter if white chocolate and jelly beans were used!

I placed a dish of chocolate chips in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Wildman then stirred the chips.  We repeated this process of microwaving for 30 seconds and stirring until the chips were sufficiently melted.

We added some noodles to the melted chocolate.

Then Wildman stirred them.

When the lo mein noodles were coated in chocolate Wildman scooped out spoonfuls of them onto wax paper.

We added the M&M “eggs” to the nests and let them dry.  Viola!  Easy as can be!

My mom is sick with bronchitis and tonsillitis.  I’m doing a drive-by chili drop off for her this evening.  I think I’ll add a little bird’s nest to the care package.