Making Chocolates

 We had a great time making raw chocolates this morning and can't wait to taste them a little later on when they've set. We even made our own instructional video to share for Lychee to earn a DIY skill for her 'Chef' badge.  You can watch the video below:

Valentines Activity

 Looking for a fun activity for valentines day? How about learning to make genuinely healthy, organic and fairly traded chocolate? That's what we are going to be doing. I'm told it's easy enough for the kids to join in with too.

You could also do a study on fair trade, it's a little early (fair trade fortnight starts on the 23rd of February) but personally I think they've missed a trick because everyone will be marketed nasty commercial not fairly traded chocolate for valentines day without giving it a second though just nine days earlier.

The fair trade website has tonnes of free resources aimed at all age groups which look great and I will definitely be looking at these both with the teenagers I work with and my own two.

And if you are looking for links to buy the ingredients you need, you can find them at the bottom of yesterday's post on my other blog. :-)

Ickwell Nature Reserve

Lychee woke up, now officially a four year old, and decided to commandeer one of my T-shirts as a dress. More and more she is wanting to wear my things, be it slippers or hair clips, she's just so desperate to grow up. When all the other children are playing she likes to have a cup of tea with the mummies. Sometimes I can't decide whether she really is shy or if she just really wants to be a grown up.

To be honest, she looked remarkably cute in the T-shirt/dress (more so than I did!) so I'm going to let her keep it.




The T-shirt was originally my little sisters (I got a massive new wardrobe when she emigrated -sad story) and I love it. The 'Beloved' logo is cute enough, but what you probably can't quite read underneath is the red script which says 'because you never looked more beautiful than in His eyes'. I really do love the One Truth brand clothing.

Lychee wore it to come on a fun day out with some friends at Ickwell nature reserve. Several people were camping for the whole weekend, sadly we had to leave because I had a wedding today.

Cosmo and Lychee had great fun climbing trees, catching insects with her new bug hunting kit and generally building dens and stick fighting with lots of new friends.

Cosmo's highlight was teaching other children how to use his fire steel to make little fires. He just loves it when he is confident in a skill that takes others a bit of practice. It's a great way of getting him to talk more easily when he is feeling shy.

Lychee's favourite part was catching crawdad (my kids love that song) and cooking them. She didn't eat them, but both kids loved running around checking the traps and seeing how many were there. We of course, did eat them and they were very delicious.

Here's the video:

Nearly five...

Having turned two lychee is really enjoying being in Cosmo's swimming lesson and works really hard at keeping up and doing everything the teacher asks of her. I'm so proud of her!!

This term Cosmo will be turning five, which means that he is now eligible to join the sports classes that are run by the co-operative we're in. He had his first session yesterday and was so nervous and excited.

He did brilliantly and the coach was really great at giving him specific instructions that allowed him to join in with minimal stress.

Winning two games of 'rob the nest' and learning to dribble with his hockey stick were highlights of the day, and I was surprised by his dexterity.

We also made 'iced tea' yesterday, which was the perfect opportunity to talk about particles and diffusion. I'm pretty sure that he had no idea what I was talking about, but you never know... He had great fun crushing all the herbs we'd dried anyway, and brewing the tea required plenty of stirring which is always enjoyable.

In fact, having spent so much time in the kitchen, he asked if he could make dinner. Unfortunately I had already made dinner and it was going to come straight from the slow cooker. He wasted no time in reminding me that one day he was going to be a daddy and that if I didn't let him take responsibility and help out with chores how would he ever look after his own children? He is nearly five after all...

It's incredible hearing your child repeat back things that you have taught them and attitudes and expectations that you have for them. I was so pleased to hear him genuinely concerned about learning how to take on responsibility around the household. 

He had one more opportunity yesterday to show me how much he'd been learning too. Lychee was being a little impatient and pushing to get past him. He disappeared off, found our Plants Grown Up book (from DoorPosts), looked up a scripture on patience and copied it out onto a card for her to keep as a memory verse!! Not only had he chosen a gentle way to reprimand her, but he took the time to write the verse out in his best writing too. 

Times like that remind me why we take the time to be intentional with our discipline, and it's worth every effort!

'Cooking' with toddlers

My son has suddenly developed an interest in baking - how helpful seeing as we have just started the  GAPS diet and we can't eat conventional cookies/brownies/cupcakes anymore. :0(

All is not lost though! It turns out GAPS 'cooking' with a dehydrator is not only easy, but toddler safe as there is no oven used! Even a four year old is capable of turning a dial to the correct temperature and placing the front on this mildly warm 'oven' without burning themselves.

We picked up a really good deal on some peppers at the local market, so today we are making 'no cheese crackers' but here are some other great toddler (and GAPS) friendly recipes you could try making together.

• Banananut Cookies 
• Lemon Cookies
• Foccacia 'bread' 
• Fruit Leathers (remove the agave nectar to keep it GAPS friendly -  it still tastes great)
• Onion 'bread'  
• Cheezit's 
• Banana Bread Walnuts
• Brownies (I make these without the cocoa nibs and they still taste great)
• Chivy Cheese Chips

GAPS friendly Easter Cookies

Courtney over at Women Living Well has a tradition of making Easter Cookies with her children. Personally I would call them meringues, but semantics aside, these are a great way to teach your children about the Easter story. 


Unfortunately we are on the GAPS diet and these cookies contain a whole cup of sugar. 


So I set to work and I have created the GAPS friendly version. The recipe is almost identical, but you have to be a little more careful with things like ensuring the egg whites are at room temperature (they will not whip up properly with honey if they are cold). 


So here it is:

1 cup whole pecans
1 tsp. white/ distilled vinegar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt

2/3 cup honey

Preheat oven to 180c (don't forget this step!!)

Place pecans inside a sandwich bag and let children smash them up with a rolling pin. Explain that after Jesus was arrested, He was beaten by the Romans soldiers. Read John 19:1-3.

Let each child taste a small amount of the vinegar. Put 1 tsp. vinegar into mixing bowl. Explain that when Jesus was thirsty on the cross, He was given vinegar to drink. Read John 19:28-30.

Add egg whites to vinegar. Eggs represent life. Explain that Jesus gave His life to give us life. Read John 10:10-11.

Sprinkle a little salt into each child’s hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus’ followers, and the bitterness of our own sin. Read Luke 23:27.

let the children taste a little honey and then add 2/3 cup to the mixing bowl. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him. Read Ps. 34:8 and John 3:16.

Beat with a mixer on high speed for 12 to 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. This works really well with my version of the recipe, as initially the mixture will be brown (due to the honey) but will eventually turn white when it's ready. Explain that the color white represents the purity in God’s eyes of those whose sins have been cleansed by Jesus. Read Isa. 1:18 and John 3:1-3.

Fold in broken nuts and then dollop blobs of it onto a lined baking sheet. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. Read Matt. 27:57-60.

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF. Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door. Explain that Jesus’ tomb was sealed. Read Matt. 27:65-66.

GO TO BED! Explain that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the Oven overnight. Jesus’ followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed. Read John 16:20 and 22.

On Easter morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice the cracked surface and take a bite. The cookies are hollow! On the first Easter, Jesus’ followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty. Read Matt. 28:1-9.

Well, Courtney says to do this over night and on Easter morning, and I think I probably will next year. This year I wanted to do it prior to Easter to check it works. It did. It worked brilliantly. I will definitely be adding this to our family traditions to do at this time of year. 

The photos are from her blog, because they are much prettier than mine. 

A Space Party!

Cosmo loves to prepare for guests, much more than he enjoys having them. Take thanksgiving for example - if you spoke to him anytime from august to November you would have assumed it was his favourite time of year. He was desperate to help make a pumpkin pie and decorate the house, but when our guests arrived he spent most of the dinner in his room by himself asking to be left alone.



So when he wanted a birthday party, you can understand me having concerns. Having spent the weeks running up to his dinosaur party excited and preparing, he spent the hours before in tears because he was scared. It was all fun in the end though.



So this year he wanted a 'Space Party'. Despite spending much of the morning balancing between tears and giggling manically he managed to stay downstairs for the entire party. There were some tears and I was sad that he refused to be part of a group photo at the end, but overall I'm glad we did it.



As with the dinosaur party, Cosmo was involved in all of the preparation, from making the pinata's and wall decorations, to baking his own birthday cake. We learnt loads during the process and spent hours on youtube watching astronauts in zero gravity training and space shuttle launches. He even made a playlist that he wanted to have on in the background of the party.



If you want to see a video of the party it's here:

Rock Candy!

We've really been enjoying watching the Frozen Planet series on BBC iplayer as a family on Sunday afternoon's. Lychee pretty much sleeps through it, but Cosmo is fascinated. So much so that the other week he clicked 'more like this' and found 'The Secret Life of Ice' and begged to be allowed to watch. It looked educational so I figured 'why not'? In fact, it looked a little too educational. I didn't think he'd last more than a few minutes.

I was wrong.

Not only did we end up watching the entire episode, he asked LOADS of relevant questions. I was amazed. The bit he found most amazing was how ice crystals formed under pressure (hot ice) and how supercooled water could form crystals instantly. In fact he though crystals in general were amazing and so we decided to look at them a bit more closely.

We made Rock Candy lollies.

If you want to have a go, the basic instructions are here. We made it a bit more exciting by doing jars with different coloured food dyes and flavourings in them, and put them in our boiler room to speed up the process. The most interesting part was that some of the colours/flavourings behaved differently and the crystals came out all different shapes and sizes, so we were able to talk about large crystals forming more slowly than small crystals etc...

I'd really encourage you to have a go with this experiment. It was great fun. Even a three year old (properly supervised with the hob) is able to carefully measure out the correct amounts of the ingredients and stir until they are completely dissolved.

I wish we'd taken photos, but we didn't, so here are some I stole from google, but they look pretty much the same.

Shana Tova

We've been celebrating Rosh Hashanah, although we are Christian, we believe the Hebrew festivals are a shadow of Christ's life and of things to come.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the anniversary of creation, and one of the things we have been doing is telling the creation story at breakfast and dinner each day by candlelight.


Cosmo is now very good at telling the facts of the story (the order things were made in, what Adam and eve did) but still struggles with questions like 'how did God feel when they disobeyed him?' or 'what do you think Adam and Eve felt like when they left the garden?'

I know it's in part because of the ASD, but it still always surprises me how well he can memorise facts, but how difficult he finds interpretation.

We've really enjoyed making a trumpet out of paper mâché and decorating it too. You can find directions on how to make the basic trumpet shape here. Cosmo especially likes waking daddy up with his trumpet in the mornings!

Israel enjoy fruits dipped in honey, a reminder of sweetness, as they wish each other a 'sweet and good new year'. We had fruits dipped in honey, and chocolate sauce, because nothing says 'sweet' to my children like chocolate!

Cosmo helped make the sauce, by melting chocolate in the microwave and stirring in double cream and milk. He's actually getting pretty good at using the microwave without help and can stir without spilling everywhere now. Hooray for fine motor improvement!

Most excitingly, he also wrote hi own name in a 'Shana Tova' card we made to send his cousins. Lychee painted the front and he wrote inside. It's the second time his managed to wrote his name, the first time being nearly two months ago, with no attempts in between.

It is frustrating to know that he can, but won't practise. He's still very unenthusiastic about writing or colouring, but lychee is the complete opposite. Colouring and painting are her two favourite activities.

Later today we shall go and perform our 'tashlikh' or 'casting off'. We are going to throw some stones in the river as we confess our shortcomings, to remind us that God will wash away our sins. This has been cosmos favourite part of the festival in the past, and I'm sure he will enjoy it this year too.

So, have a sweet and good new year, may your name be inscribed in the book of life!

Making Fifteens

Today we had some friends over to help us make fifteens. They are great because they require no oven (it's like a fridge cookie) and only minimal adult supervision. The only thing you need to measure is the condensed milk, everything else is counted.



So the recipe for those who'd like to try it goes like this:

15 digestive biscuits, crushed
15 chocolate buttons, smashed up
15 marshmallows, chopped up
15 glace cherries, chopped up
150ml of condensed milk
A few handfuls of shredded coconut
Mix everything but the coconut together to form a dough.
Roll it into a sausage shape.
Roll the sausage in the coconut.
Wrap and place in the fridge until firm, then slice.

I find the best way to let a preschooler chop things is to place them in a mug and use big scissors. The cherries/marshmallows can't escape and the blades are nowhere near fingers. However, if you have friends over, sometimes it's best to just let the mummies do the chopping!



This recipe is great for encouraging counting, and will probably be the first recipe I allow Will to make unsupervised in the future, as there is no heat and not a lot can go wrong.