E is for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Eyebright Fairy, Eggs, and the Eucharist

E week along the Alphabet Path took us over a week to complete, as we had an LLL meeting, a doctor's appointment, and a field trip! We had a fun time working through it slowly.

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual.

Our E poems for the week from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet

~Circle Time~

Caroline helped Cecilia to get an egg for show and tell... she cut it out of paper and even wrote "egg" on it for her. She chose to bring an eggplant (a toy from their play kitchen) and Ensa, her baby doll. She gave her the name Ensa several years ago, and the only explanation we received at that time was that her full name was "Ensa Encha Ladasauce." I thought it was pretty good for her to have come up with two E items to show... E isn't exactly the easiest letter to find at the beginning of many objects! The peach-colored egg in Cecilia's hand is the E object that I had hidden in the Mystery Sound Pouch.

Songs and Rhymes

Eensy Weensy Spider

Uhh... nothing else begins with E! ;)

So here are our fall and pumpkin songs:

Mr. Pumpkin

Five Little Pumpkins

Pumpkin, Pumpkin

Leaves are Floating Softly Down

Four Little Leaves

Monthly Hymn: The Hymn of St. Francis

~Work Activities~

Various activities as usual, which included Mr. Potato Head (E is for ears and eyes!), eggs (a carton of plastic eggs filled with various items for shaking as well as color sorting) on Cecilia's shelf...

...Caroline worked with this connecting manipulative called Edushapes.

...and Cecilia had a chicken puzzle (since they lay eggs!).

~Foods for E Week~

Lots of eggs...

egg breakfast burritos

Eat Mor Chikin!

Easy Eggplant and Zucchini Casserole (two E's! gosh, it looks so red in this picture! It has tomato paste, tomato sauce, and red wine in it... very yummy!)

enchiladas

English muffin pizzas (except they were from Trader Joe's and therefore called "British muffins" on the packaging, ha ha! We just called them English anyways! ;)

Cecilia ate all the cheese off her English muffin pizza before eating the "crust"

cheesy broccoli souffle (made of eggs, of course)

And the best eggplant parmesan ever! I always get Chris to make this on a weekend because he does an excellent job of it, and it is time-consuming. And the girls eat it - especially Caroline, who has absolutely no picky eater genes, apparently.

Well, Caroline didn't want to try this, actually... it was my lunch one day: eggplant garlic spread on British, er, English muffins

eggs in a basket - fun and easy to make (buttering all the bread well is the time-consuming part!)

Other E foods we had... more eggs for breakfast, "Eggheads" as a snack (see activities below!), chickadees with eggs (pieces of fruit leather cut into oval shapes!)

~Tea Time~

The girls ate their eggheads snack...

...while I had one of my favorites, Earl Grey tea and a muffin that we had made to go with dinner.

Caroline and Cecilia tried the Earl Grey tea too... Caroline said, "I like it, but I don't want any more." Cecilia asked for three refills! Good thing they used the tiny tea set cups or I'd have had a very caffeinated toddler on my hands!

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Ee using playdough

writing E's in cornmeal

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Ee

Cut and Paste E Collage, for which Caroline had to think of several items for me to print photos... you just can't find many E pictures in magazines and catalogs other than ears, eyes, and eating!

~Flower Fairy for Letter E: Eyebright~

coloring the deyebright flower from the Flower Fairy Alphabet while listening to the song

~Saint for Letter E: Elizabeth Ann Seton~

Here's our little painted St. Elizabeth... and, hooray, Saint Cecilia was found this week (she'd been locked in the jail of a castle for some reason...)!

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton poem copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints

Illustrating the saint

Caroline's completed work

~In the Book Baskets~

Science Theme - Eggs:

Chickens Aren't the Only Ones

Rechenka's Eggs

An Extraordinary Egg

Horton Hatches the Egg

Liturgical Year and Religious E Books:

The Holy Eucharist

Favorites for Letter E:

The Elves and the Shoemaker

The Emperor's New Clothes

Emma Kate

Emergency!

The Little Engine that Could

~Picture Study: E is for Eggs~

Here is Caroline's reproduction of the painting Brown and White Eggs by Brian Connelly

~ABC Virtue of the Week: Eat Nicely~

These are virtue coloring sheets found here. Using the great idea of another Catholic homeschooling mom, I am reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them. I am choosing a story from Devotional Stories for Little Folks that reinforces the virtue for each week. We read a story this week about a three year old girl who was upset because she saw another girl about her age eating chocolate candy, crackers, and fruit punch during church, and how her family helped her to understand why they choose not to do this during Mass. I couldn't find a story relating to actual table manners, unfortunately.

No, I don't know why the girl has grey skin, except maybe it is because we really don't have any skin tone markers other than brown and orange (and orange is kind of a stretch for skin!).

~Art Activities for E Week~

Edible Fingerpaints!

mix sweetened condensed milk with food coloring

This gave me a chance to try out my new food coloring!

Caroline painted a house...

displaying the edible-ness of this project!

experiencing the slippery fun of fingerpainting!

Here is one of the papers when it was dry... yes, it still looks wet and sticky, but it is not! It dried very shiny!

Another artistic, edible activity: making eggheads for a snack! I found this idea in Family Fun magazine.

It is simply hard boiled egg slices on round crackers, and then you use whatever toppings to add the facial features: olives, sunflower seeds, carrot slices, cilantro, triangular slices of bell peppers (those are what we used... there are lots of options!).

Here are Caroline's masterpieces.

And Cecilia's. looking less like faces.

~Science: E is for Eggs~

We kept track of our chickens' egg-laying this week using a graph. Well, we couldn't have picked a worse week, as you can see. They never laid more than two eggs per day, and we have five hens! At least two of them are molting... and when they molt, they don't lay eggs much (or at all, it would appear!). Stupid birds... now that the weather is cooling off in the night, they go and lose their feathers. And one who is molting now already did so in the spring, which is odd that she's doing it again...

~Chores/Practical Life: Egg-Related Work!~

Caroline cracking an egg (part of the shell ended up under the yolk, but our egs can be tough to crack, and this was her first time!)

peeling a hard-boiled egg

Caroline also helped to gather the eggs this week... what few eggs there were, that is. And with all the egg-related foods we had, we ran very low on eggs - so low, in fact, that we have NONE in the house right now! We might have to actually BUY some before making French toast for F week!

~Cooking Project: Eggs in Nests~

Cecilia dumps marshmallows into the pot of melted butter...

...Caroline adds puffed brown rice to the mixture (my boring health-nut version of rice krispie treats ;)...

...form into nest shapes while still warm...

...and fill with "eggs" (jelly beans).

Again, healthy food nerdiness showing here... they are jelly beans from Greenlife in Chattanooga, meaning all natural dyes and such. They are also about a year old, maybe more, and have been in my baking drawer just waiting for an opportunity such as this!

~E is for Emergency Preparedness~

We went on a filed trip to the fire station this week (early for F week, but fits in with Emergency for E!). After the trip, I made sure Caroline was able to unlock and open her own window in case of having to escape during a fire.

She also practiced crawling along the floor, checking the door firs to see if it was hot, stuffing pillows at the bottom crack of the door... and we are working on a Fire Safety Lapbook which we will continue and complete during F week!