If You Give a Cat a Cupcake

We finished our letter Cc activities with a focus on one of Kate's favorite books, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.

She loves all of the If You Give books, and we read them daily.

I printed up a cute cat and cupcake activity from spelloutloud.com.  Kate loved the cat, but was only moderately interested in feeding the cat the cupcakes and had no interest in matching or counting cupcakes.  We'll try again in a few months.

I also mixed up a batch of cloud dough.  The recipe I used is 4 cups all purpose flour mixed with 1/2 cup of baby oil.  Kate and I both enjoyed playing with this dough!  We played outside because it is VERY messy!  It's interesting because it has a really silky texture, and it smells nice (although after an hour of play, the smell started to bother me but I have a very sensitive sense of smell!); it also holds a shape, but crumbles easily.

We used the cloud dough to make "cupcakes".  You can see how messy it is, but I will make it again; Kate loved it!

You can also see how the dough holds a shape.  You have to really squish it together for it to stay together though, and it is fragile.

I found Kate smelling it several times.  She really enjoyed the whole sensory experience.

Of course I made real cupcakes too!

I made vanilla cupcakes with this recipe:
CLASSIC VANILLA CUPCAKES
Printed from COOKS.COM
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2/3 cup cold milk
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Bake Time: 18-24 minutes.
Yield: 12 cupcakes.
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating after each
addition. Stir in vanilla.
In a separate bowl, stir together all dry ingredients. Add to butter mixture;
stir in milk.
Bake 18-24 minutes

We frosted the cupcakes with real strawberry frosting, and added some sprinkles to make the cupcakes look like the cupcakes in the book.
Here is the frosting recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup fresh strawberries 1 cup butter 1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted, divided

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Place strawberries in a blender; puree until smooth.
2.	Transfer strawberry puree to a saucepan over medium heat; bring to a boil, stirring often, until puree is reduced by at least half, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool completely.
3.	Beat butter with an electric mixer in a bowl until light and fluffy.
4.	Beat 1 cup confectioners' sugar into butter until just blended.
5.	Beat 2 tablespoons strawberry puree and vanilla extract into butter mixture until just blended.
6.	Repeat with 1 cup confectioners' sugar, followed by 2 tablespoons strawberry puree two more times.
7.	Beat last 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar into mixture until just blended.

 I tried to let Kate frost a few of the cupcakes, but the frosting went directly to her mouth instead of on the cupcakes.  I even showed her how to put it on the cupcake -- nope, right in the mouth.

She liked putting sprinkles on though.  I love that her fingers were just covered with the sprinkles!

This page from the book is great; it reminds me of my kids!

Do you know how hard it is to vacuum up those little sprinkles?  They just bounce around instead of getting sucked up by the vacuum.  Ha ha ha, they taunt me!

Kate ate a bite or two of the cupcake, but she licked off all of the frosting and asked for more.

Collin only liked the frosting.

Reagan ate a mostly plain cupcake with a tiny bit of frosting just to taste it.

We saved a few for Tyler too!

C is for Cat

Kate 24 months

Kate and I are working on the letter Cc this week.  My goal for her right now is just to see the letter, play with it, and maybe understand that different letters make different sounds - even if she doesn't always know which letter makes which sound.  When she is ready, we will go through the alphabet again with more focus on phonics and more activities for each letter.  This is simply an introduction to the alphabet.

 We read two books about cats.  She really likes both of these books!

We looked for the letter C in this basket of peg stacking letters.

We made Cs by filling in an outline with the play dough we had left from our last two weeks of letter fun.  I actually made the letters for her; she helped a little.

She used a letter C play dough stamp to make a few Cs of her own.

I made a bunch more and put them on a tray for her to play with.

She used the dot markers.  Sometimes she dots the letters, and sometimes she just puts dots wherever she wants.  This is okay!  She's two!

We looked at cats in shapes.  She is very good at identifying star and heart; the rest of the shapes she may or may not recognize on any given day.

 Kate was happy to see cat ice cubes!

I made Kate a cat sandwich.

I also cut up some cat cheese pieces for her.

Random play:

 Kate dumped the water beads into the bin with the alphabet sponges.

 I have almost donated this My Little Pony teapot house so many times (Reagan has had it for a long time), but lately Kate has been playing with it quite a bit.

 Kate definitely plays with her toys.  I am convinced it is because she does not have as many toys as her siblings at this age.  Less is more.  I have read so many articles about children not playing with their toys because they just have too many and feel overwhelmed.  I believe it.

I have a lot more letter C fun planned.  This is only the beginning!