I found these pretty cotton scarves at American Eagle last week. I was searching for new sandals (last year's Target ones broke) in the mall and I saw these adorning the mannequins in the window. I have been looking for cotton shawls like this for a few months now and I really like the patterns on these two. Since I had a little wiggle room in our clothing budget (i.e. no one had grown out of anything) and they were on sale I bought both! I am really going to enjoy using them when the weather cools down! For now, I'll practice tying them fashionably in the air conditioning.
I love that in the summertime, it is perfectly acceptable to serve tomato sandwiches and corn-on-the-cob and call it dinner! What are your favorite summer foods?
The theme of this week's Learning Basket is Butterflies and Bugs.
We're moving right along with Katherine's lesson plans for the Mother of God. We light our candle that is decorated with the symbols of the Mother of God each evening and discuss the day's symbol of the Mother of God by it's light. We are also using the three part cards Katherine created as matching cards. We've received our copy of The Story of Mary the Mother of God and will be enjoying that this week as well!
We're using a well loved Christmas gift from Sugar Plum's godmother to pretend to be butterflies... it is so much fun to fly around and be chased by the Mama butterfly!
We'll play memory with a little springtime memory game set we found a few years ago at a Hallmark store.
We'll read, read, read this week! There are plenty of butterfly and bug books out there and we plan on getting a few more at the library this week.
My Life in France: I began this last night and wish that I had read this first instead of starting with Julie and Julia. It is fascinating so far and makes me want to do nothing but sit and watch Julia Child on YouTube. I am really looking forward to seeing Julie & Julia!
Little Women:Mimi is to blame for this one! There are some books that just need to be reread every few years, and this is one of them!
In the Orthodox Church, we get baskets of grapes* (and sometimes other fruits) blessed at the Liturgy for the feast of Transfiguration. I am so excited that our market carried four different types of seedless grapes: Green, Red, Champagne, and Midnight Beauty. We had fun washing them and putting the children's grapes in little pint sized metal baskets this afternoon... we'll probably bring them to church tonight to keep them from sneaking them before they're blessed!
* from the OCA website: The feast of the Transfiguration is presently celebrated on the sixth of August, probably for some historical reason. The summer celebration of the feast, however, has lent itself very well to the theme of transfiguration. The blessing of grapes, as well as other fruits and vegetables on this day is the most beautiful and adequate sign of the final transfiguration of all things in Christ. It signifies the ultimate flowering and fruitfulness of all creation in the paradise of God's unending Kingdom of Life where all will he transformed by the glory of the Lord.
My children have never really used a sprinkler in the yard because we've either gone to the beach or to the pool to cool off, but I spotted this bunny sprinkler in the hardware store recently and decided to give it a whirl. The water is very gentle, but both of our little ones were afraid of it to a certain degree. Sugar Plum liked getting wet, but didn't want to be too close. Little Man avoided it all together! I think that they will eventually get used it it, but I don't feel so badly that I refused to buy a Slip N Slide that they saw at Target!
The theme of this week's Learning Basket is Watermelon.
We began Katherine's lesson plans for the Mother of God on August 1st. We light our candle that is decorated with the symbols of the Mother of God each evening and read a related Bible story by it's light. We are also using the three part cards Katherine created as matching cards. I have a few books ordered to read in addition to the above and this Thursday we celebrate Transfiguration which will have it's own story book, Bible Story and activities.
I really wanted to make watermelon scented play dough this week, but couldn't find any kool-aid that flavor. Instead, we'll make fruit punch scented dough and hope that it is just watermelon colored! We used this recipe before with great results, so here's hoping it'll work again!
I found a few stories that make mention of Watermelon... some short ones in the current issue of High Five, the letter "w" is for watermelon (and other things) in Lois Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet, and the Very Hungry Caterpillar munches through a slice in Eric Carle classic.
I'd really like to tear or cut up red and green construction paper to make a collage watermelon slice. Glueing and cutting are very big in our household right now!
We will be eating LOADS of watermelon this week and I am hoping to get up the courage to visit a local farm to ask if we can take a little tour of their watermelon vines. We don't know them, but I am hoping that they will say yes. What do you think?
All this should keep us busy... especially with Transfiguration this week! I think I need to revamp my topics a bit. I am finding it difficult to find books for some of them. I'd really like to fill our baskets with more quality literature. We'll see how it goes.
So, I was cleaning up after dinner this evening and heard Little Man flick on the tv (his new trick). When I came in, I couldn't help but take a picture! First of all, I love how he is sitting! Second of all, I love that the show that was on was a car race. We don't watch races, but I think that we might have to start. This kid was totally enthralled! I hope this makes up for the fact that I returned his favorite book to the library and we didn't go to the demolition derby at the state fair.
I'm a little late mentioning this, but we are really enjoying Katherine's plans for The Mother of God! I put together our candle on Friday night and we have been lighting it at dinner time and reading our Bible story afterward. So far, Sugar Plum has been doing really well listening to the stories, looking for the symbol of the day and remembering to tell Papa what we are learning at bedtime (with a few hints:) ). I am looking forward to continuing this! Now, I just have to order the The Illustrated Life of the Theotokos for Children and The Story of Mary the Mother of God so we have them to read this month as well!
A few days ago, I received my Pottery barn catalog in the mail. As usual, I flipped through it immediately and must have been looking through it with Little Man on my lap. Apparently, he has also been reading Meredith, and came up with his own version of their Vintage Wood Pedestal to set up a tablescape... who needs to spend $60 when you can raid the dollhouse?
If you have time, please head on over to Kyrie's blog to read this recent post entitled Start with a Clean Slate. How can you argue with a woman who likes to do one thing every night to make her home beautiful?
I haven't made these biscuits in a long time, but they were the perfect breakfast this morning. In addition to slathering them with butter and jam, we really like using them as the crust on our chicken pot pie!
We really like this moist cake topped with sweet and crisp crumbs. It is delicious for breakfast, a special snack, and even dessert!
Ingredients:
Cake 1/4 cup Butter 3/4 cup Sugar 1 Egg 2 tsp. Baking Powder 1/2 tsp. Salt 1/2 cup Milk 2 cups Blueberries, rinsed
Topping 1/4 cup Butter 1/2 cup Sugar 1/3 cup Flour 1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
Method:
Cream 1/4 cup butter with sugar; add egg and beat well. In a medium bowl, sift together 2 cups of flour, baking powder, and salt. Add sifted dry ingredients to butter mixture alternating with milk, beating until smooth. Fold in blueberries.
Pout into a greased 9" square baking pan. For topping, combine ingredients and blend well to form crumbs. Sprinkle topping crumbs over batter. Bake at 375 degrees F for 35 minutes.
The theme of this week's Learning Basket is Sunflowers.
We are finishing up Katherine's Holy Apostles lesson plans this week so that we can start the plans that she has created for the Mother of God on August first.
I found a printable coloring book with pictures of sunflowers and little facts on them. Since Sugar Plum loves to color, I think she'll enjoy this.
We are planning on making a sunflower using these templates that I found online, yellow and green tissue paper, and sunflower seeds to make a sunflower to hang on our refrigerator.
We really enjoyed playing with the Wikki Stix last week, so I threw this in for a little extra fun this week.
I found this book on my shelf and it happens to have two pages on Van Gogh and his Sunflowers. I would have really liked to use the Van Gogh book in the Mini Masters set (we have two of the books in that series already), but I've used up my homeschooling money for this month, so it will have to wait!
We'll read some of books that have sunflowers in them and also read our High Five mag for this month (there's a poem about Sunflowers on one of the first pages). Our library system didn't have any of the books that I was hoping to read this week (one being Katie and the Sunflowers), so this is going to be a weak week when it comes to literature.
We are going to have our first taste of sunflower seeds this week.
I also pulled out this card set that I bought a few months ago. I think that Sugar Plum is ready to learn some of the games they suggest for three year olds. If not, good old fashioned matching games are always fun!
Finally, I am planning on taking the children to a farm stand where they sell sunflowers so that we can buy a few. Also, the local peach orchard has a field of sunflowers that are just beginning to bloom. I hope to stop there as well. It should be a fun week!
Edited to Add:
We went to story hour today and I found this book! We'll add it to our meager literary offerings this week... it looks great!
I found these pretty cotton scarves at American Eagle last week. I was searching for new sandals (last year's Target ones broke) in the mall and I saw these adorning the mannequins in the window. I have been looking for cotton shawls like this for a few months now and I really like the patterns on these two. Since I had a little wiggle room in our clothing budget (i.e. no one had grown out of anything) and they were on sale I bought both! I am really going to enjoy using them when the weather cools down! For now, I'll practice tying them fashionably in the air conditioning.
