Summer Fun: July 10th

Are you ready for some fun ideas to keep your kids busy this next week?

Here are five ideas to get the creative juices flowing (and please, take these ideas, build on them, make them your own, use them as a springboard for bigger and better ideas):

Day One – Talk to your child about avoiding strangers. Teach your child what to do in case of an emergency.

Day Two – Hide a treasure with your child and draw a map to find it.

Day Three – Practice printing or handwriting with your child. Make a certificate for job well done.

Day Four – Take a walk or bike ride with your child.

Day Five – Discover when things were invented with your child. Make a timeline.

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Here is a fun activity from the book, “A Lithgow Palooza!”:

Literary Dish

Much of literature is infused with intoxicating references to food, often times so tempting that it’s hard to wait until the end of a chapter to grab a snack. While Hemingway writes of salty oysters and Proust has his buttery madeleines, children’s books are also spiced with fanciful foods. When kids see that it’s possible to make incredible foods — green eggs and ham, anyone? — spring from the page and onto the table, they just might try a new dish or two. Creativity is key here, so don’t be afraid to let the literary dish run away with the spoon!

What to do:

For the youngest eater-readers, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle inspires a mini-tasting menu. If tots find themselves feeling like the caterpillar with an insatiable appetite, they can follow him on his Saturday food scavenge. Taking small tastes of a smorgasbord of berries, cheese, pickles, salami, muffins, and cherry pie prevents anything akin to the caterpillar’s Sunday-morning stomachache. On a cold, snowy day, everyone can contribute to Little Bear’s big black pot of birthday soup. The chef might replace his hat with the cub’s space helmet (perhaps an old metal strainer), and guests can enjoy a hot meal alongside favorite (stuffed) animal friends.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl is full of sweet ideas for older kids to explore. Recipes for simple fudge or candied fruit are easy to locate, and green oomp-loompa food coloring adds to any dessert. Concoct recipes for Wonka’s wacky inventions, such as “toffee-apple tree” (first cousin of the candy apple), “hot ice cream for cold days” (some hot sauces, perhaps?), and “fizzy lifting drinks” (carbonation is the key). Fans of Shel Silverstein will also find inspiration for new recipes in many of his poems. Read Silverstein’s “Eighteen Flavors” as a starter and choose a mix of flavors to experiment with in creating a new dessert.

In Judi and Ron Barrett’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the town of Chewandswallow experiences deluges of dinner and buttered toast breakfasts. The meals described in this whimsical book aren’t on a plate, rather they swirl around the air like the weather. Cloudy-inspired meals don’t come from recipes, instead ask a child to imagine what his meal might be, meteorologically speaking. Kids can create their own food forecasts out of their ordinary meals. Storm clouds of scrambled eggs, smoothie sleet, and a butter-and-jam tornado. For mashers and stirrers, an ice cream and chocolate sauce cyclone.

EXTRAPALOOZAS:

Cheesed Off
The Stinky Cheese Man, by Jon Scieszka, prompts an easy food-shopping activity: find a local gourmet grocery store and get to know the cheese man. Let him introduce you to a new seriously stinky cheese every week.

Riddles for the Griddles
Dr. Seuss’s books seems to have been written with the kitchen explorer in mind. Flip through any one of the fantastical books for new recipe ideas. Thank red-fish-blue-fish sugar cookies. Or potato-chip pork chops. Seuss’s book of riddles, Oh Say Can You Say, is also a double delight for the tongue.