Are our kids eating too much fast food?

Kids Activities Blog http://ift.tt/1TIBv3y

Are our kids eating too much fast food?  It is hard when we are so busy, so we run through and grab a bite for the kids, instead of giving them healthier options from home.  This new study reveals the truth about fast food, what they are eating and what they ARE NOT eating…

Recently, Beech-Nut organized a study to see how young children were really eating.  They found that 1 out of 3 children weren’t eating any fruit.

“By 15 months, babies eat 6 ½ teaspoons of added sugars per day, mainly from fruit drinks, soda, cookies, sweetened yogurt and ready-eat-cereals, which are introduced into the diet as early as 9 months. To put that into perspective, an 8-ounce cup of cola has about 6 ½ teaspoons of sugar. So, babies are eating as much sugar in a day as what you’ll find in an entire cup of soda!”

“Less than half of babies are consuming any vegetables by the time they are 23 months old. And, for the babies who do eat vegetables, the most common veggie is potatoes from French fries and potato chips.”

• What it means: When processed options like fries and chips are the most common form of vegetable, babies are missing out on nutrient-dense choices found in green veggies. In fact, only 1 percent of babies consume green vegetables!”  – See more at: Beechnut.com here.

We are living in a time when fast food is all too easy to get and home cooked meals take time. Between running to appointments and practices, it makes grabbing that on-the-go meal or snack that much more tempting.

How can you help?

1. Give your child baby food.  Our kids love those baby food pouches of pureed fruits.  We give them to our 3, 5, 8 & 9 year olds as ‘snacks’.  They think they are great.  (Refrigerate them if your child doesn’t like them the first time).

2. Sneak it into their food! Our kids love these Rice Balls.

3. Make them smoothies! 

4. Make popsicles from fruit & vegetables.

5. Let them play with their food!

6. Offer it as the only snack when they are ready for dinner, but have to wait for it to finish cooking.

7. If you go to a park, only pack veggies and fruit (we know that grabbing a pack of crackers is way faster, but if they only have healthy options, that is what they will eat.)

8. Prep fruits and veggies every Sunday and have them ready to grab throughout the week.

9.  Make homemade juice with these 10 juice recipes for beginners (our kids love to help make it… and then drink it!)

10. Try any of these 45 recipes that sneak veggies into their food!

We love to share helpful tips here at Kids Activities Blog and on our Facebook Page.  Stop by to see our latest parenting conversations.   In the meantime, here are some more ideas to encourage your preschooler to eat more vegetables. 

The post Are our kids eating too much fast food? appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.

Foam Popsicles

Kids Activities Blog http://ift.tt/1WXduf3

Making Foam Popsicles is a fun summer craft for kids of all ages. They are adorable, require minimal craft supplies, and are easy for kids! This craft is suitable for home, school, or camp.

Foam Popsicle Craft

Popsicles…the first thing my kids ask for when the weather gets hot! The craft shared below is perfect for summer and popsicle-loving kids!

Materials and Directions:

• Craft foam
• Wooden popsicle sticks (standard)
• Glue Dots
• Scissors
• Adhesive back magnetic tape (optional)
• Pencil or pen

After gathering supplies, use a pencil or pen to draw the shape of a popsicle on a piece of foam. Use that shape to trace popsicles onto the rest of the foam pieces so the shapes are the same.

RELATED: Blackberry Cheesecake Pops

After tracing the shapes, cut out all of the popsicles with a pair of scissors. Use Glue Dots to attach standard sized wooden popsicle sticks to each foam popsicle. Glue Dots work better than white glue or tacky craft glue.

If desired, attach 2 strips of magnetic tape to the back of the popsicles. They look adorable on the refrigerator!

Kids will have a blast making foam popsicles in a rainbow of colors to share with neighbors and friends. This craft is perfect for welcoming summer!

If you liked this craft, you may also enjoy painting with popsicles and making some for your pup!

The post Foam Popsicles appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.

How To Make Erupting Soap

Kids Activities Blog http://ift.tt/1zNxK2s

How to make Erupting Ivory Soap: If you think baking soda and vinegar eruptions are cool then you’re going to love what happens to a bar of ivory soap when you put it in the microwave!

How to Make Erupting Soap

What you need:

A bar of Ivory soap (no substitutions allowed)

A microwave safe plate

A microwave

Yep, that’s it!

I first asked my son what he thought might happen if we put a bar of soap in the microwave.  He naturally said that it would melt.  Most soaps will melt but Ivory soap is different because of the way it is formed.  More on that later…

What to Do:

Put your bar of soap on the plate and microwave it for 2 minutes.

The action starts right away as the soap quickly starts to grow.  When it stops growing you can stop the microwave although it won’t harm anything if it runs for the full 2 minutes.  The soap just won’t grow any bigger at that point.

My son was absolutely giddy watching this for the first time…and every time after that.  I must admit I haven’t gotten tired of watching erupting soap either!

When the soap had finished erupting, this is what we got.

What’s going on?

There is a scientific principle called Charles’ Law which states that the volume of a gas directly increases with an increase in temperature.  So the hotter air gets, the more space it wants to take up and the more pressure it will produce in order to take up that space.

Ivory soap in an unusual kind of soap in that it has a lot of air pockets in it.  There is also a lot of moisture in Ivory soap.  When it is heated, the soap softens but before it gets close to melting, the moisture in the bar gets hot and turns to gas (steam).  Add that to the already present air particles throughout the bar and you’ve got a lot of steam trying to get out.  As the steam pushes its way out, it expands the soap.

Here’s a simple animation of Charles’ Law to help explain how volume and temperature are directly related.

Other soaps are not as porous as Ivory soap because they do not have air pockets throughout. Therefore, the steam isn’t able to build up inside it and instead the soap just melts.

Except for the loss of water, this is still Ivory soap. No real chemical change took place. The soap is puffed full of air so we had fun crumbling it up, and then we whisked in a bit of water and made “soap paint”.

We painted on styrofoam trays both with paintbrushes, and with our hands.

Once the “Wow Factor” died down just a little, we decided to get a little more scientific so we pulled out a scale.

We weighed a whole bar of ivory soap: 78g., and an erupted bar of Ivory soap: 69g.

The erupted bar weighed less due to moisture evaporation.

Other Observations:

1. The soap has expanded six or more times its original size but actually weighs less now because of water that has evaporated.  Amazing!

2. If you microwave half a bar of Ivory soap, the cut side of the bar will expand significantly more quickly and with more force than the uncut side.  In this experiment above, the force of the expansion out of the cut side was so strong that it flipped the bar from its side to an upright position so that the eruption from the cut side was then facing upward.

3. The plate was hot all over after a minute and half.  However, the plate was significantly hotter directly under the expanded soap.  Microwaves focus on heating water molecules so the water in the soap heated quickly and made that part of the plate hotter.

Did you know? We wrote a science book!

Our book, The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments, features tons of awesome activities just like this one that will keep your kids engaged while they learn. How awesome is that?!

The post How To Make Erupting Soap appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.

Easy Cheese Tortellini Salad

Kids Activities Blog http://ift.tt/1r0UT3T

We always have cheese tortellini or cheese ravioli in my freezer — it’s perfect in a pinch. But instead of using marinara sauce, I used basil pesto to create this Easy Cheese Tortellini Salad.

Basil pesto is also perfect in a pinch. I love it on all different types of pasta including cheese tortellini.

Cheese tortellini has a taste that is somewhat different from cheese ravioli. And the fun shape is the perfect bite size.

This recipe is really easy.

Easy Cheese Tortellini Salad

Ingredients:

• 12 Cherry Tomatoes, cut in half
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1/2 Red Onion, chopped
• Package of Cheese Tortellini
• 6 tablespoons pre-made Basil Pesto
• Fresh Parmesan Cheese, shredded

Directions:

• In a large saucepan, heat up the olive oil and cook the onions and tomatoes
• In a separate bowl, follow instructions to cook the cheese tortellini
• Add the cooked cheese tortellini to the tomato, onion mixture and mix
• Add 6 tablespoons of pre-made basil pesto and combine
• Shred fresh parmesan cheese on top
• Serve

I started by heating up the olive oil in a large saucepan. I then cooked the onions and tomatoes in the oil.

In a separate pot, I cooked the cheese tortellini for about 8 minutes.

The onions and tomatoes will look like this when you are done. You can also roast the tomatoes in the oven if you like the tomato to keep its original shape.

Add the cooked cheese tortellini to the onions and tomatoes.

Then add about 6 tablespoons of pre-made basil pesto to the salad and mix together. I have found that making basil pesto can be time-consuming (for me anyway) so I like to use pre-made pesto.

This makes dinner just a bit easier during a crazy, hectic week.

Add freshly shredded parmesan cheese on top and serve. You can serve right out of the saucepan.

This salad can be served hot or cold. It’s a nice, easy dinner for the family!

The post Easy Cheese Tortellini Salad appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.

How to Rock Reading This Summer with Audiobooks

Hands On As We Grow http://ift.tt/25xVNrs

There is something so relaxing about listening to stories with my kids; for me it’s a quintessential summer activity! Its a fantastic quiet reading activity for young kids.

I am excited to share with you some of the ways we’ll be using audiobooks over the summer and some of the fantastic books from our sponsor, Audible that we plan to listen to.

5 Fun Ways to use Audiobooks This Summer

In the Car

We love audiobooks in the car. Whether we’re taking a road trip or just running errands in town, it’s a great way to keep everyone happy and entertained.

Often on trips around town, we listen to well-loved story books such as Skippyjon Jones and Llama Llama and Where the Wild Things Are.

On road trips, we prefer longer books such as Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Ramona Quimby Collection, and Alice in Wonderland.

Also have these busy bags ready for a road trip!

Bedtime

We still read aloud at bedtime to our younger children but sometimes for a fun twist (or when I am completely exhausted by bedtime) we snuggle in bed together while listening to an audiobook.

I love that such a simple change can take our bedtime ritual from ordinary to magical.

Some of our favorite audio books for bedtime are collections of classic stories like The Collected Stories of Winnie the Pooh, The Frog and Toad Audio Collection, and The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Create a weekly theme around an audiobook

I love choosing a book to listen to, or read, a few times throughout the week while doing activities related to the story. It can sound intimidating but it really doesn’t have to be.

I find that I can use the same simple activities for almost any book. If I am feeling particularly ambitious than I might search around a bit for activities to go with a specific book.

Try some of these easy activities along with listening to the book:

• Listening to the story as an audiobook while looking at a hard copy.
• Small world imaginary play. Create a small world of play by adding items to a basket or a box based on the book.
• Make your own story stones to go along with a book. To make story stones, collect (or buy) inexpensive stones and attach pictures with Modge Podge or draw directly on stones using permanent markers.
• Do a craft inspired by the book.

Use audiobooks to build your child’s attention span for read-alouds

I’m often asked how I get my youngest who just turned 3 to sit for read-alouds. The secret … I don’t try to get him to sit. Instead, I offer a quiet and engrossing activity such as a sensory bin, water play, play dough, or building for him to do while we read.

We start by playing together while listening to audiobooks. I always find it feels quite natural to redirect my child to play quietly because we are both listening to the story and I want to hear it too.

I’ve used this activity with all of my kids and found that it easily stretch their attention spans for longer and longer stories!

Family Story Night

A fun alternative to family movie night, this really is my favorite way to use audiobooks. Start an audiobook you can all enjoy together and listen to it over a series of nights.

Make it a real event complete with pillows, blanket, and fun snacks.

This summer we plan to listen to one of Audible’s newest releases, Peter Pan narrated by Lilly Collins, on the back patio under the stars over the course of 2 or 3 of our family story nights.

During some of our past Family Story Nights, we have listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, The Wizard of OZ.

Try Audible free for 30 days & get a free audiobook!

If you haven’t tried Audible this is the perfect opportunity to try it for 30 days free and get a free audiobook! When you join Audible you get one free book per month and the opportunity to buy more audiobooks at a discount; you can cancel at any time and keep the books in your library.

Who wants to join me in listening to Peter Pan this summer?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Audible. The opinions and text are all mine.

How to Rock Reading This Summer with Audiobooks on handsonaswegrow.com

How to Rock Reading This Summer with Audiobooks

Hands On As We Grow http://ift.tt/25xVNrs

There is something so relaxing about listening to stories with my kids; for me it’s a quintessential summer activity! Its a fantastic quiet reading activity for young kids.

I am excited to share with you some of the ways we’ll be using audiobooks over the summer and some of the fantastic books from our sponsor, Audible that we plan to listen to.

5 Fun Ways to use Audiobooks This Summer

In the Car

We love audiobooks in the car. Whether we’re taking a road trip or just running errands in town, it’s a great way to keep everyone happy and entertained.

Often on trips around town, we listen to well-loved story books such as Skippyjon Jones and Llama Llama and Where the Wild Things Are.

On road trips, we prefer longer books such as Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Ramona Quimby Collection, and Alice in Wonderland.

Also have these busy bags ready for a road trip!

Bedtime

We still read aloud at bedtime to our younger children but sometimes for a fun twist (or when I am completely exhausted by bedtime) we snuggle in bed together while listening to an audiobook.

I love that such a simple change can take our bedtime ritual from ordinary to magical.

Some of our favorite audio books for bedtime are collections of classic stories like The Collected Stories of Winnie the Pooh, The Frog and Toad Audio Collection, and The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Create a weekly theme around an audiobook

I love choosing a book to listen to, or read, a few times throughout the week while doing activities related to the story. It can sound intimidating but it really doesn’t have to be.

I find that I can use the same simple activities for almost any book. If I am feeling particularly ambitious than I might search around a bit for activities to go with a specific book.

Try some of these easy activities along with listening to the book:

• Listening to the story as an audiobook while looking at a hard copy.
• Small world imaginary play. Create a small world of play by adding items to a basket or a box based on the book.
• Make your own story stones to go along with a book. To make story stones, collect (or buy) inexpensive stones and attach pictures with Modge Podge or draw directly on stones using permanent markers.
• Do a craft inspired by the book.

Use audiobooks to build your child’s attention span for read-alouds

I’m often asked how I get my youngest who just turned 3 to sit for read-alouds. The secret … I don’t try to get him to sit. Instead, I offer a quiet and engrossing activity such as a sensory bin, water play, play dough, or building for him to do while we read.

We start by playing together while listening to audiobooks. I always find it feels quite natural to redirect my child to play quietly because we are both listening to the story and I want to hear it too.

I’ve used this activity with all of my kids and found that it easily stretch their attention spans for longer and longer stories!

Family Story Night

A fun alternative to family movie night, this really is my favorite way to use audiobooks. Start an audiobook you can all enjoy together and listen to it over a series of nights.

Make it a real event complete with pillows, blanket, and fun snacks.

This summer we plan to listen to one of Audible’s newest releases, Peter Pan narrated by Lilly Collins, on the back patio under the stars over the course of 2 or 3 of our family story nights.

During some of our past Family Story Nights, we have listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, The Wizard of OZ.

Try Audible free for 30 days & get a free audiobook!

If you haven’t tried Audible this is the perfect opportunity to try it for 30 days free and get a free audiobook! When you join Audible you get one free book per month and the opportunity to buy more audiobooks at a discount; you can cancel at any time and keep the books in your library.

Who wants to join me in listening to Peter Pan this summer?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Audible. The opinions and text are all mine.

How to Rock Reading This Summer with Audiobooks on handsonaswegrow.com

Firefly Craft

Kids Activities Blog http://ift.tt/1X5xWe8

We are so excited about summer! Whether enjoying crazy cool activities or making easy crafts like this Wooden Spoon Garden Craft, we are ready to play, create, and learn with our kids in the sun.

Shared below is an easy summer firefly craft, perfect for older kids who like to keep busy. It’s adorable, requires minimal supplies, and is perfect for home, camp, or school.

Firefly Craft for Kids

This sweet summer craft is perfect for older kids who are able to use a hot glue gun. A hot glue gun isn’t necessary for this craft, but it makes it easier.

Supplies and Directions:

• Wooden craft spoons
• Black and lime green tissue paper
• Mod Podge and a brush
• Bubble wrap
• Googly eyes
• Black twine or yarn
• Black construction paper
• Hot glue and a hot glue gun
• Scissors
• Silver or white permanent marker

RELATED: Catch Fireflies for Classic Summer Fun

After gathering your supplies, use scissors to cut the green and black tissue paper into small 1 inch squares.

Use a paintbrush and Mod Podge to decoupage the squares onto the thin end of the craft spoon. When finished, attach a couple googly eyes to the wet Mod Podge and place the craft spoon into a clothespin to dry.

While the firefly is drying, use scissors to cut the shape of wings from the bubble wrap and black construction paper. Then use Mod Podge and a brush to decoupage the other end of the firefly. Allow it to dry completely propped up in a clothespin.

Fold the bubble wrap wings horizontally and secure the fold with a dot of hot glue. Attach the bubble wrap wings and the black wings to the back of the firefly with hot glue. Use the hot glue gun to secure 2 black twine antennae to the firefly.

Use a silver or white permanent marker to make a smiley face on the firefly.

Isn’t it cute! If desired, glue a loop of black twine to the back of the firefly so you can use it as a Christmas ornament this winter!

If you liked this craft, you may also enjoy:

Pinecone Firefly

The post Firefly Craft appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.