Fun, Crafts and Recipes hosts Four Foods on Friday.  This weeks questions are all about candy.

#1. Candy. Do you prefer sweet or sour candy?
I love sweet candy. Sour- not so much.

#2. Gum. Love it? Hate it? What kind is your favorite?
I love gum. The only problem is that if I chew it too much it makes my jaw start to ache. So, I don’t chew it very often.

#3. What is your favorite candy?
M&M’s- preferably the peanut M&M’s but the plain ones are fine too.

#4. Share a recipe for anything that you can include a piece of candy in.
I haven’t had this in years but it is soooo yummy! And now I need to make some.

Whatchamacallit

Ingredients:
6 cups Crispex
2 cups Cheerios
2 cups M&M’s
2 cups broken cashews
2 cups broken pretzels
1 lb white chocolate
Powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Mix everything except the chocolate in a large bowl.
2. Melt the chocolate in the microwave (stirring while melting)
3. Pour over mixture and stir gently until everything is covered.
4. Spread onto wax paper to harden.
5. Break into chunks and put in a paper bag.
6. Put powdered sugar in bag and shake to coat. You can store it in the paper bag until ready to serve.

Stop by Fun, Crafts and Recipes if you’d like to play along.

Yesterday I showed you the felt board activity that we did to go along with The 5 Little Ducks song. Today I’m sharing another duck craft we did. I saw this over at one of my new favorite sites- No Time for Flashcards (if you haven’t been to this site yet you just have to check it out).

Here’s what you’ll need- paper, a duck and a stamp pad.  (As a side note- my stamp pads are for kids and are non-toxic.  But they were missing the all important word “washable.”  So you might want to make sure you get washable stamp pads.  I’m just sayin’)

Give the items to your child and let the creativity flow.  Hailey is working on figuring out exactly how it is working.

Having fun stamping the paper.

While I turned my head for about 2 seconds, Hailey picked up the stamp pad and stamped her face.

The finished duck stamping piece of art.

I’ve never met a child who didn’t love music and Hailey is no exception to that. So for the next few weeks I am going to be doing a bunch of activities all related to some of her favorite songs. First up- is Five Little Ducks… an adorable song about five little ducks who go out to play and then don’t listen to their mommy duck when she tells them to come back. If you haven’t heard the song- check out this Five Little Ducks link to watch it on YouTube.

Hailey absolutely loves this song, so I decided we should make some pieces for our felt board so that she can play with the pieces while we sing it.

Here’s what you’ll need: 5 little ducks and a mommy duck, some crayons and not pictured- contact paper, scissors, glue and felt.

Hailey colored the ducks.

Then I put contact paper on the front side of the ducks.

Glue the backs of the ducks to a piece of felt or Velcro.

After the glue dries, cut out the ducks and put them on your felt board. (My felt board is just a big piece of felt nailed to a wall in Hailey’s play room.) Then I sang the song to Hailey showing her how we could move the ducks to go along with the words of the song.

And Hailey loved it!

And here’s the words, just in case you need them:

Five Little Ducks

Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only four little ducks came back…

Four little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only three little ducks came back…

Three little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only two little ducks came back…

Two little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only one little duck came back…

One little duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but no little ducks came back…

Mama duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
and five little ducks came back.

We recently returned from vacation.  Whenever we talked about something we had done on our vacation Hailey would act like she was thinking about it and trying to remember.  So I decided to create a simple little photo album for her to help her remember the fun we had.

First I found a cheap photo album (I actually already had it, but I’m sure you can find them at the dollar store).  Then I printed out some of Haileys favorite pictures and printed out some captions to go with the pictures.

Then I glued the captions onto the pictures and let them dry.

I put them into a photo album.

Finally I showed Hailey her Summer Vacation 2008 photo album.  And she loves it!

Fun, Crafts and Recipes is hosting the 39th Four Foods on Friday.  This week the theme is baking.  Here are the questions:

#1. When you need to serve desserts, do you buy them or make them?
Other than baking cookies I am not very good at making desserts. So I usually buy the desserts that I serve.

#2. When baking do you use butter, margarine or something else?
I always use butter.

#3. What meats or veggies do you cook in the oven?
Unless the veggies are part of casserole I don’t usually do veggies in the oven. And I have cooked all kinds of meats in the oven.

#4. Share a recipe for anything that is cooked in an oven.
This recipe for Chocolate Chips cookies is very yummy and is different than all of the others I have ever made. It has pudding in it and these cookies definitely stand out amongst all of the other chocolate chips cookie recipes.

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, melted, cooled
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 box instant vanilla pudding mix (must be instant)
2 tbsp milk
2 large eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups milk chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. In large mixing bowl, using wooden spoon, mix butter and sugars until creamy. Stir in pudding mix and milk, then eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking powder and baking soda; stir until batter is smooth. Stir in chocolate chips.
2. Drop batter on non-stick cookie sheets (about 12 per sheet). Bake for 12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 10 minutes on cookie sheet. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

Makes about 36.

Stop by Fun, Crafts and Recipes if you’d like to play along this week.