Muffin Tin Monday and a Quick Update

This week went by so fast. I had a pretty cool cake to work on which I will share soon. We started a unit study on the book Mr Poppers Penguins. Such a cute book and the kids are really enjoying learning about penguins. We are reading the book and watched a couple movies about penguins, including March of the Penguins. A penguins life is really kind of hard isn't it? Anyways, so that was the theme of the week and we will be working on the same theme this week. This is a longer unit study.

This week will be kind of busy too. Tomorrow we have our first event for the new homeschool group I am starting. We will be going to Skateland for a couple hours. The guy at Skateland is so nice. He is a believer in Jesus and was super nice to meet with. He is not requiring a minimum of people for our events, knowing it could take some time to build up. Our first event is tomorrow, we will have another in October with a Halloween theme and then we have one planned for Valentines Day. I think there will be some in between October and February too but these are the dates so far.

AND I want to show our muffin tin breakfast. My kids eat so well with a muffin tin meal, its craziness. So I made one up for breakfast. They don't eat a lot at breakfast time so I kept it simple.

Here we have some boiled eggs, cut in half (both my young ones will not eat the yolk). Some banana bread cubed and some apple slices.


I am joining in Muffin Tin Mondays, check it out to see more cool muffin tin meals!

Giveaway Winner

The winner of the Big G Cereal giveaway is Julie! Congrats Julie, I will send you an email.
Thanks for playing!

Blogs to Share

I have a couple blog articles I want to share. Just a quick post from me. :) It's a busy week but I will update soon. Please visit the blogs though.


Children Keeping You Out Of Ministry?

Do Homeschoolers Spend Enough Time With Their Children?

Big G Cereal Giveaway!~

It's time for another giveaway! This one will help you have happy kiddo's in the morning. I know mine love cereal. As soon as we get it they want to eat it. All. Immediately. ;) I like having some around for those rushed mornings.

Big G has a fabulous promotion going on. In specially marked boxes of Big G cereal you can find $5 worth of coupons on brands including Betty Crocker^®, Nature Valley^®, Pillsbury^®, Big G, and Maxwell House. You can find more cereal information at Cereal Benefits.

Now for the giveaway! The winner will receive 6 boxes of Big G cereal,

Cheerios^®

Chocolate Cheerios^®

Cookie Crisp^®

Golden Grahams^®

MultiGrain Cheerios^®

Total^®

Here us how you enter!

#1 You can become a follower of this blog or if you are already a follower you can "like" the Facebook page. Please leave a comment letting me know that you did.

#2 For a second entry you can let me know your favorite cereal.

#3 For another entry you can share the giveaway on your Facebook wall or on your blog. Please leave a link. (My ulterior motive, I love reading blogs!)

The winner will be chosen on Sunday the 25th via random.org. Thanks for playing!

"Disclosure: The cereal, information, and giveaway have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark."

Win a Kitchenaid!

Ok I had to share this giveaway. Mostly because I hope to win but wouldn't it be awesome if I helped someone else win too???? Say yes!
If you go to Sweet Indulgence and follow the rules for entering, mentioning that I sent you to enter, we could both win that beautiful raspberry kitchenaid, if they choose your comment!! Good luck!

Apple Chips

We made apple chips last week as an activity to go along with our unit on The Giving Tree. I found the recipe on Babble so you can check that out if you want to see what they did. :)

We had kind of small apples so I used three. We didn't need to peel them just wash and core. I actually bought this apple corer to use on cupcakes but it worked perfectly for this recipe since I wanted slices.

The mandolin made slicing quick and easy since you will want them thin.

We then laid the slices out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. They aren't really supposed to touch each other but I didn't want to have to use another cookie sheet. I will tell you why in a minute. ;)

We mixed 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. I put it into a sprinkle container I had saved and let Meghan sprinkle it on. Well she didn't realize how quickly it could come out so it got used up on about 10 or so slices. ;) So I mixed up some more and we did the rest. While we were doing this we preheated the oven to 200. After they are all sprinkled with cinnamon sugar in they go. They bake at 200 for 2 hours. This is why I didn't want to use another cookie sheet, I didn't have space for two in the oven and it takes a while for them to bake.

Here they are all dried and ready. They aren't burnt, those are those ones that got the heavy sprinkling.

Loosen from the parchment paper after they are cooled. You can store them in an air tight container for up to three days. Ours didn't last that long. They were sooo good. A nice healthy snack and so crunchy. I recommend this recipe and now I want to see if I can dry (dehydrate?) other fruits in the oven. :)

First Week Review- The Giving Tree

We had a great first week back to school! Our first unit study of the year was on the book The Giving Tree, from Homeschool Share. Have I mentioned I love that site? I do! There are so many units and we are constantly adding new stuff.
The unit had a lot of great information in it. The first thing we did was make a mobile of the Fruits of the Spirit and read Galatians 5:22-23. The mobile has one Fruit listed on each apple. We talked about how the tree exhibits all of the Fruits.

Meghan used a map to find our state and major apple producing states. She colored the states and we talked about why apples grow well in those states.

We found out apples are a member of the rose family.

We talked about the different uses for trees.

Kaden and Ellie learned about the letter A and it's sound. They had coloring and tracing sheets to play with. Kaden used his maze book.

Ellie was covering each A with a crayon or pencil. haha

 Meghan made a list of things you can make using apples. She also graphed a list of apples I gave her and helped Kaden sequence the story with story strips.

 

We discussed fractions using an apple and we made apple chips.

 

For art the kids all made a tree using their arm and hand. We traced them and then they painted their trees.

 

 

Some other things we did this week...

Baking cookies. This is the first time I have had her follow the recipe and pretty much do it herself. I was there just to answer questions.

We started calendar time.

Ellie's pretend time with Barbie.

Kaden using the counting beads.

They also went outside a lot more this week than in weeks past. I guess they can feel the little bit of cool down. :)

Here they are opening their back to school gifts. They got new art supplies.

Over all a great week back!

 

First Day of School Pictures

September 6th was our first day and I always try to take some school pictures. :)

Kaden- Age 4, Preschool

Ellie- Age 2- Tot School

Meghan- Age 9, 4th grade

Then the class pictures. :D

A first day of school breakfast picture. :) They had chocolate chip pancakes with maple syrup.

Just Some Fun Stuff

I have some pictures I wanted to share from last week. First off... A little horsing around. ;)

These two are very close in height and weight so this was just funny. I didn't get a picture of when she made him top heavy and they both fell over.

Daddy is a good one to ride, he's got room for two.

Too cute!

I asked Meghan to get the clothes out of the dryer for me. After a couple minutes I went to put the next load in and this is what I found. haha Of course, I told them to stay put so I could take pictures.

One of Meghan's favorite breakfasts, Egg in a Hole, or whatever your family calls it.

Crafting (they made puppets)

and computer time.

Menu Plan... Not Monday

We made this yesterday for Labor Day if you want the recipe. Doesn't it look yummy?

Yea, it's Tuesday so? ;) Since it was a holiday yesterday I didn't get a menu plan done. It's going to be a busy week so I am glad it's a short one. :) Our meals this week will include...

Beef pot pie (I made a beef stew for Sunday after church so the leftovers plus more veggies make the pie, I thought it was a fabulous idea. I will let you know how it turns out.).
Spaghetti (always have lots of leftover so this will probably be two meals)
Homemade pizza

I worry about the weekends on the weekend. :)
I am also going to work on making a Bone Broth this week. Read more about it here if you are interested. I feel like it's something we need to be doing.

Other things I will be making...
bread
banana bread
scones (I hope)

Labor Day 2011

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I love long weekends with nothing special to do. We just hung out and relaxed. The kids played in their little pool and played games outside. We made cheeseburgers and sides, and homemade Honey Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Sauce. YUM
Later the kids went out to ride on their bikes and then they watched a movie. My brother came and had lunch and hung out with us a while too. A nice day was had by all. NOW we are ready to start school!

Yes I took these pictures when it was starting to get dark. I should have gotten some earlier.

 Oh well... ;)

Back to School

Tomorrow, Monday the 6th, is our official back to school day. We have already been doing some things but we'll add in the rest. I like to give little gifts and do some fun things the first day back. I am excited about this school year and hopefully that feeling keeps on going through out the year. :)

Last week my business was slow so I used my free time to prepare for this week. I found the books from our shelves that fit our theme, printed out the unit study and any other pices we needed and I found crafts and recipes to add to the fun. (Meghan has been keeping up with her personal reading and she started her Math program, she tested out at 4.5 level, which is about where she is with reading too.)

This year we are going to continue with our Unit Studies, I just like teaching that way. It's a gentle way to teach and really keeps it fun and interesting. Meghan chooses a lot of the subjects we study. She will also be getting a journal to write in daily and she will have reading and math with the computer program. She loves to use the computer and loves doing those subjects on there. I don't think we will have any resistance with math this year. She has a list of extra's she would like to do also. At the top of her list is singing lessons so I am searching for someone that can help with that. She would also like any and all of the following; horse riding, ballet, volleyball. haha We also found a homeschool Girl Scout troop late in the summer and she has started attending the meetings and our church has a youth program for her age on Tuesday nights that she is going to as well. She loves being busy and hates to miss anything. She will often ask me the night before if we have anywhere to go the next day. I need to add activities to her personal calendar.

Kaden and Ellie will follow along with some of the subjects Meghan does. Kaden will do some normal preschool-ish activities and they will both have lots of play time. Kaden knows how to count some, lots of letters and sounds and all his colors and shapes and I didn't even do anything! Ellie pointed out three colors and knows her upper case R, she is constantly finding them on everything! Again, I did nothing. So I am not too worried about them at all. ;)

This week we are starting out with an apple themed unit, The Giving Tree. The little ones will do what they can too and they will focus on the A sound too. I have crafts, recipes, books and more for us. It's going to be a good and busy week!