Mmmmm... Our June Menu

We enjoy cooking with real food at Cheese & Quackers!  We have some favorite cookbooks that we return to time and again.  Cookbooks like:

                      

Most of the recipes on our June menu can be found in one of these books!

We Are So Excited!

We are growing and stretching and we are so lucky to have acquired some fabulous new staff to help us do that!

Hi! My name is Sarah.

I am a Mother of 2 beautiful girls, Emily 17 months & Step Daughter Lidia Jade who is 8. I have been a stay at home Mom & Wife for the last 2 1/2 years but before that I worked in Health Care for many years. We love doing things outside and creating our own adventures as a family. Becoming a Mother has really opened my eyes to the importance of Early Childhood Education, I am so beyond excited to start this new chapter in my life & get to know you and your children as well as be a part of the amazing environment that is Cheese & Quackers. I look forward to meeting you all soon!

Cullen Mitchell-

Graduated from SSU with a BA in Biology, but after having children discovered she loves learning how to be a better parent for her kidlets a little every day. Now with three little ones, ages 5 and 2.5 and 6 months, she's looking forward to spending the summer with your littles too!

Hi, my name is Stacy. I am the momma of two little girls, Hazel (3yrs) and Rose (10mos). I've been working with children all my life; babysitting, tutoring, teaching special education and caring for children in daycare centers before and after school. I love working with children. This past year I've been in a training program called LifeWays, which is an early childhood education program based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf movement. This training has invigorated my mothering and home life, and I am delighted to bring my experience to Cheese and Quackers. 

Just a Peek: Buttons

Just a Peek

Cloth Diapering at Cheese & Quackers - Pt 1/3

WHAT?  A child care program that, not only allows cloth diapers but, actively encourages it?  Yup, that's us!  This is part one of a three part series about cloth diapering at Cheese & Quackers.  We're going to talk about the how, our diapering routine & set up and then, we'll discuss the why.  Logically, I know that writing about why first might make more sense but, inquiring minds want to know HOW in the heck do we make cloth diapering work with so many kiddos & families so, that's where we'll begin!

What do I have to do?

First of all, if you cloth diaper at home, great!  If not, no worries!  If they find a program that accepts cloth diapering, families that cloth diaper at home tend to have to bring bags of clean diapers and cart home a wet, stinky bag of diapers every day.  That's gross, smelly, not very hygienic & extremely inconvenient!  For families that use disposables, they're usually still tasked with keeping their child's diapers & wipes stocked and, when you're trying to get out the door on time Monday morning, it's pretty hard to remember to grab a pack of dipes & wipes when you were informed you were out on Friday.  It's really not convenient or cost effective for either family, is it?  Cheese & Quackers has always provided diapers & wipes as part of our program and we haven't changed since switching to cloth.


If you cloth diaper at home, we ask that you drop off one clean diaper and a small wet bag every day.  That's just so your diapers don't get absorbed into our stash!  With your child's first change of the day, we'll diaper them out of our stash of bumGenius 4.0 diapers, placing your one (as opposed to 5-8) soiled diaper in your wet bag for you to take home at pick up.  An hour before pick up, we'll do a final diaper change and use your clean diaper from home.


If you use disposables at home, it's even easier!  Your child will come to Cheese & Quackers diapered in a 'sposie.  At their first change of the day, we'll diaper them from our stash of cloth diapers and then, an hour before pick up, we'll do our final diaper change right into a disposable.  No muss, no fuss, no schlepping dipes & wipes back and forth!

What do you use?

bumGenius 4.0 diapers

Diapers - 

We diaper with bumGenius 4.0 diapers.  They are very much like disposables, one size fits all & we've never had a blow out or leaks!  We make sure to line each diaper with a flushable liner to make it easier to clean solid waste.

Warm, lovely smelling homemade wipe solution

Wipes -

For wiping, we use baby washcloths moistened with a mixture of warm water, a little bit of Dr. Bronner's baby soap & a few drops of lavender essential oil.  We mix it up every morning & keep it in a pump-style beverage dispenser at the diaper changing table.  One of the best things about using cloth wipes, a normal 5 or 6 wipe diaper (if you were using disposables) is usually still just a one wipe job!

We actually do cook with it too!

Diaper Cream - 

For normal, every change protection, we use organic coconut oil.  Coconut oil is amazing stuff!  It’s anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-fungal & antiviral, according to this article.  We keep small jars of coconut oil all over the place!  In the bathrooms, diaper bags, first-aid basket, you don't have to look far to find a little jar of the stuff!  For the odd rashy bum, we switch to Weleda Diaper Care.  It has calendula oil in it, which is wonderfully healing for raw, broken skin.

How do you clean & sanitize the diapers & wipes?

Our sanitizing routine is pretty simple actually!  We have a diaper can with a very large waterproof wet bag right next to the changing table.  All wet diapers, wipes & liners get dropped in there immediately after changing.  For diapers with solid waste, we flush the solids, rinse with a diaper sprayer & then spray the diaper with Bac-Out, a live enzyme producing culture spray that attacks pet, food and beverage stains, organic waste, and odors until they are gone, digesting them back to nature, safely and naturally. Bac-Out is safe to use around children and pets, even birds.  After spraying, it goes right into the diaper pail too.

We wash every Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday so we have plenty of diapers every day.  We do a 3-cycle wash every time, a rinse & spin, followed by a heavy, sanitizing wash with biodegradable soap and some more Bac-Out and then, we do another heavy, sanitizing wash with no soap at all to make sure that there aren't residual chemicals or bacteria.  We usually air dry the diapers & soakers.  The kiddos love helping us stuff, fold & put away the diapers!

That's our general how we diaper at Cheese & Quackers!  Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!




If you end up purchasing the items on Amazon through the links in the this post, Cheese & Quackers earns a small percentage of the purchase price.  We use those funds to purchase supplies & materials for the program.

Bread Workshop Success!

Hooray, the workshop went wonderfully!  The only problem I had (and, apparently, no one seemed to mind) was that, when your topic is inspired by a book with a title like "Baking Bread in 5 Minutes a Day", it's really hard to stretch it out to a 45 minute workshop!  Especially when you get nervous and forget to pass & share the samples, which would have eaten up at least 10 minutes of the evening... Oh well, next time...  And, sweet things that they are, the 4Cs asked if I would be willing to teach it again, since everyone enjoyed it so much!

To begin the workshop, I asked how many providers were already baking regularly with their littles and I was pleasantly surprised to see about half of them raise their hands!  Next time, I'm going to remember to ask why they choose to bake, what are the benefits they see but, nerves got me this time and I immediately started in on a list of why people might choose not to:  too messy, too hard, too expensive, can't get all of the littles interested at the same time, takes too much time...and then went on to try to debunk each of those 'Baking Myths'.  So, in no particular order, Baking Myths Debunked!

Baking Myth #1

     "I can't get all of the kiddos interested at the same time!  When I finally get them gathered around the table, it's only minutes before a flour fight breaks out and Stevie spills the water and Lisa dumps the salt and..."

WHY are you trying to get 6 small children interested in the same thing at the same time anyway?  That's like herding cats and must be so incredibly frustrating!  In our program, baking is part of the rhythm of our week.  It's just something that gets done, like the ironing or making our oatmeal in the morning.  On Monday morning, after breakfast/morning snack, I pull out the dough bowl and carry it and the large bin of flour over to the table. Usually, one of the 5 year-olds notice this and run quickly to push a chair up to the counter and get my measuring spoons and cups.  We gather the rest of our ingredients, all four of them, and begin the work.  If someone would like to scoop the flour, of course they may!  If more than one someone would like to scoop the flour, they figure out things like turns and order, that's not my job!  If no one is particularly interested in dough prep and they all want to be in the front room with the babies, playing with the blocks and making forts, that works for us too!  I'm not teaching them how to bake bread, I'm modeling order, rhythm and the gentle art of taking care that our home is running smoothly.  Whether they are there mixing with their little hands or not, there will be a warmth in our home, the heavenly aroma of bread in the air and hearty bread in our tummies at lunch time.

Baking Myth #2

     "Baking bread is to complicated/hard/time consuming!"

Some bread recipes are complicated.  Don't do those ones.  Some take a ton of kneading, prep-work, rising time, and a list of ingredients as long as your arm.  DON'T do those ones!  See those rolls up there?  Shaping them took maayybe 90 seconds and I just let them rise for the 20 minutes it took to heat the oven.  They look fancy because the littles wanted to sprinkle some poppy, sesame & sunflower seeds on them.  The boule? 30 seconds, a few knife slashes and the same 20 minute rise.  Four ingredients in the actual bread (water, flour, yeast, salt).  Seriously guys, it can't be easier!  Bread is something our ancestors have been making for thousands of years.  Find yourself a simple recipe you like (I think you know which one I like!) and, I promise you, you can not mess it up!  Even with this simple recipe, I forget things sometimes and it always turns out edible!

Baking Myth #3

     "Baking from scratch is so expensive, especially if I want to use high-quality ingredients!"

Sure, if you buy all of your ingredients for the amounts you need right then and only shop at WholePaycheck!  I buy my ingredients in bulk online because a) when you're baking so regularly for so many people {average of 9 littles & 4-6 adults everyday}, it's not like you're not going to go through it and, b) it is SO much cheaper!

I purchase my flour & yeast from Honeyville Grains and I purchase my sea salt from Amazon.   All together, when I make a double batch of dough (and I get 8-10 loaves of bread from that), our bread averages out to less than .70/loaf!

Bottom Line

I really can't tell you how much baking with the littles so often has changed our program environment for the better!  We're able to be more creative when it comes to meals (Pizza?  Sure!  Stuffed hot sandwiches?  Why not?  Cinnamon raisin rolls?  Takes 5 minutes, let's do it!), our home has a warmth and a rhythm to it that it didn't have before, the children are really enjoying the sense of accomplishment and participating in running our home that contributing to the meals gives them, there really hasn't been a down side at all!  

I'd really love to hear about what baking looks like in your homes & child care programs!  Why do you do it?  How do you do it?  

Baking with Children

I've been asked to give a presentation tomorrow evening for The Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County and I'm really excited about it!  I'll be sharing the whys and hows of baking with children with about 30 other local care providers.  

I'll write a full post on Wednesday with details about our discussion & a list of resources & tips but, first, I'd love to know if you bake regularly with the littles in your care?  Why?  Why not?  What do you picture in your head when you hear that 'the children have been baking today?' 

 

Does it look like this?

Or maaaybe this?