Making Messes in the Kitchen

When the Dumpling was around two and a half years old, there was an incident that forever changed how cooking was done in our household. My toddler was then looking for me, found me standing in front of the kitchen stove, and became thoroughly confused.

“Mommy, what are you doing?” she asked.

“Cooking,” I replied.

“No, mommy,” she said shaking her head. “You cook over there.” By there, she pointed at the microwave.

Kids say the darndest things.

In my defense I did proper cooking — from scratch with fresh ingredients. The only opportunity for me to do so back then was while she napped, so she almost never saw me in front of the stove. My M.O., however, was to make a giant batch and eat leftovers for the next several days. So whenever the Dumpling saw me in the kitchen, the chances of me being in front of the microwave were high. Very high.

After the Dumpling’s savage microwave shaming, I realized that I needed to show my toddler there was more to cooking than reheating leftovers. As I attempted to prepare fresh meals more frequently, I also got her involved in the process. At first I asked her to help with her own snacks, such as:

Peel boiled eggs: It was her chance to finally break something without getting in trouble. For easier peeling, soak the egg in cold water first.

Peel clementines: Clementines are small and have thin skin, making them easy to hold and peel with little hands. I rolled them around my counter first to help loosen the flesh from the skin.

Slice bananas: It was a bit scary to see my kid with a knife…even if it was just a butter knife. Luckily no one got stabbed. As with all activities, adult supervision is required.

Pick grapes: I still slice grapes in half before serving them, so I would ask her to help me pick them off the stems and soak them.


Kid-friendly recipes

As she grew older, we started experimenting with various recipes — mostly dessert-related because they are enticing motivators. Below are a few of my favorites. Depending on their complexity, I separated the steps into multiple activities or only involved her in what she was able to do (ex: whisking/sifting flour, mixing ingredients, kneading dough, etc.).

Ice Cream Without Machine: A three ingredient recipe (heavy cream, condensed milk, and vanilla extract) that is super easy. We were amazed to see heavy cream turned into whipped cream before our very eyes!

I actually found the recipe overly sweet the first time we made it, so I subsequently decreased the amount of condensed milk, and it came out delicious!

Sugar Cookies: We bake sugar cookies three to four times a year because the Dumpling loves decorating them. I stretched this into three separate activities: 1) making the batter ; 2) cutting the shapes and baking; and 3) decorating.

I purposely used tiny cookie cutters to trick ourselves into eating less; it has not worked.
We used to make our own royal icing but have since moved to store bought ones that come with writing tips.
According to the Dumpling, “you can’t have too much sprinkles!”

Pro tip from my local baker is to decorate whatever you need in an oven tray covered with a clean kitchen towel. The kitchen towel will catch the sprinkles and not allow them to jump everywhere.

Oatmeal Cookies: This is such a versatile cookie because I can add whatever in there (nuts, chia seeds, etc.) and the Dumping would eat it without questioning.

This won the Dumpling’s “favorite batter to lick” award.

Banana bread: This bread could be made without an electric mixer. Overly ripened bananas were easy to mash and the batter could be mixed by hand.

Rice: It is a fun water and scooping activity. I had a strainer on hand in case half the rice got poured out during the rinse.

Jello: I absolutely hate jello, but felt the need to add it to my list. I made this once with her, hated it so much, and ended up using the rest of our gelatin to make plastic.


Although I enjoyed having the Dumpling as my little sous chef, our culinary endeavors were not all picturesque Instagram moments…and they should not have to be. There were often huge messes, a few failures, and occasional bouts of frustration. If the activity went awry, I would sacrifice a small portion of the ingredients to let the Dumpling have her way while I finished up. Sometimes I questioned whether something was safe for human consumption after the Dumpling manhandled whatever she was “cooking”. Luckily no one has gotten food poisoning…yet. In the end of the day, the most important thing was not how delicious our creations were, nor how fun, educational, or enriching cooking can be; it was that I have successfully disassociated mommy’s cooking from the microwave.

Aluminum Foil Embossing

DIY metallic embossing — with embossing powder, special ink, and heat gun, has always sounded complicated and messy to me, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that a kid-friendly version can be created with aluminum foil. This project allows lots of room for error, so it is great for toddlers still working on their fine motor skills.

Materials

  • Aluminum foil
  • Thick string or twine
  • Elmer’s glue
  • Scissors
  • Paper
  • Black cardstock (optional)

Draw or print a design on a piece paper. Simple images without much detail work the best. Click here to download my leaf design.

Trace design with glue. Smudges are okay since everything will be covered up by the foil anyways.

Glue string/twine onto the design. For my leaf design, I cut the string into varying lengths beforehand and let the Dumpling chose which ones to use. I was not picky about placement. If you are, however, the strings can easily be re-arranged since the glue took a while to dry.

Apply more glue surrounding the image and on top of the string, cover with a sheet of foil with shiny side up, and gently rub on the raised image.

Let dry, cut along the outlines, and glue the leaves onto the black cardstock. Any color paper can be used, but I preferred black since it brought out the metallic silver.

Bonus: Turn the leftover foil into abstract art. Crumples, rips, and wrinkles are interesting textures, so fold the leftover foil into strips of varying lengths and widths. Then ask your toddler for their expert arrangement to create a piece of abstract art.

Turn Your Child’s Handwriting Into a Font

It started when I noticed the Dumpling drawing lines between random dots on her magnetic doodle board two months ago, so I began making more dots for her to connect. She got really into it, so we moved onto shapes, numbers, and letters and are now even solving simple connect-the dot puzzles! 

As much as I want her penmanship to improve, I know that I would miss her scribbles one day. Wouldn’t it be great if I could archive her chicken scratches forever…without keeping piles of paper?

Enter Calligrphr, a free app that I used to convert the Dumpling’s handwriting into a font. I downloaded their template, filled it up with the Dumpling’s traced numbers and letters, and then re-uploaded the template back onto the site.

I used a pencil to create the dotted letters and numbers, had the Dumpling trace them with a marker, and erased my markers when she was done.

If anyone is interested in downloading the font, click here! (Please note that only numbers and capital letters are available…no lowercase, punctuations, special characters, etc.) 

This would make great “handwritten” holiday cards or letters to Santa!

I plan to turn the Dumpling’s handwriting into a new font annually and to track how her handwriting progresses!

Halloween Activities: Toilet Paper Roll Creatures

Did you know that toilet paper rolls in Hong Kong are white, not cardboard brown like they are in the U.S.?! This is a game changer for a crafter like me because the rolls are essentially perfectly primed canvases.

I had a half a dozen toilet paper rolls saved up that were itching for a second life as pieces of art. A quick Google search for “toilet paper roll Halloween crafts” returned hundreds of great ideas—using these as my starting point, I turned my paper roll crafts into lanterns so they are cute creatures during the day, but spooky monsters at night!

Toilet-Paper-Roll-Creatures

Materials

Additional materials depending on the creature

  • White masking tape (mummy)
  • Bubble wrap cut into approximately 4″ x 4″ (zombie)
  • Brass fasteners (zombie)
  • Pipe cleaners (cat)
  • Push pin/tack/needle—optional

For All Toilet Paper Roll Creatures

Draw the eyes, noses, and/or mouths on the toilet paper rolls with a pencil and cut the shapes out with an X-Acto knife. The basic premise is to create openings so that light from the candle can shine through. To add additional designs, puncture small holes on the roll with a push pin—they can be anywhere, but a safe approach would be to follow the shapes of the eyes, mouths, etc.

Color in each creature (where applicable). The Dumpling and I used both watercolor and craft paint, but I found that watercolor latched onto our rolls better and didn’t flake off as much once they dried.


Ghost

Because my paper roll was already white, I pretty much left the ghost as is. The little ones can opt to glue on cotton balls or strips of white tissue paper as additional decoration.


Jack-o-Lantern

Cutting this was the closest as I’ll get to carving a pumpkin this year. Mine is just as cute as any real jack-o-lantern, but without the mess!


Mummy

I don’t know what it is with toddlers and tape. The Dumpling could spend 30 minutes peeling, cutting, and sticking tape on anything!

Peel masking tape and stick it onto the toilet paper roll. There’s really no wrong way to go about this—it doesn’t matter which direction the tape goes on, how uniformed the tape is ripped, or how much tape is used—all these “imperfections” give the mummy character. The Dumping ended up putting on so much tape, she blinded our mummy so I had to cut out the eyes again!


Zombie

Puncture a small hole on each side of the head (roughly where the temples are located) to insert the brass fasteners. 

Paint the bubble wrap pink, roll it roughly into an ovoid with the bubbles facing outward, and insert it on top of the toilet paper roll where the zombie’s brain would be. Have extra bubble wrap on the side because the Dumpling and I couldn’t stop popping them! Warning: The craft paint flaked off everywhere once it dried. Unless you’re coloring with something that is more permanent, the brain is mostly for decorative purposes and less for play.


Cat

Fold the top halves of the toilet paper roll inward to create the ears. This should preferably be done prior to coloring the cat.

Cut two pieces of pipe cleaner and fold them in half. The length depends on how long you want the whiskers. Mine were approximately 2 inches before they were folded in halves.

Puncture a small hole on each cheek where the whiskers would be and insert the pipe cleaner with the “v” side going into the toilet paper roll. 


Owl

Fold the top halves of the toilet paper roll inward to create the ears. This step should preferable be done prior to painting the owl.


I found a color changing LED candle (from the Dumping’s old Mickey balloon we got at Disney) and tucked it inside one of the creatures. Doesn’t my toilet paper roll gang look like they’re having an awesome party?

TP Halloween Lantern - Pinterest.jpg

Tissue Paper Cherry Blossoms

It seems like I’m have developed an obsession with tissue paper lately. When I saw this pretty cherry blossom piece on Pinterest, I knew the last of my tissue paper tiles leftover from my suncatcher project will have ANOTHER life…just in time for Chinese New Year and spring too!

This turned out to be a great “big kid” project with the Dumpling because it involved multiple steps (technically two, but that’s double the number she was used to following!). Each step also allowed room for exploration (read: deviation) and the end result would still look fabulous. Below is my tutorial modified specifically to working with a two year old.

Materials

  • Printout of a cherry blossom branch (Note: I hand drew mine because I still don’t have a printer yet. I used brown and black washable markers, then traced the drawing with a wet brush to replicate a watercolor vibe. The link of the printout is to an external website.)
  • Red, pink and/or white tissue paper cut into approximately 2-3 cm tiles
  • Glue
  • Plastic tray (optional)

Step 1: Crumple the tissue paper into little balls

I showed the Dumpling how to crumple the tissue paper with her fingers and in the palms of her hands. Unlike the tiny beads needed for the mosaic hearts, the balls can be tight or loose for this activity—both work and produce different effects.

Step 2: Glue the crumpled tissue paper onto the branches

To prevent the Dumpling from going overboard with the glue, I poured a thin layer into a plastic plate, asked her to dip the crumpled tissue paper in, and replenished the glue as needed.

It was a game of chance where the Dumpling pasted on the flowers but I did try to direct her attention to the branch ends where they would naturally cluster. When she missed the tree entirely, I complimented on how lovely the falling petals looked. I also occasionally rotated the paper so she didn’t concentrate too much in one area.

When I felt there were enough florals on the tree (which was entirely based on personal preference), we concluded the activity by admiring the tree in full bloom. Yay!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Making Tissue Paper Suncatchers With a Toddler

I love asking for the Dumpling’s help in my arts and crafts because it’s a great way for us to work together…even if she’s more troublesome than helpful most of the time. Now that she’s older, I began involving her in more steps throughout the process whereas in the past, she was only responsible for only one task (or the entire activity consisted of only one task).

One of the first “big girl” projects we did was making suncatchers out of tissue paper for Valentine’s Day. There are many tutorials online—I just tweaked and combined steps from various ones to suit the needs of working with a two year old.

Materials

  • Tissue paper cut into squares
  • Scissors
  • Plastic tray or plate (make sure it’s bendable)
  • Elmer’s glue diluted with equal amounts of water

Notes Before Starting

Whenever the Dumpling is involved, I always do the prep work behind the scenes beforehand. For example, I had the tissue paper cut and the glue diluted at the start of the activity to avoid dealing with my daughter growing impatient.

I brought out only the supplies needed at each step. For example, I had the tray and tissue paper out during step one and kept the glue hidden until step two. Otherwise the Dumpling would fidget with the glue prematurely.

I also learned that activities often don’t go as planned with a toddler. If I ask the Dumpling to do X and she ends up doing Y, then Y it is! Even though it’s frustrating at times, I have come to accept that exploration is more important than results at this stage.

Step 1: Layer the pieces of tissue paper onto the plastic tray

This was actually a good exercise for the Dumpling to practice her fine motor skills since the tissue paper required gentle handling—she crumpled and ripped a few, but casualties were expected. I was on the sidelines spreading clumps apart, filling in thin areas, and putting the pieces back into the tray because she kept taking them out after she was done.

Step 2: Drench the tissue paper with the glue mixture

I put the diluted glue in an old plastic sauce container for the Dumpling to pour in. To prevent her from taking the now wet tissue paper out (yep, she was still at it), I took the tray away immediately and thanked her for a job well done. Yay!

Yes—that’s it. She helped with two steps.

Step 3: Let the tissue paper dry completely and peel off

The entire sheet should come off easily without tearing.

Step 4: Cut into hearts or other desired shapes

The Dumpling was quite pleased with the results, but it took her a while to realize that these are fragile (the epiphany came after destroying the fourth one) and needed to be handled with care.

Craft Idea #1: Instead of taping the hearts on a window like traditional suncatchers, I strung them into a mobile and hung it inside the Dumpling’s tent.

Craft Idea #2: Use them in Valentine’s Day cards.