(And All My) Work Be Praise

For a variety of reasons, my kitchen has been a floury mess for the past few days as I fill the freezer with breakfast foods. Mostly, the flutter of activity is in preparation for a family vacation next week, but there was also the five pounds of grated carrots sitting in the fridge that needed to be used up. (Every so often I think it's a good idea to buy the ten-pound bag of carrots at Costco. It is rarely a good idea.) So, if you're needing thaw-and-serve breakfast inspiration, here's the short list: Baked oatmeal Breakfast Cookies. I used this recipe today, but more often use this one  with a few modifications. Freeze in dough balls, bake on the day you want to serve. Sourdough waffles . Or soaked waffles , if sourdough isn't your thing. Both reheat beautifully in the toaster oven. Morning glory muffins . I have three different recipes for these. They're hard to mess up, whatever you throw in them. Carrot snack bars . I was getting desperate to use up...

As I mentioned in Part 1 , ever since we read Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! , Owen has been collecting seeds to make a seed poster of his own. (Yes, this is supposed to be Levi's science, but Owen has been more interested in seeds from the beginning.) We've kept them in a little jar on the counter for two weeks, and last weekend I finally found a moment to get them situated in their poster-making. I offered very little guidance, excepting a small spelling correction on "pomegranate" and encouragement to use more glue. (Owen is very stingy with his glue.) Sometimes, they work so well together! I never thought about bananas having seeds. Kudos to Daddy for these tiny seeds. We lost the orange seed, but there IS a cantaloupe seed --  you just can't see it well in this picture. Also, my bean plant is still growing! It has been sitting in the same place on the counter for a while now, so we got to have a good discussion about why all the leaves are ...

This post requires completely random back-story, so if you'll indulge me for a minute: We drink raw milk from a farm about 45 minutes north of us (we own shares in the herd). We pick up milk once a week, but since it's such a drive, we share the pick-up with three other families so that each family only has to drive up once a month. (By the way, if anyone else local is interested in getting raw milk and joining our driving co-op, shoot me an e-mail.) All of that to say, once a month on a Tuesday, I pack up everyone (and three large coolers) and spend an hour and a half in the car. Back in the fall, I decided we should use that time to listen to something enriching. After a very unfortunate audio version of some Curious George stories, however, I decided to forego audiobooks from the library until I could ask around and get recommendations. For lack of any further inspiration (or, more precisely, lack of ability to remember to get something new at any point other  than Tue...

My little bean seed got big enough to re-plant in a pot with soil! We also got a few more books on plants: Plants Feed Me by Lizzy Rockwell A Seed in Need by Sam Godwin What are Seeds? by Molly Aloian How do plants help us? by Bobbie Kalman They're all pretty generic, but Levi really likes A Seed in Need . :)  Also this week, Levi and Owen watched a video on photosynthesis, found here . Who knows, we might have actually learned something about botany this spring after all!

Almost exactly eleven months ago, I set Silas up at the refrigerator with a hastily-constructed letter poster and some letter magnets. ( See it here. ) He's now a whiz at capital letters, including their phonetic sounds, but I realized recently that he doesn't know most of the lower-case letters at all. So I re-created our letter matching activity, but this time with lower-case letters on the poster! I ran out of room for y and z, but Silas made me squeeze them in with a pen later. Since last summer, we've managed to lose several of the big letter magnets. I fully expect to find them all if our stove ever has to be moved. Fortunately, Silas received these wooden letter magnets from his great-grandmother for Christmas, and I tucked them away for "the future." The future is here! The magnet set includes both upper and lower case, but I only gave him access to the capitals for now. We have several road trips coming up this summer, so I'm brainsto...

As I've mentioned previously, we're following the Well-Trained Mind suggestion for first grade science: twenty weeks on the animal kingdom, ten weeks on the human body, and ten weeks on botany. The first few units were fun and engaging, even for me. But botany? Botany is NOT my thing. The garden in my front yard? Planted by the people who lived her previously, weeded by my husband and my mother-in-law. The two plants inside my house? Both gifts, both watered by my husband. I can't tell you the names of flowers and I don't really care that I can't. It's just not interesting to me at all. (The world takes all types, right?) Still, something had to be done, and here's what it's looked so far: Book about Plants Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  This is a really cute book, and thanks to the book's suggestion, we're saving seeds from different foods we eat to make a seed poster. From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.  We always lo...

Silas was surprisingly agreeable when I asked if he wanted to do an activity this morning, so I pulled out my box of toilet paper tubes, the can of pom-poms, and the mini tongs to re-create an activity from when Levi was two . (Levi was just barely two, and Silas is nearly three, but that's a difference in attitude more than aptitude between those two!) It didn't stay educational for very long -- I was hoping to count pom-poms as we put them in the tubes -- but it was  fun and occupied his attention for over twenty minutes! He struggled a bit to manage the tongs. Such concentration! Even with a brother laughing in the background!

I have been trying for three weeks to get Silas to do this rectangle activity. Usually the glue stick is one of those coveted items that gets him excited about a craft, but he is dead set against it. So, in the name of authenticity, I'm going to stop hoping the craft will happen and just show you real life instead! The goal: glue some black rectangles onto a larger rectangle. (Silas is standing next to me right now shouting, "I DIDN'T glue, Mommy! I didn't!") I even flipped the paper over and tried to get him to glue anything anywhere. No dice. Today, he chose to eat leftover oatmeal instead. I don't even know how his bowl got from the counter to the little table. He did, however, spend time each day I tried putting the cap on the glue and taking it off again, which is a great fine motor skill. And right this second, he's in the kitchen picking up all of the black rectangles he threw all over the floor in his rage, so we're p...

I realize I've been a bit sparse here on my own blog lately, but I did find time to write a guest blog for a friend. You can read me today over at Ohio Homeschool Assessments talking about my favorite resources for free printables, and how I find and store them!

I have long counted the daily study for  Bible Study Fellowship as my personal devotion time, even though I have long felt a little guilty about it. Though there are plenty of personal application questions, it's always felt a little more "academic" than my ambiguous notion of "quiet time" allows for. (This is all very random and not really based on anything concrete, but there you have it.) This year, I felt rather challenged to do something more, say, introspective than BSF during Lent, so I downloaded the She Reads Truth app onto my new iPhone. I'd heard of the studies/devotions from Money Saving Mom and a few other sources, and since a number of the studies were free, it was convenient more than anything else. Long story short, I haven't been disappointed, and I highly recommend it if you're (a woman, and) in need of a source for daily devotions. All of the plans are free online (but some are paid-only through the app); the Bible readin...

Two big break-throughs with Silas this morning: 1. He willingly told me the shape we were working on (square). 2. He jumped into the activity without a single protest. (Usually he complains for about thirty seconds that he doesn't want to, and then gets into it.) I'm beginning to believe that he just might outgrow his two-year-oldness after all. (That's easy for me to say right now, while he's sleeping. I might be singing a different tune, come dinner time . . . .) I sort of made this activity up on my own, loosely based on some playdough mats I printed from some site or another several years ago. I traced around a square out of our color tiles (from the manipulatives kit for Saxon math K-3 ), then used that as a rough template to make more counting sheets. Cheap paper, a marker, squares I already owned, one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, fine motor skills (in matching the tiles to the paper) . . . my kind of activity! And as a bonus, Owen d...

What I'm Cooking KFC Copycat Coleslaw , for a birthday party last weekend. I think I must be the only person left in the world who still loves coleslaw; most of it came home with me, and I'm the only person in the house who will eat it. But that's just fine with me, because I love  it! (I omitted the onions and was quite pleased with the results.) Crockpot spaghetti squash and meatballs . I'm on a mission to reduce starches and increase vegetables in our dinners, but spaghetti squash is not going to be the answer for us. Interestingly, Silas (who won't eat anything at all) and Toby ate it, and Isaac dutifully eats whatever I put in front of him, but the big boys and I just couldn't do it. I used this meatball recipe , and will use the rest of the meatballs for something other  than spaghetti squash! Seasoned rice as a side dish for baked chicken. I don't use bouillon, as most (if not all? haven't checked in a long time) contain MSG, but I cooked th...

After several weeks of doing a shape/color activity with Silas each week, I can say two things with confidence: 1. He knows all of his colors. (I knew this already.) 2. I have NO idea if he knows his shapes. Silas's two-ness is in full swing right now, and one of the things he's adamantly put his foot down about is identifying shapes. I got pretty good at tricking Levi into answering questions he didn't want to, three years ago, but Silas will not be manipulated. Now, he will tell me happily that a triangle is "a mountain," and a square "might be a diamond," but that's about it. Kid's driving me crazy. But, we persevere, and this week we persevered with the help of some sticky craft sticks my mom sent for him. About an inch or two on one side of the craft stick is sticky. She suspected peeling off the backing would be good fine motor practice for him, and she was right: the first one was a little hard, but once he figured out where to ...

What I'm Cooking Quick cinnamon biscuits . Very tasty. I subbed white whole wheat flour, as usual. Glazed orange scones . Because we needed some bright citrus on yet another snowy morning! Slow cooker cheesy spaghetti with turkey sausage . This was a huge hit in my house. It has the creamy comfort food feeling of lasagna, but with a fraction of the work and even fewer calories (thanks to cottage cheese and ground turkey). The recipe calls for only 8 ounces of pasta, but I think I could have used a full 12-ounce box. It was very saucy. Pizza using this crust , but with white whole wheat flour. I do not love whole wheat crust, but this was one of the better recipes I've tried. I use Ragu pizza sauce, because it doesn't have any sugar, and pizza sauce is one thing I still haven't gotten around to making myself. Poor man's steak . I really liked this -- an interesting twist on traditional meatloaf. Plus it made enough for four meals, for our little family! I us...

This post is woefully belated -- the Chinese New Year was February 19 -- but I didn't want our celebration to go unrecorded, especially since my brother moved to China just a few months ago! He has lived in various parts of Asia for several years, but this is his first job in China. I planned to celebrate the New Year before he even took the job, but knowing we were celebrating "with" Uncle Brian in a small way made it that much more special! We read one random non-fiction book on the Chinese New Year, thanks to the library's seasonal displays, and did two crafts: Chinese Hand Drum : paint the outside of two paper plates red (the lucky color in China, a fact Owen pounced on and declared about every red item he saw for the next three days). Attach something -- the site says small jingle bells; I used small beads -- to the end of some string; attach string to each side of plate (I taped and then stapled over the tape). Attach some sort of rod -- the site suggests a ...

We're doing a little unit on Chinese New Year this week. One page of this printable pack  was a one-to-one-correspondence activity, matching up something (stickers were suggested, but we used the yellow dot marker) with each gold coin.  I fully expected Silas to dot willy-nilly all over the page, but he actually took great care in matching up the marker with the coin. Success!

Did you that there are science experiment kits to go along with the Magic School Bus books? I spotted them on accident once while browsing Rainbow Resource , looking for something cheap-ish to meet the minimum shipping requirements. At $16, this wasn't as cheap as I had in mind, but Levi loves the books so  much, and we were planning to do ten weeks on the human body this winter already, and I couldn't resist! I give it four stars out of five. The giant human body poster (with stickers!) is a huge hit in our house. (It's too big for a decent picture, but you can see a lot of it in the background from Toby's first birthday pictures .) The kit includes most of the materials you'll need for all of the experiments (minus basic things like tape and scissors, and a few bigger things like an empty two-liter bottle). It lost a star because the materials aren't clearly labeled, and a few times I've grabbed the wrong size tube, for example, and then been frustrated...

My grandma loves cardinals, so when I saw this idea for handprint red birds  ( also here , a little less cartoon-y) come across my Pinterest feed, I knew I wanted to do something similar for her some day. I thought about it at Christmas time, but we were busy making these handprint canvases for my parents and my in-laws and didn't end up seeing my grandma in December anyway. Grandma turns ninety on Saturday, and my dad and aunt are throwing her a party: the perfect opportunity to make and give this gift! I don't have pictures of the process (taking pictures while painting children's hands is never a good idea), but it was very simple. The canvases are 8x10 from Michael's; the paint is just plain old tempera paint. I did the handprints first and then added the other details later, all in tempera paint except for the names, for which I used a felt-tip pen. I think they make a cute little set, if I do say so myself!

What I'm Cooking Sweet potato and apple casserole . The boys love this, so I often make it when I'm not going to be home for dinner myself. I didn't have any juice on hand and just used water. Whole-wheat crepes (for breakfast this morning). This time we filled with chocolate chips and banana slices, and topped with raspberry syrup made by a friend. Delicious as always! Rachael Ray's chicken and green bean casserole. I leave out the mushrooms entirely. I had every intention of linking to this recipe, but the one on her website is not the same as the one I took out of her magazine. Lame. If it sounds interesting to you, let me know, and I'll get you the recipe! Six Sisters' crockpot chili and whole-wheat honey cornbread that I didn't save the link for. It wasn't the best cornbread I've ever made. I wish I'd stuck with my usual cornbread waffles to go with chili. What I'm Reading I'm reading another book on discipline, but I...