Growing with my Girls: November 2010

We have finished up I week along the Alphabet Path! I am hoping to get J week in and maybe K during Advent, but I also want to focus on preparing and spending time with Advent activities.

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual. The cute little ice cream cones are little erasers I found at the craft store.

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

~Work Activities~

Among this week's activities were this instrument puzzle and I Spy bottles

~Circle Time~

For Show and Tell, Caroline brought her stuffed camel, who she says is named Ida. The mystery sound pouch item was an ice cream scoop (which was promptly removed after a tantruming two year old used it to whack her sister in the shin).

Songs and Rhymes

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Ten Little Indians

I Scream, You Scream

If Wishes were Horses

Going to St. Ives

various ice cream rhymes using felt board

And for Thanksgiving:

I Have a Turkey

Mr. Turkey

Little Pilgrim Dressed in Grey

~Foods for I Week~

Lots of ethnic foods this week, since not all that much begins with I: Italian, Irish, and Indian foods abounded in our kitchen!

Irish Guinness Beef Stew with Irish Brown Bread

Indian Curry

The girls didn't really care for it, although it was not spicy at all

Irish oatmeal with maple cream (from my King Arthur whole grains baking cookbook - don't know how authentic that maple cream is, but it sure was delicious!)

my Irish oatmeal alongside my everyday ritual of Irish breakfast tea

Irish soda bread

We also enjoyed the Italian meals of lasagna and spaghetti, insects on a log for snack, and of course, ice cream!

~Tea Time~

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes!!! These are to die for. Lucky for my waistline, I only made a half batch (a dozen instead of 24, that is!).

These are the same cupcakes I made when we were at the beach... they were much prettier that time. This time I skipped the piping of the icing and just scooped it and spread it...

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Ii using playdough

writing I's in cornmeal

Cut and Paste I Collage... I was so surprised at how many things we found! I printed off the pictures of the Ingallses, insects, and St. Ignatius, but Caroline found the ice cream, ironing, and ice skating images in magazines.

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Ii

~Flower Fairy for Letter I: Iris~

Caroline coloring her flower fairy page from the Flower Fairies coloring book

Caroline's completed Iris Fairy

~Saint for Letter I: St. Ignatius~

painted St. Ignatius

Illustrating St. Ignatius

Caroline's completed work

Completed St. Helen poem copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints

This was Caroline's fist time to actually copy the words rather than trace them, and I thought she did a great job! We spread it out over two separate sessions. the idea here is for her to do her very best, neatest writing... we erase over and over until it is right, and so it is slow going sometimes. However, the copywork later in the week from God's Alphabet didn't go as well, so we are back to tracing for the next few weeks, I think...

~In the Book Baskets~

Science Theme: Insects

Bugs!

Insect Soup

Fireflies!

Insect (DK Eyewitness book)

The Life and Times of the Ant

Ant Cities

Liturgical Year and Religious I Books:

The Immaculate Conception

Social Studies Theme: Laura Ingalls

Inside Laura's Little House

A Little House Birthday

Going West

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Prairie Day

Summertime in the Big Woods

Sugar Snow

The Deer in the Woods

A Little Prairie House

Winter Days in the Big Woods

~Word Box Work~

sorting words by long and short I

~Picture Study: I is for Insect~

Caroline working on a drawing of a butterfly... we couldn't find a print of this one online anywhere, so she worked from the small detail image in the book.

~ABC Virtue of the Week: I'm Sorry~

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. This weeks's story was about a boy going to confession to say he was sorry for his sins.

~Activities for I Week~

Ice Cream Cone Math

Ice Cream Scoop Patterns

I drew some cones and started a pattern on each using Do-a-Dots. Caroline completed each patterns, forming some very tall ice cream cones!

Some were a bit wobbly, but she got every pattern correct.

Making Ice Cream

Cecilia is good at slicing bananas!

Caroline sliced the strawberries.

The slices were laid out on a baking sheet to go into the freezer for a few hours.

The girls put the frozen fruit into the food processor and we pulsed it to chop it up. Then I added a bit of vanilla extract and milk until it reached ice cream consistency...

ooooh, yum!

And it is not real ice cream... it is called "Better Than Ice Cream," and it is amazing how much it resembles the real thing, and with no sugar at all! The frozen bananas are the trick to it.

They love it!!

And there's some left over for the freezer!

~I is for the Ingalls Family~

The book Inside Laura's Little House is such a fun resource... it contains lots of crafts and recipes relating to the Little House books. We made the Ma's Pancakes recipe for dinner, and I poured some of them into the shape of people, just like Laura's Ma did on Christmas morning in Little House in the Big Woods. The recipe was yummy... molasses in the pancakes gave them a different flavor from what we are used to.

Here's Caroline with her pancake man (and omelette and fruit)

Cecilia took a few minutes of finagling with hers until she discovered the best way to pick it up and hold it!

Here the girls show off their headbands we made like Laura's and Mary's... this idea was also in the book Inside Laura's Little House.

And while the Ingalls family used a churn to make their butter, I thought it would be fun for the girls to see how cream, a liquid, becomes a semisolid butter with movement... so we all took turns shaking it while reading together!

Caroline holding the homemade butter

Making an Igloo

So, I wanted to make igloos using sugar cubes, but no store in my whole town carries sugar cubes - isn't that nuts? I was talking to my mom, and she mentioned how the preschool teachers at her school do it: they take an upside-down white styrofoam bowl and let the kids glue mini marshmallows all over it. I opted for cotton balls, and this is what we ended up with:

Caroline's igloo, complete with a "polar bear" inside

~Cooking Project: I is for Irish Brown Bread~

This is a fun recipe for kids, because they get to mix it up with their hands! No eggs in it to worry about, and no rising time either: mix it up, at it out, and bake it! Hmm, we should make Irish brown bread and soda bread both more often because of how simple they are!

Messy hands!! I know where I found the Irish brown bread recipe, but I cannot locate it now and the blog it is on has no search feature... The Irish soda bread recipe is from the La Leche League Whole Foods for the Whole Family cookbook.

Mmm, warm out of the oven!

I is for Ice Cream!

We took a trip to Bruster's with that free kid's scoop coupon that we have had laying around for over a year now... Cecilia chose mint chocolate chip, and Caroline chose strawberry. And, we happened to go during "happy hour," so Caroline's was free with the coupon, and Cecilia's was free when I bought a single cup of pumpkin pecan ice cream - YUM! I love Bruster's pumpkin flavored ice cream... it sounds so weird, but it is so good!