Big Kid Links

Gravity:

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/fallingwater.pdf



http://homeschooling.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=homeschooling&cdn=education&tm=220&gps=487_199_1276_569&f=20&tt=13&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.spartechsoftware.com/reeko/Experiments/gravity.htm





http://classroom.jc-schools.net/coleytech/webquest/Save%20our%20Gravity/gravitywebquest.html

Ancient Greece:

http://greece.mrdonn.org/persianwars.html

http://www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/htmlver/characters/f_pericles.html

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/history/peloponnesian.htm

Maya, Inca, and Aztecs:

http://www.projectpages.org/Audenried_Projects/Aztec,_Mayan,_and_Incan_Webquest.html

Recipes we love!

I love to cook. My girls both love to be in the kitchen. Three is also very into "helping." :)

So in this blog post I'm going to share some of the recipes we love!

Rice Pudding--this is an EXCELLENT way to use up leftover rice!

1 cup rice
2 cups milk (soymilk works well too)
2 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup sugar
Optional: Raisins/Craisins/Dried banana's

Add rice to milk, heat to scalding. Beat egg yolks, add the hot rice/milk mixture. Place mixture back into saucepan, cook until thickened. Fold in dried fruit. Three loves this on cold mornings (he likes it better than oatmeal!)

Bacon Cheeseburger Chicken--from http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/bacon-cheeseburger-chicken.html

I'll summarize here though, you should check out Kevin and Amanda though, it's a cute blog!

Make bacon bits--just fry the bacon, let it cool for a minute and then chop. Trust me it's worth the few extra minutes!
Brown the chicken tenderloins. Place in a casserole dish.
Add Teriyaki sauce (to be honest, I've never made it with the teriyaki sauce...because I just didn't have it. I've mixed soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and used that), just enough to cover the chicken.
Put on a coating of ranch dressing (get the ranch with bacon if possible...it makes it extra yummy, although it's good with regular ranch as well.)
Top that with cheese, and then bacon bits.
Bake @350 for about a 1/2 hour.

YUM-O! This is One's favorite meal. Fav.Or.Ite.

This next recipe is from http://www.food.com/recipe/bourbon-chicken-45809 and is a recent find. It was such a big hit, that the fam has requested I make a double batch next time, as they all wanted more!

2 lbs boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 -2 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/4 teaspoon ginger
3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup apple juice
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar (I didn't have this, and left it out.)
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup soy sauce

Cook your chicken. Remove it from the pan. Add ALL the other ingredients to the pan, heat over medium heat until well mixed and dissolved. Add chicken back to the sauce, bring to a hard boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. The website recommends serving with rice, but *I* prefer it with mashed potatoes (when I eat it at a restaurant) so that's what I made at home. It was delish, I kid you not, and done in 30 minutes!


I hope you'll try some of these, and ENJOY!

Fall crafts

Three is 100% obsessed with all things Toy Story 3, and really, who can blame him? Here he is dressed as Woody:


This craft is one I ordered from Oriental Trading Company. It has the feathers, turkey body, beak, eyes, hats and boots (which Three thought was so silly!) and the child just sticks them together. Easy, and cute.

Finished turkey:

He was proud and wanted to hold it up for the picture...but you couldn't really see it that way so I took the other shot (above) but wanted to show his "proud" picture as well.

This is a simple craft, I cut the tree trunk from a brown paper grocery bag. Three glued it on the blue paper (it's the sky dontchaknow) and added leaf stickers. In the bottom left hand corner you see a "big pile of leaves because the leaves are falling off the trees now that it's faaaaaaaaaaallllllllllll." Three always says fall with this huge drawl. It's sort of adorable, but I could be partial. There are no pictures of the process as he did this craft with One while I was at a dr. appt earlier in the week.

Another OTC craft (and I'm pretty sure those leaf stickers are from there too), in this one you take the yellow tissue paper squares and ball them up and add them to a leaf cutout. The leaf cut out comes with a peel-off cover, revealing a sticky side. No glue involved. My kind of crafting!

Three's finished leaf:

Four is a ham, and was YELLING at me while I was snapping pictures of Three doing his work the other day, because he wanted HIS picture taken TOO! So, here you have it. He's "cheesing" so hard you can't even see his eyes! Stinker.

An OTC tip: Everything comes in quantity of 12. What we do is get a group of us, everyone picks a couple crafts (depending on how many you want to order total,) then we divide the lot up. So, each family might get 2 or 3 of the craft. That turkey craft you see, Three did that last year as well...because I had 2 of them. So, get some friends together and order from OTC, their crafts are usually pretty good.

Upcoming blog: One and Two's school projects! Recipes that our family loves! And, New Holiday Traditions.

Fall Fun!

Making some jack-o-lanterns for the window.

Two and One helping carve our AWESOME pumpkin!

And, here is the pumpkin....

Awesomesauce.

Pics

So, we've been doing school, but not things that are really "picture worthy." Anyway, pictures of real school stuff coming soon, I promise. To hold you over (because I know you've been waiting for a new post from me) here are some pics of my kids from this week--Monday we went to the park, and then there was a rainstorm.

Four loves a slide.

Three LOVES the new rainboots mommy and daddy brought him from Vegas (I swear, it's the only place he thinks we went! LOL)

Three peeking at me!

Isn't this a FANTASTIC picture. Loooook at it! The leaves behind them, some of which are changing from our great fall weather, they are all LOOKING AT ME AND SMILING...it was a freakish moment in time I tell ya.

L to R: One, Four, Two, Three. :D My loves.

First Day of School--October 18, 2010

We started our new school year yesterday. It was a good start, even though it had a rocky beginning. I was in a horrible, no good, bad mood. There really was no one to blame for my bad mood...I was just feeling bitchy. Once we got in our groove though, I began to settle. Which makes me think maybe my bitchy-ness was from lack of routine (we've been having our break, then we were on vacation, then I was trying to readjust to east coast time....) and maybe it will be better now. The day went well. The girls seemed excited for their new books. We finished relatively quickly, and then we had bowling league. This week we have lots of activities going on. Bowling league yesterday, seeing grandma today, 4H tomorrow, and the state fair on Thursday!

Our final activity of the school day occurred after we got home from bowling. The kids put on the pumpkin faces! We will carve the big one next week, but for now we'll change his "Mr. Pumpkin Head" features daily.

Here is One, all ready for the first day. She is 12. This is her 7th grade year, how did that happen I ask you??? She looks so grown. She is very excited about dance this year as she moved up to a more competitive class. This means more opportunities to perform, and a real dance competition in the spring. She is the only girl in her class who hasn't had tap before (although, she did take tap 3 years ago, it was just that one time, and most of the other girls have taken much more tap) but she is keeping up pretty well.

Here is Two. She is 10 (11 in December) and this is her 6th grade year. Technically, she would be in 5th grade because of her late birthday, but since we homeschool we didn't have to wait for her to start Kindy. She is really enjoying her competitive soccer team, and has scored 3 goals this season!

Here is Three. Three is 3. :) He is currently very into Cars and Toy Story. He is still working on learning the alphabet. He really likes the crafts, and he actually really enjoys workbook pages as well.

Here is Four. When the other kids were all standing there, he was pretty sure he needed to have his turn. :D Four is almost 1 and 1/2. You can see where he recently fell off the steps and scraped his nose. :( He is FINALLY using some words, purposefully. Before the last 2 weeks he could say enough things that I wasn't worried, BUT he didn't really use them regularly. Now, he's using words in context. His receptive language though, is through the roof! I swear, he understands 98% of what is said to him, and I know his receptive language skills are way ahead of where any of his siblings were at this age. On top of all that, he's so stinking cute.

Week in Review

Here is Three working on his firetruck craft. He LOVES it.


This is Three working on an activity I made. There are numbers and stamps on each plate, and he has to match them.



One painting a "buffalo hide" for a project to go along with her Native American studies.

Three cutting out the first of his wish list items for Christmas.

Four putting poker chips in a slot. :)

We didn't quite get everything done, BUT I lost all of Monday, and most of Tuesday due to some personal issues. Then today DH took the day off for us to have a family fun day, so we didn't do school today either. That's OK.

One is ALMOST finished with her final unit in History, and we are only doing History/Math/Reading right now, so we should be done by mid-week next week, which is PERFECT since my SIL is coming in late next week.

Three started his "class" again this week, through our local parks and rec. He was SUPER excited to be there, and really participated (which he didn't do at all the last time we were there.) When he was telling Daddy about the class, he kept calling "Mrs. Michelle" "that girl teacher," for some reason I thought this was hilarious. LOL

So, the plan for this week is to finish up school for One prior to family visit. Have a lot of fun with family. Then we are on a break until Mid-October. Yahoooooooooo.

I'm going away for 10 days at the beginning of October, just DH and I. For. Ten. Whole. Days.

Posts between now and October will be sparse, and mostly fluff. :)