Too Cool for Reindeer Hats

Today we worked on the science project that involved making igloos out of sugar cubes and frosting. As you can see all of my kidos wanted to get in on the science!

Our tallest igloo!



This project went really well, until Mom stepped away for a minute and World War III broke out over who was using the most sugar cubes and why.

(Some days I can look at this philisophically and see that what my children are really exploring, are aspects of social justice, the fair distribution of natural resources within a society and different methods of conflict resolution - today however, I chose to demonstrate the paticular form of government called a "dictatorship" and "instant incarceration" ie. go to your room; since in my kingdom it's never okay to dump sugar cubes on your sister's head!!)

And last, but not least, is the antler hat, that my three-year-old was waaaaay too cool to model for me. When I showed him the picture, his only comment was: "They just look funny when the antlers are flopping over like that"



Tueday's Meals

Breakfast, I just used refrigerated croissant dough and added chocolate chips to the croissants before I rolled them up. You can also sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar before baking!  The yogurt is just plain vanilla with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

 Lunch was easy to pack, we were out of cottage cheese, so I just substituted montery jack cheese cut into bite-size chunks.

 Carrots & Ranch

By the time dinner came around, the weather had turned cold. Warm soup was just the thing!

If you'd like to try any of the recipes they are on my "Menus" page!!



Flying Santa

Just playing around getting our Flying Santa to Fly!

Jay-Jay's been asking all day when it was time to "glue the puff-balls!"

If you'd like to try any of our actvities with us here's the link:

Santa & Reindeer

Christmas Through The Eyes of A Child

One of the most precious things about being a parent is the chance to re-live the wonder of childhood through my children. I distinctly remember my oldest daughter’s second Christmas. She was almost two years old and was finally aware enough of what was going on to have some definite opinions about our family traditions.

The first thing the adults did was to buy a tree. That’s right, they went out and bought a tree. Now, keep in mind that she was not allowed to bring sticks, leaves, dirt or pinecones into the house on the pretence that they would make the house dirty, but all of a sudden an entire tree gets brought into the house and placed in the middle of the living room. When my husband brought it in, she kept looking at me clearly waiting for me to reiterate the rules and make him “take that outside.” Not only did the tree stay inside our house, those adults actually looked pleased about it. Then we promptly got out a box of decorations, and hung shiny things all over that tree! Next came little lights that blink on and off. After setting up such an unexpected display, our next move was to invoke a “no touching” rule.

Within the next few days, pretty packages wrapped in bright paper and tied with sparkly bows started appearing under the tree. With strict warnings not to touch the presents!! This amazing phenomenon lasted a few weeks, and then one morning both parents got up plopped her down in front of the tree and handed her a package. She just stared at it, having been reminded several hundred times by now about that “no touching” rule. Then with smiling faces we encouraged her to rip open the paper! She was not about to be tricked into breaking that rule, what was the matter with everyone? Had everyone gone insane? The pictures from that Christmas morning are precious, and well, if you look at it from her point of view she’s right, we didn’t make much sense at all did we?

And let’s not even mention two months later, when we lit her dessert on fire, stood around singing and then expected her to put out the fire! Birthdays’ didn’t make much sense either.

Santa, Reindeer & Leeks

Hi Everyone! My appologies, but one of my fabulous kidos misplaced my data drive, so I wasn't able to post my menu and preschool theme earlier (I just found it this morning behind the chest freezer!!)

So, for anyone who's interested:

The preschool theme is Santa & Reindeer:

Santa and Reindeer

And the menu for next week:

Dec 10 Menu Leeks

As always, let me know if you try any of the ideas/recipes and how they work for you!!

Recipes

Hi Everyone!
I just realized that this week's menu is missing two of the dinner recipes (amateur mom!). The ingredients made it on the menu, just not the recipes.

So.... Here are the missing recipes!!

Mark's Favorite Chicken:
     1 Cup Bread Crumbs
     1 Envelope Ranch Dressing Mix
    6 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast

Combine crumbs and dressing mix.
Coat chicken pieces.
Bake in greased baking dish at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Barbeque Beef Patties
     1 Egg
     1/2 Cup BBQ Sauce
     3/4 Cup Bread Crumbs
     1 tsp. Salt
     1 lb. Ground Beef

Combine egg, 1/4 C. BBQ sauce, bread crumbs and salt.
Add ground beef and mix well.
Shape into four 3/4" patties.
Top with remaining BBQ sauce.
Place in greased pan and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until internal temperature is 160 degrees.

Gingerbread!

Hi Everyone,
Next week's theme for my three-year-old is gingerbread!
If you'd like to join along, here is the link:

Gingerbread

It will open up a pdf document with all the activities and a list of the materials you'll need.
If you click on an activity the instructions or a website will open up!

Menu for the Week of December 3rd

Hi Everyone,
I have the link to next week's menu. The featured produce item ("Harvest of the Week") is Cranberries! That means I've included one recipe each day that uses cranberries in some way shape or form. The full menu includes breakfast, a packable lunch, snack and dinner for each day of the week.

Cranberries are a great source of Vitamin C and a good source of vitamins E and K as well! Plus they're just fun to eat.

Here's the link if you'd like to see the menu:

Menu Dec 3 Cranberries

Clicking on the link will take you to a pdf document. The first page is the menu, if you click on any of the items with a square around them, it will automatically open up the recipe. The second page is the shopping list. It looks long, but it's usually not so bad, once you cross off what you already have. You can check out my menu page if you'd like to see the method behind my madness when making my menus.

Let me know if you enjoy any of the recipes, and I'll keep you posted next week as I try to get some very picky eaters to try cranberries!!

Oh The Things We Are Thankful For.....

 So here is a picture of our first day of the "Thankfulness and Gratitude" Projects. Jay really loved the gratitude paper chain. Most of the things that he was thankful for were pretty routine, but my favorites were "glue" and "online.com."

Here's his fishing for compliments lake. Sorry I couldn't find his fishing pole to get in the shot. At the top is his thank you card (the words got covered in stickers). This was my favorite activity of the day, espeically since the the inside of the card as dictated by my three-year-old reads:

Dear Dad,
Thank you for the remote control helicporter that Santa is going to bring me for Christmas.
Love Jay

If you'd like to join along with us, the link is in the post below!

Here are some more of our pilgrim crafts from this past week. (We ran out of room on our refrigerator for our story magnets, but thankfully we have a magnetic surface on our dishwasher too!)
Next Monday we'll start our projects for "Thankfulness & Gratitutde." If you'd like to join along, I've posted the link below. It will take you to a pdf document (you need to have a pdf reader on your computer) The first page lists all the activities for the week. If you click on the activity, it will take you right to the page with directions and printables. If it's not my original idea, when you click on it, it will open up the webpage with directions and/or printables.

Thankfulness & Gratitude