Easy muffins with colostrum and spinach in them. Spoiler alert: Your kids won't even notice the spinach. (Shoot!!)
Benefits of Imaginative Play
Hint: Keep reading for our Super Green Muffin Recipe (your kids will thank you)
Written by co-founder Erica Diepersloot
When I was a kid, I vividly remember taking care of imaginary kittens with my sisters. We even went to the extent of asking our swim teacher to help take the kittens out of the pool when they fell in. Fast forward to my life now as a mom, where I get to daily watch our kids’ imaginations. Sometimes that’s pretending to be the doctor or the babysitter… Yesterday, my little one patted my leg and said “My name is Roxy and today we’re making cookie dough balls with ketchup.” Other times it’s playing house or Barbies, or like this morning, our 3-year-old selling magna-tile ice-cream cones.
She knew I of course wanted a yummy ice cream cone after my workout in the garage.
What I didn’t know back when I was playing with imaginary kittens was how important kids’ imaginations really are.
Research now shows that “pretend play” helps kids’ brains develop, specifically with what is called symbolic thought.
Symbolic thought: The ability to use symbols to represent ideas, objects, or events. (Consider how you as an adult actually use symbolic thought all the time to understand ideas.)
How Playing Impacts Development in Children
Symbolic thought is a major developmental accomplishment for children. It begins when they are toddlers and becomes more sophisticated throughout childhood. Symbolic thought promotes what’s called Cognitive Flexibility, which essentially means your brain’s ability to find a solution to a problem. For example: A child needs a hammer when he’s pretending to build a house, so he make-believes a spoon is a hammer… problem solved. We all want our children to grow up to be excellent problem solvers, and how sweet to watch the beginning of that development with pretend play.
Just our girls and their friends, playing in a "castle" on a beautiful spring day—dressed as princesses, of course.
Symbolic thought also promotes language development. You might notice how much your little ones chat in character while they’re pretending– research confirms that most children are more prone to use complex language while they play. For example, they...
- Use language to assign roles. ie: “I’m the doctor, you are my kitty"
- Narrate a ‘script’. ie: “You come into my office because your foot hurts"
- Definitely get into character: ie “Oh poor kitty! I’ll check your owie and get you all better"
All that to say, when you consider what your children should be doing in a day: Playing should be top of the list.
Imaginations, Leprechauns, & Festive Green Snacks
So on the subject of pretend play and in the spirit of March, our daughters have added a leprechaun to their “play script.” They like to pretend that a naughty leprechaun stole a treasure and they need to find it (I have no idea how they came up with this, but there must be some talk about leprechauns on the playground). I decided to join in their fun and bake muffins that fit their theme: SuperGreen Muffins.
Bonus… they’re so yummy that the leprechaun wants to steal them. Hope you try them out, and enjoy!
SuperGreen Muffins
Makes 24 mini muffins (or 12 regular-sized muffins)
Ingredients:
- 1 ripe banana
- ¼ cup water
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ cup almond butter
- 1 egg
- 2 cups fresh spinach
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp salt
Optional Whipped Butter Ingredients:
- 6 scoops WonderCow Colostrum
-
½ cup butter
Instructions:
- Blend all muffin ingredients in a blender until smooth.
- Pour into a greased mini-muffin tin. Each should be about half full.
- Bake at 350 for 17 minutes.
- Allow to cool. Meanwhile, whip colostrum and butter together to create a delicious and nutritious frosting. (Hint: use WonderCow's Chocolate Colostrum for a chocolate whipped butter) 😋
- Smear over each muffin before serving.
- Enjoy!
Hopefully your kids enjoy these muffins as much as ours do and you get to enjoy the fact that they are consuming spinach (bonus points for being festive :) Have fun watching their imaginations!