For this recipe you’ll need:

• Vanilla and chocolate cupcakes
• Chocolate and vanilla frosting
• Vanilla wafer cookies
• Assorted candies for ears and bows
• Food coloring
• A pint sized glass
• A knife
• A spoon
• Spatula
• Scissors
• Gallon and sandwich sized bag

Eep the Mouse cupcake:

Add one teaspoon of blue food coloring to store-bought vanilla frosting and whisk, or add to homemade butter cream frosting.

Make a piping bag. Put one corner of a gallon sized plastic bag down in the bottom of your cup and fold the bag open over the edges. Scoop in your blue frosting until the bag is full. Lift your bag out, squeeze out the air and zip the bag shut.

Squeeze the frosting down to the bottom corner of the bag, and then snip off the end.

Starting from the edge of the cupcake, frost gently in a spiral motion until you reach the cupcake’s center.

To make the face, prepare two piping bags: one with black frosting, and one with white.

Using black frosting, draw little eyebrows, eyes, a nose and a mouth on your vanilla wafer cookie. Use white frosting to add a little sparkle to his eye.

Place your cookie in the center of your cupcake.

To make the ears, cut a chocolate circle in half and place them.

Trace over the chocolate with blue frosting, and finish with two blue candies.

Mother Goose Club’s Teddy Bear cupcake:

Use a chocolate cupcake.

Make a piping bag with chocolate frosting, frost starting at the edge and work your way to the center.

Place the cookie face and chocolate circle ears. Trace over the ears with chocolate frosting.

For Teddy’s special bow, add two blue candy-covered chocolates.

Baa Baa Sheep cupcake:

Use a vanilla cupcake. Add eight drops of red, and two drops of blue to vanilla frosting to get the right color. Make a piping bag.

Make a series of dots with pink frosting around the edge of the cupcake.

Using your spoon, smear each dot towards the center of the cupcake.

Make a second circle of dots, just like the first in the center.

Add the cookie face and two purple chocolate-covered candies for ears.

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You know those claw machines at the arcade that kids go crazy for? Fishing for ABCs is basically that game, but instead of spending $5 to (most likely) not get a toy, why not play this far more rewarding AND educational version using vocabulary words and letter tiles instead?

Kids decorate their own “fish bowl” using an ice cream carton or tissue box. Parents (or older kids) build a “fishing rod” using a wooden dowel and some magnets, and then fill the fish bowl with letters and early vocabulary words. Kids go “fishing” for letters to create words, or simply to practice saying the letters of the alphabet. Older kids can fish for words and create sentences. There are endless ways to play!

Especially in the early stages of learning, kids crave sensory play to help connect mind and body. Physically handling the fishing pole and fetching the letters keeps them engaged, while also practicing fine motor skills. This game is also great practice for letter recognition (I know this shape is a letter “L”) and letter sound correspondence (The letter “L” makes the /l/ sound).

Ayla (age 7) was excited to paint her fish bowl, fetch words to make sentences, and sort her letters by color (sorting is another awesome skill to flex in this game).

Lennon (age 3) had a great time spelling her name and winding up the fishing pole.

Did you try this activity out with your kids? Let us know how it went! Tag us on social media @mothergooseclub #ShowMeHow.

SHOW ME HOW!

Supplies:

• Cleaned ice cream carton, tissue box, or similar
• Paint in various colors, including white for priming
• Paint brushes
• Construction paper
• Marker
• Drinking straw or wooden dowel
• String
• Small magnet
• Paper clips
• Use our free printouts:
  • Fish printout
  • Shapes printout
  • Squares printout
  • Alphabet printout

Instructions:

Step 1: Prepare the fishing container: Find a suitable fishing container like an ice cream tub, a tissue box or a cake box.

Step 2: Cut a hole on the lid at least 3 inches in diameter at the center of the container’s lid.

Step 3: Prime the container by painting the outside with white acrylic paint. This layer of paint hides the print on the tub or box and prepares the surface for the final colors of paint.

Step 4: Paint the container: Once the layer of white paint dries, paint the container with various colors of tempera, poster paint or acrylic paint. You can make stripes, dots, swirls or other patterns. You can also paint an ocean theme or any design you like.

Step 5: Make paper squares or fishes: Cut out several 1-inch squares or small fish shapes from construction paper.

Create alphabet letters: Write a letter on each paper square or fish using colored markers or crayons. If you intend to level up to a spelling activity, make sure to add more vowel tiles. Put a metal paper clip on each of the letters. Put the letters in the fishbowl.

Tip: Make this activity a fun challenge by asking your kids to fish for the letters of their name.

Make a fishing pole: Cut string to a length of about 1½ to 2 feet. Tape one end of the string to a small magnet. Tie the opposite end to the tip of a drinking straw or wooden dowel.

Fish for letters: Finally, have kids use the fishing rod to catch alphabet letters inside the container. The magnet on the fishing rod will attract the metal paper clips on the letter squares. Have kids identify each letter they catch.

Level up! Spell some words: Fish for a few letters and see how many words you can spell. As a math activity, count all the letters caught or the words created. You can also incorporate shapes learning by making the letter tiles out of different shapes instead of just squares and using numbers.

Make it a game! Set a timer and see how many words your kids can form in 3 minutes. Winner gets to help clean the next ice cream carton

Social distancing is a challenge, especially for parents with young children who have been so accustomed to the routine of school, parks, playdates and family trips. But with some adjustments, valuable learning, creating, exploring and bonding can happen indoors too. Try working these accessible tips and activities into your daily routine.

Get Crafty

Crafting has tremendous benefits for young, growing minds, helping to develop coordination, fine motor skills, creativity, imagination and more. Crafts are also an opportunity to bond with loves ones. Working together on a craft can help build communication, teamwork and pride!

Get started with our collection of craft ideas – all you’ll need are some simple household materials, but feel free to improvise as needed! We also love Super Simple Songs’ craft collection!

Play Games

Just like crafts, games can be brain-boosting activities that bring the family together. Try the ideas below from our “Show Me How” parenting series:

• The Power of Pretend Play
• How to “Pat-a-Cake”
• How to Play “I Spy”
• How to Play “Simon Says”

Write a Letter

With classrooms shifting to remote environments, so much of our communication is being done over the computer. But don’t forget to continue fine tuning those writing skills!

Choose one day of the week to go old-school with a letter writing activity. Have each member of the family write a letter to grandma, a friend, the dog, whomever! As long as you’re practicing expression and writing.

To help support very early writing development, you can also try our collection of free printables, which include activity pages and coloring pages based on our videos.

Have a Dance Party

Get those wiggles out with a dance party! All you’ll need is a good set of speakers and some tunes. Mother Goose Club songs are available across all major streaming platforms, so come dance along with us, or mix it up with some pop, rock, rap – whatever inspires movement in your home!

Learn an Instrument

Learning an instrument can be challenging, but also tremendously rewarding. Music education provides numerous benefits for early learners, including artistic expression, reading comprehension and confidence.

Our website includes over 80 free, downloadable sheet music pages, all based on our videos. Familiarizing preschoolers with the chords and lyrics from their favorite nursery rhymes is a terrific entry-point for their music education. And for some inspiration, check out our “Show Me How” video about the benefits of drumming.

Do Yoga

Yoga can be terrific for mindfulness and relaxation – both so important in times like this! Setup and cleanup is relatively easy, and the whole family can join in. Cosmic Kids Yoga is an excellent resource designed to guide and inspire children of all ages to try it out!

Explore Google Earth

With Google Earth, you and the family can travel the globe from the comfort of home. Of course, the virtual experience isn’t quite the same as the real thing, but there’s opportunities to explore, adventure and learn.

Start with Google Earth Education tools where you can travel with Carmen Sandiego, create timelapses and more. And here’s a helpful guide for using Google Earth as a learning tool, including some landmark recommendations.

Share With Us!

We hope these tips will help inspire some valuable indoor learning and bonding with you and your family! We’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Share with us using #mothergooseclub on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

I’m hosting a small Easter celebration with some of my favorite people and kids this weekend. This playful dessert is sure to delight them and work as festive decor! I really enjoyed making these because piping the grass frosting isn’t hard and you can have kids help each step of the way if you want (we’ve got lots of other activities planned for this gathering, so I’ll keep the baking to a minimum day of – I’ll have kids who want to feel involved add their own jelly bean eggs).

I’ve outlined some tips below! Be sure to use #mothergooseclub on social media to share pictures and videos of your Easter baking adventures – can’t wait to see what you come up with!

• Place your stencil at the top fold and when you cut out your bunny, make sure the ears stay connected at the top, giving you two sides -front and back (though I just opted for doing bunny backs on each side since a tail is easier to draw than a face!).
• Use a crayon in a slightly darker shade to outline your bunny and add a tail – the outline really makes them pop and the tail is just so cute.
• Use hot glue to attach your craft stick between each side of your bunny and then add a few small dots to connect the paper bunny edges completely.

• Bake chocolate cupcakes with your favorite recipe – I just used a box from the supermarket.
• Add drops of food coloring to your frosting until you get your desired shade of green – I wanted mine to feel a little pastel and used about 12 drops.

• I placed the plastic frosting tip in the piping bag first to see where the frosting would come out, made a cut across the bag there and squeezed to get the tip in place.
• Spoon/spatula your frosting into your bag and frost.
• As you gently squeeze the piping bag, pull up and away to get the frosting to disconnect and create the grass effect.
• Finish with a few colorful jellybeans for Easter eggs!

One of my secrets in the kitchen is incorporating math while teaching my daughter how to cook. Cooking is a terrific way to introduce simple mathematical concepts, allowing children to begin conceptualizing and understanding addition, multiplication, fractions, number order, ratios and more.

So what is a good recipe that’s doable for kids? Pancakes! Our family eats gluten-free, so we use a pancake mix called Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix, found on Amazon at the link below. It tastes so good that even my friends who aren’t gluten-free absolutely LOVE it. It comes with simple, mistake-proof instructions on the back.

Pamela’s Products Baking & Pancake Mix

How do I use pancakes to teach math? First, I ask my daughter to measure how many cups of the mix we need to make for the number of people we plan to serve. If the package says you need 1 cup of the mix for 4 people, how many cups do we need for 8 people? Voila – 2 cups it is!

We love adding bananas into the pancakes – it naturally adds that extra sweetness. I ask my daughter to slice the bananas into equal parts, which teaches basic division and cutting skills. If each pancake needs 5 slices of banana, how many do we need to make 8 pancakes? 40 banana slices!

Next, we add the eggs. Encourage your child read the directions on the package to decipher the amount needed.

Make sure to use another bowl to crack the eggs, since little pieces of shell can fall into the mixing bowl. You can also introduce a concept called mise en place, a French culinary term that means “everything in its place”, so that your family can cook more efficiently and safely.

Time to mix the batter! Kids LOVE this part – one less task for the parent!

Fire up the stove, use a little coconut oil in your pan to give the pancakes a nutty flavor, and scoop your batter into the pan. You should wait until bubbles form at the edge of the pancake as it cooks, and then flip it just once.

An opportunity to instill patience!

Now the best part – pouring maple syrup on top!

Sometimes I ask my daughter to cut the pancakes in halves or quarters as a serving size, which illustrates division in a real-world way.

You can also add blueberries, walnuts and other ingredients of your choosing. Kids love chocolate, of course. I like to use Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips, which can also be found on Amazon below. They’re dairy-free, soy-free and nut-free.

Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Vegan Chocolate Chips

And there you have it! In just 20-30 minutes, thoroughly delicious and healthy pancakes for the family! Plus, we learned some math along the way! It’s become one of my favorite activities to do on a Saturday morning. The most important part is the quality time – be creative and have fun with it together!

Cheers to joyful eating,
Clara

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Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a B,
And put it in the oven for baby and me.

View on YouTube!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
Bake me a cake just as fast as you can.
Pat it and roll it and mark it with a “B”,
And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

View on YouTube!