Betty

Homemade Almond Milk

September 17, 2012 by Betty

Although we are not completely diary free, the one milk that we drink at our house is almond milk. Almond has a lot of health benefits. To find out more, read this article. I learned to make almond milk a couple of years ago and I no longer buy from the store.

How to make almond milk:

Soak one cup of raw almonds over night or 6-8 hours (soaking the almonds will make them more digestible). Drain the almonds in a colander and rinse with water.
Remove the brown outer skin by pressing on it with thumb and forefinger. Discard brown skin.
Put almonds in blender or VitaMix. Add Medjool dates as a sweetener. I usually put about 3 of them. But I’ve read bloggers who add up to 8 dates. Try and see what taste good to you. (Medjool dates from health food stores usually come with a pit so you’d have to remove the pit by splitting it open with your fingers). Then add 3 cups of water to VitaMix and blend until nuts are pulverized (about 10 sec in VitaMix)
Strain through a fine mesh sieve, cheese cloth or nut bag. I’ve tried using a nut bag, but it gets messy as you have to squeeze the milk out. I prefer to use the metal mesh sieve. My kids like to help by using a spoon to scrape the almond pulp around to drain the liquid into a glass container.
Use almond milk as a drink or with your favorite cereal or transfer to a glass bottle, covered and store in refrigerator for up to 4 days. Shake before drinking.

I”ve included some helpful pictures below if you’re interested:

My three kiddos are removing the brown skin from the soaked almonds.

Almond without the brown skin.

Medjool dates as a sweetener for almond milk.

Making almond milk in VitaMix.

Blended almond milk in metal mesh sieve to drain liquid.

Natural almond milk without any preservatives for drinking or used with your favorite cereal.

References:

Mercola.com: Take Control of Your Health.

Pamela Salzman: Do-it-yourself Almond Milk

Filed Under: Healthy Drinks Tagged With: How to make almond milk

Kids’ Construction Zone

September 14, 2012 by Betty

My kids love the outdoors, and what a better way to integrate learning in their outdoor activities. One fun summer activity that my kiddos enjoy is what we called, Kids’ Construction Zone. We have a small structure area with slide and two swing sets within this rectangular box filled with wood chips. This is our construction site. To add to the fun, I bought some hats and dump trucks from a local thrift store. We’ve also collected some gardening tools over the years so this is a part of their construction set. (The best time to pick up some gardening gear is after spring when stores try to get rid of their merchandise.)

Prior to their play, we talked about what we see at a construction site: what the workers wear, signs they see, and colors. As a result, the following pictures are the creativity and learning experience while they play.

Things we have in our Kids’ Construction Zone: (I’m sure you’ll come up with other fun items)

Kid’s Gardening Gloves
Dump Trucks of varies sizes
Hard Hats
Shovels
Trowels
Hoe
Hand Rakes
Buckets
Old Vinyl Table Cloth (if your kids wanted to make a sign)

Here are my three workers ready to start their day!

Mei scooping with her hand-held shovel.

Digging and filling their dump trucks.

Mei hoeing.

This cool dump truck actually tilts when a knob is turned!

This dump truck is pretty good for riding too!

Day 2: Buddy, my big boy, wanted to make a sign. I provided him with an old vinyl picnic table cloth (so it’s waterproof) and now all the sibblings are helping.

We hung that sign. “Kids at Work” sign is up and now it’s official!

Now the three kiddos record their fun in their journals.

Here’s Buddy’s journal entry for his time at the Kids’ Construction Zone. He was told to draw a picture and write about it. This is his effort in sounding out words. In the meantime, Chico and Mei were just drawing whatever came to mine like apples and bananas.

As an extension, your kids might like:

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

For more great ideas on outdoor activities, visit Flights of Whimsy.

And there you have, an outdoor activity that’s fun, inexpensive, and a great learning tool. Do you have your own that you would like to share? Please comment.

Filed Under: Outdoor Activities Tagged With: Kids' Construction Zone

Kids’ Construction Zone

September 12, 2012 by Betty

Things we have in our Kids’ Construction Zone: (I’m sure you’ll come up with other fun items)

Kid’s Gardening Gloves
Dump Trucks of varies sizes
Hard Hats
Shovels
Trowels
Hoe
Hand Rakes
Buckets
Old Vinyl Table Cloth (if your kids wanted to make a sign)

Here are my three workers ready to start their day!

Mei scooping with her hand-held shovel

Digging and filling their dump trucks.

Mei hoeing.

This cool dump truck actually tilts when a knob is turned.

This dump truck is pretty good for riding too!

Day 2: Buddy, my big boy, wanted to make a sign. I provided him with an old vinyl picnic table cloth (so it’s waterproof) and now all the sibblings are helping.

We hung that sign. “Kids at Work” sign is up and now it’s official!

Now the three kiddos record their fun in their journals.

As an extension, your kids might like:

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

For more great ideas on outdoor activities, visit Flights of Whimsy.

And there you have, an outdoor activity that’s fun, inexpensive, and a great learning tool. Do you have your own that you would like to share? Please comment.

Filed Under: Outdoor Activities Tagged With: Kids' Construction Zone

Teach Your Child to Ride a Bike

September 12, 2012 by Betty

When you first learned how to ride your bike, how many times did you fall? Did you scrape your elbow? Did you wish it would just end? Or you and your parents just gave up? Well, if your experience was anything like most, it was not good. Since my kids love to bike, Bubba and I wanted to teach them how to ride a bike and enjoy the experience. So, we found the perfect method and we were thrilled. We were so excited that we had to try it the following day with our five-year-old boy. Guess what, within one hour, he was able to ride his bicycle without any training wheels or any assistance from us. Matter of fact, the only assistance that we gave him were our words; we taught and encouraged him. This whole new technique worked so well that we showed our friends and they were able to teach their 7-year-old daughter how to ride her bike. She picked it up in less than 15 minutes. No pain, no crying, no blood, just great memories.

Teaching your child to ride a bike:

1. Find a safe place that is not on grass or any soft surface. We went to our neighborhood school parking lot on the weekends so it was empty. This parking lot is a great place because it’s paved and it’s slightly sloped. The slope will help in step four.

2. Remove the training wheels and the pedals.

3. Lower the bike seat so that your child would be flat footed when he is seated.

4. Starting at the higher end of the sloped parking lot, tell your child to scoot along to get a good feel of the bike.

5. Once the child is comfortable scooting along, tell the child to pick up his feet and coast. If the child feels like he’s going to fall, tell him to put his feet back down to the ground to regain his balance. Continue to do steps 4 and 5 until the child can coast comfortably without losing balance. Remind your child to look straight ahead and not down at the ground. The goal in steps 4 and 5 is to learn how to balance. We did this with our 5-year-old boy for about 40 minutes. The 7-year-old girl that we taught this to picked it up in 10 minutes. Once the child learns how to balance on the bike, then the hard part is over!

6. If you feel that your child got the balancing act down, and seemed like he’s having fun, put his pedals back on and repeat steps 4 and 5 again.

7. Now show your child how to start his bike. Have your child start coasting down the hill and when he feels comfortable, lift both feet on the pedals and start pedaling. (An alternative is to have him put one foot on the ground, the other push on the high pedal that you’d have adjusted so that one pedal is higher than the other to create momentum.) If your child can start his bike, he’s on his way to be a biker!

Here’s how Chico got his feet on the pedals!

He’s biking!

I’d love to hear how you taught your kiddos to ride a bike. If you used this same method, please share your experience with us in the comments.

References:

REI Teaching Your Child to Ride a Bike Video

Filed Under: Outdoor Activities Tagged With: Teaching Your Child to Ride a Bike

Nature’s Bounty Green Juice

September 11, 2012 by Betty

Today we picked some tomatoes and kale from our backyard and decided to make our Nature’s Bounty Green Juice. If you’re in the Northwest, it’s apple and pear season so now’s a great time to add your apples and pears in your green juice. If you don’t have any pears, just use two apples instead. Here’s what we did. See recipe below. Recipe makes about 30 fl. oz or 1000 mL. depending on the size of your juicing carrots and other vevggies. New to juicing? Click here to see the benefits of vegetable juicing. Do you have a favorite green juice recipe? Please share!