Happy Birthday, Johnny Appleseed!

I love to eat and I love to celebrate so today was particularly fun for me (and the girls, of course)!

In honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday, we spent the day immersed in all things apple.  We started off at the library with the Hemmers where we picked up some great books about apples and Johnny Appleseed.  Back home, we read Apples to Oregon, a great story about how the first fruit orchards were transported from Indiana to Oregon in covered wagons!

We then pulled out the apple peeler/corer/slicer and got to work on some homemade applesauce.

Red, yellow and green apples along with a little water, cinnamon and sugar went into the crock pot and made the house smell great all day!

Later in the afternoon, we read Stephen Kellog's retelling of the Johnny Appleseed tall tale.  We learned about John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed, and how his legend became so well known.  The girls made hats in the spirit of the pot it is said that Johnny wore.

For our math lesson, we discussed patterns and used Apple Jacks to make necklaces.  Lily used the AB pattern, Ruthie chose no pattern at all and Josie just ate hers!

For afternoon snack, we ate the applesauce we made and the girls loved it!

To top off the day, we made foil packets filled with apples, cinnamon and brown sugar and baked them for dessert.  mmmmmmmmmmmm.......

"Life Skills" and a Baking FAIL

I have been keeping a list of chores that need to be done daily beyond the repeated sweeping of the dining room floor and loading/unloading of the dishwasher.  It's time the girls start doing more to earn their keep around here so I have incorporated "life skills" into our homeschool curriculum.

So far, they are enjoying it.  Vacuuming seems to be the most popular and they argue over who gets to vacuum first or more or in the living room or whatever.  Predictably, cleaning the bathrooms lost its luster after week one!

Today we also decided to bake some sesame seed cookies.  We found the recipe in a book that contained ideas for activities, crafts and recipes to go along with our studies of ancient Egypt.  Evidently the Egyptians had a lot of nuts and seeds in their diets so there is a chance they ate something similar to these cookies.

The recipes instructed us to mix the dough with our hands and the girls were agreeable.

Once we achieved the desired consistency, it was time to roll it out.  Notice Ruthie pouting in the background because she was not chosen to go first.

We slathered up the dough with honey and sesame seeds, cut out the cookies and put them into the oven where the girls sat and waited for about 12 minutes.

They smelled good while baking and looked pretty good, though a bit flat, when we took them out.

For some reason, they just did not taste "good."  They weren't bad or off-tasting but just not good.  Not like you would expect something sweetened with and then slathered with honey to taste.  Maybe my shortening was too old?  I don't use shortening that often and was a bit surprised to find it in the pantry but figured it was one of those things that just lasted.  Could have also been the whole wheat flour.  I know it can go rancid after a while but, a: it is younger than the shortening and, b: I store it in the freezer.  Regardless, the girls did not finish theirs and neither did I.

Since Everett is a baby and a male, he devoured his and would have eaten as many as I would have given him!  Again, ignorance is bliss!

Just before I was to click "publish" I researched the shortening issue.  Seems as though everything about the cookies would be normal but they would taste "off" and possibly have an aftertaste.  It says the shelf life should be 2.5 years and I am positive I have not had it for that long but it seems it went bad nonetheless.  Guess we found our culprit.

Egyptian Princesses and Potato Farmers

We have been studying the history and geography of Ancient Egypt and the girls made headdresses today.  They were really pleased with the result!

We are really enjoying reading from Farmer Boy and today, we learned about a way that the Wilder family was able to earn money.  Potato buyers came to town from New York and the Wilders were able to sell 500 bushels of potatoes they had harvested in the fall.  

We went out to the compost pile to check on our own (sweet) potato crop that is thriving thanks to me leaving the cover off of the pile!

We read all about potato plants and learned that the leaves will begin to wither when the potatoes are ready.  Clearly we are not even close!

While we were checking out the potato vines, we noticed some healthy worms digging through the compost.

Our co-op organized a "Busy Bag Swap" where we traded busy bag activities among our group.  The girls were very excited to have some new things to work with during their independent study time.  Lily worked on symmetry with the felt butterfly and Josie practiced color matching with straws in the can.

Tomorrow will be the first time that we are taking some of our "real" school work on the road.  We got a little behind this week and Lily and I need to work on math and language while the little kids are at drop-off.  I am anxious to see how it goes!

Best.Pancakes.EVER!

For a Monday, today was pretty great!

We read about the Wilder Family's Sunday morning "stacked pancakes" ritual and decided we had to try them.  The teacher in me turned this into a science lesson.  The girls learned that heat changes things and learned the difference between a reversible change (water to ice back to water) and an irreversible change (pancake batter to pancakes but not back to batter).  We put a cup of water into the freezer so we could use different temperatures to reverse the change throughout the day.  Then it was time to tackle the pancakes!

In the book, Mother would pull the hotcakes off the griddle and immediately cover them with butter and maple sugar.  She would stack them in this way so that the sugar and the butter would get all yummified in between each cake.

We substituted brown sugar since we didn't have maple sugar but I will definitely be buying some for next time!

This was the finished stack.  We left 5 plain so that Everett would have some to snack on, too!

They were awesome and Lily declared that I would never need to make them "the other way" again!

Everett loved his even without butter and sugar.  Ignorance is bliss!

Back in the classroom, we worked on some basic map skills.

The girls each have a "Busy Box" filled with things they can do independently while I work with someone one-on-one.

Lily created an entire story with these stamps and Josie built lots of fun things with the geometry blocks.  Meanwhile, I worked with Ruthie on counting, phonics and handwriting.

We do a lot of "school" together: Calendar time, weather, memory verses, Bible study, history, geography and literature.  I then spend about 20-30 minutes each day with each girl working mostly on phonics and math.  The big girls also get handwriting practice and Josie gets work with letter, number, color and shape recognition.

Throughout the day, Everett plays with some of the busy box things, sits with me or just makes a mess!

Another Week Down!

Our second week of school was lots of fun and very productive.  I forgot about taking pictures for most of the "fun" stuff but, trust me, it was good.  :)

On Tuesday, we had our first Science Co-Op gathering at Jenn's house.  She taught the kids about polymers.  They made "slime" and had jello with their lunch.  The kids all had a good time together and the "class" was a success!

We continued with much of our other normal day-to-day activities and then took Friday "off" since Pappaw was in town.  We went to Joann's to get fabric for our Halloween costumes and a weaving kit for Lily since she so thoroughly enjoyed our weaving activity last week.

As soon as we got home, she started working on her potholder.  When she began, all of the pieces on the bottom were red and it was difficult for her to weave properly without picking up an extra piece here or there.

She was becoming increasingly frustrated so we ended up taking it all apart and starting over by alternating red and blue on the bottom.  She was much more successful and worked diligently on the potholder throughout the evening and I helped her finish the edges just before bed time!

She was very proud of herself!  So, weaving lesson = success!

5 Days In

We spent one whole day, breakfast to bedtime, emptying out and then prepping the school room for our first day.  The girls were so excited to wake up and get started.  They worked quickly through their Morning Routine charts without any reminders from me!

We got started early since our first MOPS meeting happened to be on the same day.  We did our calendar time and reviewed the Awana memory verse before heading off to our meeting.  When we returned home, we had lunch and then went back upstairs to carry on with our school day.

The first day was great and we all finished just as excited as we started!

We have been reading Farmer Boy, the second book in the Little House series and the girls really love it!  They especially love to make foods that we have read about so we checked out the Little House Cookbook and started off by making donuts.  One fun thing we learned: if you twist the donuts instead of cutting them into circles, they will flip themselves over in the oil when they are done cooking on the first side!

Of course, we had to follow it up the next day with popcorn!  After reading about Royal Wilder making popcorn for the family in a wire basket over hot coal, we decided to make some fresh popcorn on the stove top.  It was fun and yummy!

We also had a double-yolked egg when we were making dinner that night!

We have been studying Ansel Adams and comparing his photographs.  We spent some time discussing perspective and how different angles and distances change what you see.  The girls each took 3 shots of the same object from 3 different perspectives as an experiment.  Lily chose a rock, Ruthie a weed and Josie a leaf.

Today we did some weaving after reading about Almazo's Ma weaving fabric in Farmer Boy.  Ruthie and Lily nailed it.  Josie made "rainbows" with hers.  :)

Just to liven things up, Everett busted his face on one of the chairs while trying to climb onto the desk.  He dripped blood all over himself and then wiped it all over me.  It was awesome!

We ended school time today with our observation journals outside.  The girls both chose to observe flowers.  The flowers didn't do much so they had time to make some good drawings!