Craft Stick Puzzles

I've been working with Ronan on counting to 20 (He only makes it to 13 most of the time), and on letter sounds. Today I decided to look on Pinterest for hands-on ideas. Amazingly, I found NOTHING, but somehow looking through other preschool ideas gave me an idea. Ronan loves puzzles, so I made a puzzle to help him with his numbers. I printed out some Cars coloring pages and colored them. Then I painted the back of the pictures with glue and stuck popsicle sticks to them. I cut the popsicle sticks apart with an exacto knife and labelled them with numbers 1 through 20. Then, I wrapped them with packing tape to make them more durable. Now, he can practice placing the numbers in order to form a picture, and when I do it with him, we can also say the numbers aloud. He can't complete the puzzle by himself yet, but I do think he'll get it soon.

If you decide to do this, I used the large popsicle sticks, and no, twenty sticks do not fit on one page. I used two coloring pages, used "Paint" to connect the ground between them, and then split it onto two pages (Well, actually the top and bottom of one page). The seam is on stick #11, but its not overly obvious.

It was easier than I expected and turned out exactly as I planned, so I decided to make a few more puzzles. I will probably make a few other number puzzles later, but today I decided to start on some basic spelling puzzles. They are much easier than the number puzzle, but I wanted it that way. I figure he will probably need to learn his numbers in order to be able to complete the picture, but on the word puzzles he will have to be able to complete the picture in order to reveal the word. These are the word puzzles I made. I plan on doing "cat", "dog", etc later, but for now I just used family pictures.

Cornbread from scratch

Cornbread is a staple in our house. We always have a couple boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix in the cupboard because my husband LOVES cornbread. I've always found it to be too dry and not worth eating, but hey, if he doesn't say anything about the massive amounts of chocolate I eat, I'll let him have the cornbread. So one day last week I went to make cornbread... and we didn't have any! I was confused. I looked through every cupboard. How could we be OUT of cornbread??? I'll make some from scratch, I thought. It couldn't be too hard, and I know I've got cornmeal around here somewhere because I bought it for one of those kids sensory exercises you find all over Pinterest. Nope. I had corn starch. Not really the same thing.

So the next time I went shopping I bought a big bag of corn meal plus two boxes of Jiffy just in case I was an idiot and couldn't make good cornbread from scratch. A few days later I made "Homesteader Cornbread" from Allrecipes.com, and now I'm seriously considering giving away the Jiffy. It was easy. It was cheap. It used only ingredients that I already had (plus the cornmeal). And I actually liked it. Not enough to choose it over sweet rolls or croissants, but enough to choose it over nothing, which is a huge step for me. Unlike cornbread from a box, you don't feel like all of the moisture has been sucked out of your mouth when you're eating it. My husband said that cornbread was the kind of cake he wanted for his next birthday (weirdo). So for anyone curious enough to try it, but too lazy to look it up themselves, here is the recipe:

1 1/2 C cornmeal
2 1/2 C milk
2 C all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

In a large bowl, mix together cornmeal and milk. Let stand 5 minutes. Add all other ingredients and stir until smooth. Pour batter into a greased and floured 9x13 pan. bake at 400 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

QUICK. EASY. CHEAP. DONE. How did Jiffy convince us all to keep buying those stupid little boxes?