Yummy Color Sorting

Today I planned for Charlotte to have a special dessert after lunch, and made her work for it a bit: M&M Color Sorting! Everyday Charlotte amazes us with the new words she uses (usually in context), her daredevil feats or the details she remembers but for some reason colors escape her. She is doing great with pronouncing the names of the colors and knowing that those names are for colors but does not really seem to have picked up which name goes with which color. Her default answer is always “yellow”.

We have been trying to work with her on colors recently and I thought this little game might have just the right kind of motivation! She started with a handful of M&Ms (specific colors pre-chosen) to go with matching bowls I even added a few brown M&Ms to throw her off. Once I told her she could eat the M&Ms after she sorted them into the color bowls (and showed her what I meant) …she worked quickly!

I have to say that hours later I am still surprised by how well she did, only a few were misdirected and those were red with orange or vice-a-versa. I really thought the brown M&Ms would throw her off but she just looked at them for a minute then gave them to me, Thank You Charlotte! She did have a lot of trouble with identifying the right color/name combination and only got the hang of it at the end. Looks like we have a lot of work to do so I am sure she will enjoy the dessert in the future.

Charlotte, The Muffin Maker

Most of you know how much I really like to bake. Until recent events I made breakfast bread or muffins once a week so that we had an “on the go” meal ready for the work week. I tried to incorporate Charlotte as much as possible in the baking process, unless I was behind schedule and baking at midnight…which happened more than I’d like to admit!

As part of “getting back on track” Charlotte and I sat down this afternoon to make Blueberry & Banana Muffins. Charlotte was a big help – she broke apart the bananas, helped pick out the biggest blueberries to wash and drain and generally poured in all the ingredients and mixed up the batter. I was really impressed that she restrained herself from eating any of the ingredients until it came to the blueberries, the last ingredient.

It’s been really neat to watch her stirring skills improve over the last few months. Unfortunately, Charlotte is getting to the “I CAN do it myself” stage which gets a little out of hand sometimes. We only had one mishap today – vegetable oil. Wouldn’t you know the messiest ingredient didn’t quite make it to the bowl….ugh! :) But Charlotte was good about staying still while I cleaned up both her and the spill!

I’d like to say that all turned out well but, I let myself get distracted during the baking process and the muffins burned quite a bit around the edges. (um, that is why I’m not including an “after” shot) So, Wayne improvised and just cut out the centers. I have to say they were YUMMY anyway and we managed to bribe Charlotte to eat more of her dinner by telling her she could have a muffin for desert!