Monkey See, Monkey Do ... Banana Cream Pie

Tuesday was our anniversary, and the kids were very excited about the whole thing.  My Wonderful Husband had recently asked for a banana cream pie, and we decided to surprise him with one after dinner that night.

Generally speaking, I like to make things from scratch, but it's always helpful to have a few shortcut-ready items around the house.  I never cheat on real piecrust, but on the graham cracker kind ... I can't tell the difference between the from-scratch and ready-made varieties.  With a pudding base, that makes this a perfect pie for kids to make!

I showed my Big Girl how to hold a knife and slice a banana.  (Before you panic, this was a special table/butter knife designed for kids that had absolutely no sharp edges or serrated pieces anywhere.  She couldn't have cut herself unless she fell off the roof and landed on it.)  She was so proud of herself for learning how to do this!  One banana is usually enough to cover the bottom crust, but if you like lots of 'naners, do another!

Next, my Little Man used a short-handled whisk to stir up the pudding.  We used your basic sugar-free banana cream flavor.  He loves doing this!

Tip for making pudding with younger children:  Put the pudding mix and milk in a small, lightweight bowl with a tighth-sealing lid.  While standing over a non-carpeted floor, allow them to dance and shake the container.  You'll soon have pudding, and they'll have helped without the stress of trying to keep it in the bowl!


After the pudding begins to thicken, I poured it gently over the bananas and we chilled it for a few minutes before moving on.

My Big Girl then smoothed on some whipped cream, and voila!  You've got fresh-tasting banana cream pie without the fuss - and it's kid-friendly to boot.  With knives, wire tools, and mounds of fluffy white goodness, what kid wouldn't want to help make this??

Monkey See, Monkey Do ... Making Jelly

Strawberries are in season here - actually, they're almost over! - and so it's time to make jelly.  I've been making jelly for as long as I can remember - first with my mom, and now for years on my own - and it's exciting to have the kids help me now.

My Little Man and I packed up our buckets and headed out with some friends ...

and we picked several buckets' worth of berries.  Because so much of jelly making involves sharp knives and hot equipment, there's not much else he can be involved with.

This big girl, however, is old enough to be much more involved, and she likes it that way.  She's a GREAT helper!  She was a wonderful water-swirler to get all the dirt off the berries after I'd capped them.

She transferred the berries out of one sink of water to the second and swirled them again to give them one last rinse.

After washing them, she scooped them out of the water and put them into the blender to be measured.

When things slowed down a bit, she tried her hands at capping her first berries.  She got several severed from their stems but will definitely need a bit more practice with the paring knife before I turn her loose on any more fruit!  This task made her seem so big, though - she's definitely growing up.

Do you make any jelly at your house?  Are there any short people involved??

Monkey See, Monkey Do ... Snapping Beans

So I've had access to a wonderful man selling fresh green beans, which means that my little Bean Snapper is back in business!

The best way for children to learn is to be involved.  I mean, think about it - two hundred years ago, were children playing video games or choring alongside their parents?

To that end, the kids help me with many of my daily tasks, and the ones involving food or massive amounts of dirt are their very favorites.  Since Luke is a serious bean lover, he adores this task.

My Little Man can't yet snap the ends off of the beans.  He can't get quite that precise about where he snaps them yet, so we have a system.  First, I snap off the ends and lay them on the table.  Then he snaps the beans in half to make them a more manageable size for eating.

My Little Man is happy to be helping.  I'm happy to be spending time with him - and knowing that he'll have some basic knowledge of these things when he gets bigger is just icing on the cake ... ahem, the beans.  :-)

Monkey See, Monkey Do ... Making Wunch

My Little Man is going through a growth spurt.  Either that, or he's suddenly mutated into a bottomless pit!  :-)

Yesterday nothing seemed to fill him up, and he was ready for lunch waaayyyyyyy early.  I tried to hold him off just a bit, and suddenly his face lit up.

"Mommy, I'll make wunch!" he announced.  He ran to wash his hands, then pulled a kitchen chair over to the counter.  He's only attempted his lunch once before, but he was positive that he could do it, so ....

He found a butter knife and asked for bread, a plate, and peanut butter.  He tried to get some peanut butter on his knife ...

and then tried spreading it.  It's hard to spread what you can't see, however, so it took a few tries.  Eventually he had enough peanut butter for three sandwiches all stuck right in the middle.  He was happy with that.

Jelly proved to be even harder to get out of the jar, and he didn't want my help, but that did make it easier to spread.

After that, he put the top on a few times - it took a few tries to get it lined up to his satisfaction - and then he patted it down to make sure it would stay.

It certainly wasn't the prettiest sandwich - but he was super happy to eat it.  He was very proud of his efforts, and we had fun laughing together in the kitchen.

What more can you ask for out of a good meal?

Monkey See, Monkey Do ... Washing Dishes

When I was little, my parents worked opposite shifts and so I was always with one of them.  They had lots to do, so I had playtime, but lots of times, my playtimes were with them, doing what they were doing, in a little kid kind of way.  I saw what they were doing, I wanted to do it, too, and so they adapted their activities for me.  When Dad painted the house, I proudly brushed on water from my Smurf bucket.  When Mom ran the sweeper, I ran my pink plastic one right beside her.  I learned how to do lots of things that way.


My kids are the same.  They want to be close to us, helping us, doing what we're doing, and so whenever possible, I modify the activity so that they can do it beside me. One of my son's favorites is dishwashing.  


Sound strange?  Maybe on the surface, but what kid doesn't like a sink full of soapy water and free license to play?


Before beginning, I clean both sinks.  I fill the left side with hot, soapy water and the right side with just an inch or two of lukewarm water.  Then, as I rinse the dishes I wash, that water adds to the kids' sink and gives them more.  

I grab a few dishes out of the kids' play kitchen for them to manipulate.  They love to wash and pour!

Then I take my time washing dishes and scrubbing down counters, because my son would happily play there all day!


My son will probably one day no longer love the task of washing dishes - but by then he will not be able to claim ignorance - and hopefully his future wife will thank me.  :-)


** Note:  He is now almost four and can reach well by standing on a regular kitchen chair.  With me right beside him, I feel he is quite safe.  When he was younger, I put a bath towel on the floor underneath with a basin of water. At that time I gave him play spoons or other manipulatives that could hold a minimum of water to prevent massive spills, and he was just as happy - only closer to the ground.

Working Together

Sometimes, I'm happy to put off a cleaning project to spend time with the kids.

Sometimes, I can't wait another minute to get that project finished.

This one was like that.

I'd faithfully 'mopped' my floor with one of those add-a-wet-pad-and-scrub type of mops from the store, but they just don't take the place of a bucket full of Lysol water and an old rag for scrubbing.  It just feels cleaner, you know?  So despite the fact that my Little Man wanted to play, this floor just had to be scrubbed.

Since it was already dirty, though, I thought ... why not make it dirtier?

Luke wanted to help, and my little boy just LOVES to clean up really messy messes, so I gave him one!  I used a dry erase marker to put letters in the blocks in a certain area of the floor - just a bit away from where I was scrubbing.

I called out a letter, and Luke used a baby wipe to wipe it off the floor as he found the letter and it's match.  When he had erased them both, I called a new one.  I continued to draw sets of letters on the floor for him as we moved around the room.  He had fun matching the letters, and he loved seeing how dirty his wipe got from the green marker!

** Be sure that you use a dry erase or other easily cleanable marker, and test it before using.  Ours cleaned up easily, but my husband would not have been happy if we had turned the entire kitchen into an alphabet board!