Rainbow Bread! Easy, quick, and BEAUTIFUL!

Okay, I'll admit, I am not the baker in the family. My husband does all of that. I am the one who scrolls Instagram and sees recipes, then shows him. He executes. So, he was the leader when it came to making rainbow bread. I was just the support person.

Apparently, if you know how to make bread, any old bread recipe will do.

And yes, my husband makes his own bread. I just burn things, but he follows recipes and sets timers and all that jazz. It's VERY impressive.

Anyway, once my husband made the bread dough, we separated it into 5 piles, one for each color. We let our daughter choose from the food coloring which colors she would like in the rainbow bread.

Then, we gave each child a small pile of dough to squish and mix with their fingers to get the color mixed in. That was cute. :)

After that, my husband rolled out each pile of color and layered them. He let it rise again at that point before baking in a small bread pan. And the results were...AWESOME!

Check it out below! And here is the link to the recipe we used.

Tell me you're a teacher without telling me you're a teacher...

Tell me you're a teacher without telling me you're a teacher...

Every time my 1-year old makes a mess with food, my 3-year old yells out, "SENSORY PLAY!"

That's it. Now, I'll go get cleaning.

Sensory Play: Have you heard of FLOOF?

My three-year old routinely tells me that what she is doing is "sensory play." She's pretty smart and uses this as an excuse to make a mess, basically.

Anyway, FLOOF is a little messy and it is definitely sensory play. :)

It comes in a bucket, and it smells so amazing. Your hands are pretty clean after using it, not terribly messy unless they were wet or sweaty, then the Floof sticks a bit.

My kiddos can make designs, sculptures, cakes, etc. They talk through the imaginative play with each other, and I make them stay at a table. Even so, some fall on the carpet and I've vacuumed it up, no problem.

So, if you are looking for an alternative to play doh or kinetic sand, this seems like a really engaging option (that literally smells like marshmallow.).

Sensory Play: Kinetic Sand

Good morning!

Now that I'm the mom of a toddler and baby, I am finding out how important sensory play really is. Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates a young child's senses of touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing, as well as anything which engages movement and balance. Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate and explore.

Enter a few sensory play essentials:

- Splat Mat because I am Type A and so is my toddler.

- Kinetic Sand (scented is really fun)

- Cookie cutters

We had a lot of fun with these color coded cookie cutters I found on Amazon. The colors correspond to the holidays, so we tried to focus on yellow for Easter/Spring, but of course Violet was into every single one! And we needed to go through them all. We practice flattening the kinetic sand and pressing the cookie cutters in to make shapes. Then we decorated some of the shapes with more kinetic sand rolled into snakes or balls.

I also picked up some sand tools that were fun to incorporate to make bigger balls, tweezers to pick up small pieces, and little melon-baller type tools for some fine motor skills work.

Check out some pictures from our experience below. Also, we were sequestered in the bedroom while the baby napped - hence the Splat Mat! (I think it is meant for under the high chair, but neither of my kids have been too messy while eating and it is perfect for crafting anywhere without a mess!