Kai Projects: Food and Paint

After establishing that I would be staying with her today, Kai informed me that she wanted to do "a food project" and then a "paint project." We turned to Pintrest, starting on the board where I keep ideas I want to try with her.

Kai's focus on "a food project" forced her to skip interesting looking projects like making bouncy balls and colored soap in favor of an apple flower. Here she is, with our inspiration on the iPad behind her:

A closer look at our finished project (ours has a raisin and nut mixture because we've run out of plain raisins):

After her snack, Kai was ready to move onto her "paint project." She selected the picture of herself with bottles of flour paint on Pinterest, so we repeated an earlier project. 

We mixed flour, kosher salt, and water in a big bowl until we had a thick, paint-like consistency. (We didn't measure anything, I mostly allow her to scoop or pour the ingredients into the bowl and mix them up. We discuss whether the miture is too thick or too thin and I help her determine which ingrediants might help.) Using a funnel, I transferred the "paint" into our bottles. 

Kai added food coloring, I mixed the paint, and she screwed the lids in place. She managed to only knock one bottle over, but the paint was thick enough that it didn't even spill. 

Here she is, outside, with her art:

Cheese Faces

Today, Kai picked a picture of faces made from Baby Bell cheese from Pinterest for her "food project." This one required a knife, so this was primarily my project. We had two pieces of cheese, so Kai picked out two faces and I did my best to recreate them. I used chia seeds for the eyes and leftover wax for the mouths.

Kai project: Fruit butterfly

We looked on Pintrest for our "food project". A butterfly made with apple slices, a carrot stick, raisins, and pretzel sticks caught Kai's eye. We made our own version with what we have on hand - apple slices, blackberries, raisins, and peanut butter. 

I put the peanut butter in a bag and squeezed it out on the plate to make the antenna. Kai loves peanut butter, so the proportion is wrong for the butterfly but better for getting her to eat the creation. 

Here's what we made:

We couldn't get the raisins to balance on the lowest part of the wing, so I added the last of the peanut butter directly to those apple slices instead. 

Gingerbread Houses

Today, I decided to try making gingerbread houses. Aside from the resulting complete exhaustion, I think our first attempt went pretty well. Of course, I didn't plan ahead so we used the remaining Halloween candy and anything else we could find in the pantry to decorate our houses. Here they are:

Mine is mostly starbursts, mini starbursts, jolly rancher sticks, fruit roll ups, caramels, and coconut chips (on the roof). [Is it obvious that I grew up in a brick house?] Kai's is...well...everything I used plus most of her Halloween candy.

I used a recipe I found online for the gingerbread, modified for the fact that we only had fresh ginger (the equivalent is basically TONS of fresh ginger for powdered). I found a recipe online for the frosting too - egg whites, cream of tartar, and powdered sugar. 

I didn't use a pattern for the houses; I cut them out free form. Kai's fell in a couple times before I got it to stand. I think a pattern might be helpful, but our pieces got distorted a bit as Kai helped put them on the baking sheets. A pattern would not have solved that problem. 

Kai Project: Fun with Fruit

Continuing with our food project theme, we made fruit skewers today.

We used a variety of fresh fruit and dried fruit. Apples were hard for her to push onto the chopstick, but the bananas were so soft they broke apart as she pushed them onto the stick. Fresh grapes, dried cherries, fresh oranges, and dried appricots were the easiest for her to work with. 

After we made fruit skewers, Kai smashed the bananas and I chopped the remaining fruit as small as I could. We added jello and made these "gummies" (Kai's name for fruit snacks).

Kai Project: Faces

Following the food project kick we've been on, we made faces for lunch. First, Kai made a pizza with a face:

For dessert, I sliced an orange, an apple, a banana, and found grapes for noses.

As you'll see, Kai made one happy face and one sad face:

Kai Projects: Rainbow Bread Butterfly

Today's food project selection was a butterfly made from a slice of bread, cream cheese, and fresh fruit. Substituting what we had on hand (and what Kai likes), we used rainbow bread from yesterday, peanut butter, and dried fruit.

After I trimmed the rainbow bread, Kai spread peanut butter:

The finished project:

Kai Projects: Rainbow bread

Kai has been fascinated with "food projects" lately. We look through Pinterest together to find things to try. Her first (and most frequent) selection is always felt cut into food shapes - I guess that pictures best. But I've been able to guide her toward edible projects for which we already have the ingredients on hand (important because I'm still on crutches).

To make rainbow bread, we first mixed food coloring with milk:

Kai "painted" the colored milk on bread:

And I toasted the bread in our toaster oven:

She loved it!

Unfortunately, I'm still somewhat disturbed by colored bread. I remember when they started selling tie-dyed white bread in the store when I was a kid. I think my mother's distress at this product carried with me.