Shape Hopping, Color Wheels and Vegan Burgers
What we've been doing, eating, and learning lately
Welcome to The Greenhouse. A newsletter about growing tiny humans, eating plants & living a little more simply.
My son is 3.5 and my daughter is 6-months-old.
What my preschooler learned this week:
We started the week doing a couple of puzzles that he’s really been into lately. I like to keep activities like this hidden away for awhile and then bring them out when we’re needing something fun and exciting to do. I’m thinking we should get some more advanced puzzles because he’s just been whipping through the ones we have.
I’m always on the hunt for books for him at the multitude of Little Free Libraries in our neighborhood. One day, on my morning walk, I stumbled upon a couple of really great Highlights Magazines that were perfect for his age.
One of the activities we found was called ‘Do The Shape Hop’ and it looked fun (and easy for me to set up), so we tried it.
I used painters tape to make different shapes on the floor and he hopped from shape to shape calling out the names of the shape as he landed on each one. He LOVED this and would’ve done it for much longer if I didn’t have to shut it down because the baby was napping and the jumping was too loud (we live in a very old house - it was built in 1905!).
Once the baby was up, I taped down numbers instead of shapes and he hopped from number to number, calling out the numbers. Before this, he was having a little bit of a hard time remembering what came after 11, but after this, he’s hasn’t had trouble once. In fact, I heard him count to 40 today!
If you’re looking for a fun way to help your child learn numbers and counting, try this.
Every day after breakfast, my husband and our 3yo try to do an art project of some sort. My husband has a degree in painting and drawing so he absolutely loves every second of this time with our son. This week they created several color wheels.
Color wheels show the relationship between primary colors, secondary colors and tertiary colors.
Since our 3yo has shown a huge interest in art, this seemed like a fun creation to have hanging on his art wall. They started with a simple, six-color wheel. After my husband showed him how to draw the wheel itself, and wrote the words for the colors, our 3yo practiced sounding out each color and got most of them right! He then proceeded to pick out a color he liked for each out of a huge bin of colored pencils that I found a thrift store and colored the section in.
HOT TIP: Thrift stores are one of the best places to get art supplies.
After they were done with the first color wheel, he wanted to do an even bigger one, so they made a twelve-color wheel next. Once again, he picked out all of the colors for each section by himself and colored them in. It’s not perfect, but it’s a wonderful first go at a more advanced color wheel. I have a feeling they’ll be making even more of these in the future.
Another art project that took up several days this week was creating a picnic table for squirrels out of popsicle sticks. He loves feeding the squirrels in our neighborhood (probably not the best thing to do?), so they thought it would be fun to try to make a little table to set almonds out on to then watch the squirrels come grab ‘em and squirrel them away. I think it turned out so cute.
And finally, our favorite ‘Art Every Day’ post of the week was this one by Picasso. It’s such a good conversation piece. I think our 3yo was a bit unsettled while looking at and talking about this piece (he’s most definitely a highly sensitive child), but he was interested nonetheless.
I mean, look at those shapes and colors. So cool.
Some plant-based meals we ate this week:
If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m in a major ‘easy meals from Trader Joe’s’ phase. I can’t wait to get out of it, but for now, I’m deep in it. So this week’s dinner of choice was their Lemon Torchiette Pasta tossed with their Vegan Kale, Cashew & Basil Pesto.
I added about a quarter cup or so of light coconut milk from a can to make it a little bit creamier, canned lentils for some extra protein, and as per usual I added some nooch too. Hot damn this was delicious. And so easy. Thank god for easy these days.
Sadly, I think the pasta itself is/was a seasonal item so they may no longer have it. But if you haven’t tried their vegan pesto with some canned coconut milk mixed in, make it ASAP. It makes it so much better.
One day, our 3yo stated that he was craving burgers and we should have them soon. Unfortunately, any time he eats ‘fake meat’ (aka Impossible burgers, Gardein chicken, vegan sausage crumbles, etc.) his digestive system doesn’t seem too happy. So I looked up a simple black bean burger recipe (no chopping and only one bowl!) and made them for dinner the next day.
They actually turned out pretty good. A bit mushy, which is to be expected, but the flavor was there. I didn’t feel like running to the store, and we had English muffins on hand, so we used those for the bun. We went for the classic burger vibe and added vegan cheese, homemade fry sauce, yellow mustard, lettuce, tomato, pickle, and red onion. I wanted to make homemade fries, but who has the time for that these days, so we went with potato chips instead.
It definitely satisfied that burger craving. Our 3yo agreed.
I made some mini baby-led-weaning muffins from the The Plant-Based Baby & Toddler for our 6-month-old and they turned out so good - like little, moist banana bread bites. They were kind of on the stodgy side, so she didn’t absolutely love them herself, but our 3yo sure did. They were the perfect late afternoon snack alongside some vanilla soy milk.
HOT TIP: We choose soy milk over other plant milks because it’s higher in protein and fat. Both of which growing humans need lots of. It’s also fortified with calcium which is crucial for plant-based kids to be getting enough of.
More baby-led-weaning meals from this week:
Some personal highlights from this week:
I’ve been drinking boatloads of tea these days. And I owe it all to Substack. I feel like the majority of people on this platform are British (is this true??) and so many people suggest drinking a cuppa while reading their post. And I just can’t get tea out of my head because of it.
So I’ve been making at least one cup a day and I absolutely love it. Why haven’t I been doing this all along?
If you have a favorite tea that you can’t get enough of right now, leave a comment and let me know!
I’ve been ending my showers with a cold water rinse and let me tell you, it’s amazing. Would I rather just end my shower with the piping hot water I’ve been using the whole time? Yes. Yes I would. But there are so many benefits to rinsing in cold water that it’s worth it to me.
Do you wanna know the real reason I do it though? It’s all about the mental game. I breathe through it, focusing on the air flowing in and out of my nostrils, just letting the water pour over me. I haven’t had time to meditate lately, so it’s my own little way of powering through a challenging moment by returning to my breath and just letting everything else go.
Highly recommend.
If you’re in need of an album to get you through the rest of winter, look no further. Enough said. Just listen to it. ✨
And that about does it for our weekly roundup.
Thanks for being here.
See you soon!
xo Kristen
Loved this I sight from your journey 🙏