Fun for Everyone | picklebums.com

August 31, 2010 | Filed in: Activities for kids,Fun for Everyone

If Quatro sleeps in the morning I attempt to take advantage of the ‘un-baby’ time to get on top of housey kind of things. If I am organised I do the laundry and cook dinner (or at least make a start) and maybe sneak in a little baking.

This all sounds blissfully domestic, but it’s not exactly all monogrammed wooden spoons and frilly aprons. You see I have this other child… A sadly neglected three year old middle boy child, and he desperately wants someone to play with him. If I leave to his own devices while I get on with things he’s been known to seek out a play mate by waking the sleeping baby, or worse, destroying something in the girl’s room. So rather than picking up the pieces afterwards I find it much easier to be proactive and find ways that he can ‘play’ with me. Lucky for me he still thinks cooking and cleaning are fun!

So today we got dinner going and put on a load of laundry but there isn’t many ways he can help with those things, so we made Pita Chips.

Pita Chips have to be one of the easiest, yummiest, ‘use up your left overs’, treat in the world, and there is lots of things little hands can do to help.

I used the pizza roller to cut up the pita bread into ‘chip-ish’ shapes (the girls are able to do this safely without help, but Muski can’t quite manage to keep his fingers out of the way of the sharp bits yet) and Muski put them on the trays. It’s kind of like fitting together a pita puzzle, trying to get the chips on the tray with as little space between them as possible but no over laps!

Then I gave them a quick spray with olive oil and we sprinkled them with salt and some mixed herbs and baked them in a low oven (about 100C) until they were nice and crispy (takes about 10 minutes, maybe less, maybe more, keep your eye on them).

And that’s it…. now you have a bowl full of yummy crunchy herby chips, and a happy boy!

For more easy things to cook with kids you can check out my guest post at Childhood101. We’re also joining in with We Play this week – so head on over and see what everyone else has been playing!

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In the corner of our living room there is a wooden oven and wooden sink. The girls were given these beautiful handmade children’s kitchen pieces when they turned two and they have been in use ever since. Over the years we’ve added some lovely extras too… The wooden fruit and veggies, a collection of crockery and cutlery, some lovely metal pots and pans, a really cool toaster and even a birthday cake!

I thought about putting them away the other day. It seemed that no one had really played with them much for a while and a change would do us all good. But no sooner had the thought popped into my head when suddenly there has been a resurgence of ‘home play’, cooking and enjoyment.

All three big kids were busily setting the table and cooking up a storm after school today. It is such important play, this mimicking of daily life, even for a six year old.