Wrapping up loose ends

We are getting down to the wire now and only 1 week until school starts. I have finished all of my planning and now am making last minute things needed for each subject.

Bible study-  I laminated  a sheet for each child to check off daily for verse memorization. I found it on yahoo workbox group files. I also bought a small 4x6 picture album for $1 at Dollar tree and got that ready to use for our weekly verses. I will be using the Awana verses and printed off the ones from http://homeschoolcreations.com which we can file in there at the end of the week.

Handwriting Without Tears- I made them each up there own box to hold most of the things they will need. It contains their foam letter pieces, mat man pieces, slate, whiteboard, laminated sheet showing all of the letters, and the workbook. This way I can pull out whatever is needed each day for the workbox.

We made some cute clipboards yesterday. Since we are going to be Galloping the globe and exploring God's world this year I found the coolest scrapbook paper for Luke's clipboard which is just SO fitting. I just removed the hardware and cut the paper to size and using a bit of glue/water combo slapped it on and replaced the clip. Added some jute and ribbon with the writing utensil and tada!

Okay now for the most tedious of all my tasks to date...... tons and tons and more tons of squares for my homemade AAS letter/phonogram tiles. I am not going to start the program until next year but I wanted to use the tiles for phonics stuff this year. So in my crazy thinking (mental illness, OCD, etc. as my husband would say) I decided that I would make color coded letter tiles and laminate them so that when they start learning with them the color coding will flow into next year and they won't have to learn a different way. There are free "movable alphabet tiles" at Currclick from Discovering Homeschool which I downloaded and then made the rest of the tiles we will need on Word. Rather than printing the tiles on colored paper I just made the actual letters the color and printed them on white paper and laminated them and added magnets to the back. You can get them here. I made a packet for each of the kids (they find enough reasons to bicker so I do not want any fighting over a's and b's). I am not sure exactly where we are going to keep these yet. Maybe I will keep one set on the whiteboard and one set somewhere else or they may get misplaced. We'll have to see how it goes.

Right now I am working on getting some math games/mats made up. I will have to do a separate post on these since I am not finished. If you have any ideas you love and were a big hit with the K4-K group shout them out.  I would love ideas.

It is a great feeling to have my planning (mostly) done and now on to the fun extras. The only thing I do not have lessons laid out for is nature study. I felt I would be better off just going with the flow on that one depending on what cool things we see/find or what is blooming, changing, etc. I have a general idea of the things I would like to cover for the year but I probably plan weekly. I do follow the Handbook of Nature Study blog and get some great ideas from her. We are very nature loving and Luke really enjoys nature study so this will be no problem for us.

I forgot I had my beloved laminator heating while I was typing this up so I better go get to laminating :). OH how I love my laminator. I better not burn her up!

Blessings, Julie

All things Ice cream

With a blazing hot day and even more humidity what better to do than have "Ice Cream". This morning the kids were sorting and messing with pompoms at the table with me so I decided it would be cute to pretend they were little ice cream balls and went to get the mini sundae cups from the playdoh set. They had fun making me different flavored sundaes with LOTS of cherries on top :). That then led to them later wanting to play with the playdoh so more ice cream AND snakes, lobsters, worms and many other bizarre things boys come up with to make. Sophie was mostly just making food items to feed to Luke's various animals.

I had made some vanilla ice cream last night so it would be ready for today to make chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. So after naps we made some cookies and had our treats after dinner.

Basic Ice cream recipe

2 cups half&half or whole milk

1 cup whipping cream

1/2-3/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

I have this ice cream maker...

But just told my hubby that next summer I want this one...

no salt no mess just enjoy!!

I have a crazy yummy Choc chip cookie recipe that we all just love. They are BIG and oh so good.

Chocolate Chip cookies

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) "unsalted" butter (no substitution or poor results)

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 lg eggs

Dark chocolate chips (I use only about 1/2 pkg)

nuts optional (I do not use)

Place butter and sugars in bowl of mixer and cream on medium speed until fluffy. Scrape down bowl and then add eggs and vanilla. Stir until combined. Gradually add in dry ingredients until fully combined. Add chocolate (and nuts) and stir by hand.

Use 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop and place on cookie sheet. Place in 350 degree oven for 12 minutes. They will be slightly brown on bottom and may look "slightly" soft (raw) in middle but after sitting they will be just perfect.

These are what we made and filled with our ice cream for dessert.

That was some of our indoor fun on this horribly hot day. If you have any ice cream recipes you love and would like to share please do. I LOVE ice cream!

Come on fall (did I just say that?)

Julie





Book Review- Wait! No paint!

We checked this book out from the library a few weeks ago and I just had to share about it. I loved this book and so did the kids. Sophie is a huge fan of the Three Little Pigs so knowing the original story so well really made this book a hit.

This is the story of the Three Little Pigs gone wrong. It begins as usual with the pigs building their houses of straw, sticks and bricks but then enters "The Illustrator" or otherwise known as the Voice. Well the three little pigs then started having a bad day.The illustrator was not real careful or prepared. He spills his drink wiping out the first little pigs house. And with more hilarious problems along with way he ends up running out of red paint. This caused the pigs to become rather upset so he tried different colors on them which really upset them. Then he ends up changing the characters altogether to Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Whatley did a great job of communicating the importance of the illustrator to a story. I have always told my kids the author and illustrator of the books we read and they do understand that the author writes the words to the story and the illustrator draws the pictures, BUT this book just solidified that concept for them. I have read many great stories with the kids but this one just stuck out as such a great learning tool that I felt I needed to share it. I hope if you read it to your kids they enjoy it as much as we did.

Blessings, Julie

Picnic at the State Park 7-5-11

Today we went to Johnson Sauk Trail State Park for a picnic and a little nature adventure. We had planned on going on a few trails but it was really hot and buggy so the kids were not game. What really sealed the "no deal" was the abundance of wasps in and around the restrooms. Lucas then thought that every bug he seen was a wasp trying to sting him. So we just had our picnic and  looked around at the wild flowers. We seen some beautiful and new flowers we had not seen before and had to come home and look them up. Here are a couple pictures of them.

Here we have some Purple Coneflower.

I do not know what this is yet I am going to look into it a bit further. The intricacy is amazing.

Here is the big red barn that we had our lunch by. It is part of the historical society and was built by Dr. Ryan in 1910.

So after a bit of running around and playing we decided that this fall when there are not so many bugs and the weather is cooler we will come back for some trail exploration and some duck watching. There was not a duck to be seen in the lake today.

Happy Adventures,  Julie

July 4th weekend

We had a great time with family and friends celebrating this weekend. We were all wore out from the long days and late night of staying up for the fireworks but it was well worth it. I tried to throw a little education in with all the fun so the little ones had a general idea (Luke more so than Sophie) of why we were celebrating other than just our town party. Lucas colored a flag and we talked about what each of the areas represented. Sophie as we know is not so much into coloring so she just listened in. Then we had a fun art project. They painted terra cotta pots and decorated them with stars. They had fun doing this and we used them to put out chocolate dipped pretzels and cake pops in.

I seen cake pops for the first time last week (yeah I know I live under a rock :) ) So I decided I just had to make some. I thought they looked Soooooo yummy. I will say they were good but not quite out of this world like I expected. Although Mike thought they were. He just raved over them so I am sure I will be making them again. He just wants to know if I can get some creme in the middle somehow.

I hope everyone had as great of a time this weekend as we did in celebrating our "Independence Day!"

Now back to the grind of getting my planning done for the upcoming year and then Kindergarten here we come!!!

Julie





HSV Garden Challenge- June

Every year it amazes me to watch the garden grow. Those tiny little seeds growing into beautiful plants. God is an amazing artist. "Indescribable!" Here is a glimpse into our garden. First let me tell the ones who wondered about how the strawberry hanging basket would do... {clearing throat} DIED! So instead we planted 2 patches in raised beds. They are growing along nicely and we have even picked a few berries to munch.

We have got some serious tomato plant action. We are not going to run out of salsa this year. We planted 18 but a couple of them are quite small and may not produce much if anything. Not sure what happened to them little fellas. We also have green peppers still in their protectors and varying types of peppers.

Over here we have a bit of everything: onions, carrots, pumpkins, cantaloupe, watermelon, broccoli, zucchini, green beans and jalapenos. I just cleaned out the rhubarb a couple of days ago and got the last of it froze.

Beans Beans the musical fruit... Oh wrong kind of beans :)!!

Can you see that yummy cantaloupe coming off the back there? There are 5 coming right now.

And the sweetest part of the garden for last... the corn!! Just kidding. My sweet baby girl!

That's how the fruits and veggies are coming along in our little corner of the world. We learn new things about gardening all of the time and hopefully each year it will just keep getting better and better.

Julie