Well today was our last Cooking with Books today and we chose one of the best books ever! Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett is the most adorable gingerbread boy book ever. However I ordered the book and it didn’t come it! Ahhhh…..thankfully on Jan Brett’s website, there is a short video with her reading most of the book to some kids! So we watched that instead! Then it was time to bake! We made dough, rolled it out, cut our ginger boy and girls, and then decorated them! Then it was in to the oven with them! 8 minutes no more or less! We didn’t want our gingerbread babies running around the house! They had fun, we had fun, and there was lots of yummy gingerbread. The best part was that just as we finished our cookies, the book I ordered, finally made it here! So we were able to read it together after all! Here are some pictures!
So there you have it! It was an amazing end to a great year of fun! Now, we are on to the next plan! What will it be? Hmmmm….don’t know, but it will be awesome!
Today was such a beautiful day that my friend and I decided to take the kids to the zoo. Now as a good homeschooler, I really needed to make sure that we had some educational fun. So I told the girls that they needed to find the animals from North America while we explored! Bunny was to take pictures of them and then we could make an animal page for our north America study later on. (yes I am still promising a post on that, but another day)!. We saw all sorts of cool stuff. We got to watch the otter’s feeding, the polar bear cubs playing, and the hippos actually moving around! Plus some ducks even ate right from out hands! It was a great day at the zoo! Here are some pictures…..ok maybe a lot of pictures!
So that was pretty much what we did all day! 😉 I hope that you are enjoying the beautiful cooler weather too! I love this time of year! It is such a great time to be outside. Happy Fall Y’all!
PS. Sorry about the sideways pictures. For some reason when I put them into wordpress, they are getting rotated back. Hmmmm…..looks like a techie problem.
Are you ready for fall? That is the question I keep hearing here. However, with the 100 degree weather we had here today, I can say NO. But it is September and I know that it is coming! 🙂 So in order to start getting us into the mood of fall cooking, my friend and I picked an apple recipe for this month’s cooking with books! Turned out it was YUMMY! Our book is Apple Cake : A Recipe for Love. And here is what the recipe in the back of the book turned out!
It was a lot of fun for the kids to cook this one! There were a lot of steps so there was lots for them to do! I love our cooking day! Have your gotten cooking lately with your kids?
Well as promised, here is our Ice Cream making fun from the other day! It was the July edition of our cooking with books fun! We read the book Ice Cream: The Full Scoop by Gail Gibbons and it explained how ice cream is made. After reading the book, we made a simple ice cream mix with half and half, whipping cream, and sugar. All of this was mixed in the old fashioned ice cream maker. The maker needed ice and salt placed around the drum. Thankfully this maker had a motor attached to the top of it so there was no hand cranking needed. Or so we thought! It motor decided not to work right, so we tried using the hand mixer instead. After about an hour it was still really soupy….then it was Dad to the rescue! My friend’s husband came home, fiddled with the motor and got it working! hooray! So we had yummy ice cream after all (don’t worry we had some from the store as a back up just incase)! It was a day full of yummy treats, lots of playtime, and summer fun (even a tornado warning to make it interesting)!
And the picture of the baby is just because she is too cute! She didn’t get any ice cream though! The kids had such a fun time together and it was fun as always! Besides, what is more summery then ice cream?
Today we had our monthly Cooking with Books day! Once a month, my friend and I get the kids together and read a book. Then we cook the food that they make in the book! So far it has been a HUGE hit with the kids! Today it was my turn and I found a book called Pond Day by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. In the this book, Buddy and his mom go for a walk around a pond. For lunch they bring some turtle sandwiches! So planned to go to a pond with the kids and make our sandwiches there. However, it was supposed to storm, so fortunately my friend’s mom has a pond behind her house. She was kind enough to let us play there so that if the storm did happen we could head inside! We were lucky though, aside from a few heavy sprinkles, we were able to play outside in the pond the whole day! We started off with our story and then we made lunch like Buddy! The kids had fun “cooking” up their sandwiches! In the story Buddy also had wheat crackers and cookies to eat! 🙂
After all lunch, the kids all wanted to play in the pond! It was hot, there were suits for everyone, and well…it was pond day! 🙂 There was a lot jumping and smiling and splashing! They even played through the rain! It was a pretty sad (and sandy) moment when they realized that they had to start getting ready to go home! I think that signifies a pretty good time! 😉
Today we got together with our friend for a fun day in the woods and the sun! There was lots of running, laughing, smiles. and talking. Some climbing, and new things tried. And there was some little fish that got names during the picnic lunch! It was a beautiful day and wonderful way to spend a spring day!
Digging for fossiles
Here is Pup “reading” this sign. She said the sound of each letter she saw!
Look at how close this squirrel got while we were in the bird blind.
Feeding Fish
Playing with the Puppets
This underground tunnel was hit!
Well….Bunny was not amused by my camera! 🙂
Here are the fish the kids names while they ate lunch. One was named Puffy and one Longy. 🙂 They kept coming back to see their new friends!
Well spring cleaning has been going well but it has taken alot out of me! That means there really hasn’t been to much to share with you! But the other day our homeschool group got together to celebrate Earth Day! It was a perfect way to have some fun in the middle of a busy week! After a wee bit of decorating (it is me after all), we started out celebration off with a fun craft. Each child got a piece of natural earth clay and they rolled it into an earth. The they added some blue dyed stones. Add a shake of glitter and a stick, and now you have beautiful, natural garden markers! The kids had a lot of fun with it! Plus they turned out so pretty!
After that we read a fun vintage book called Junk Day on Juniper Street. In the story everyone decides that they need to get rid of some junk. After everyone clears out their houses, they needed to wait a day for the truck. As they waited, they started to find that their neighbors junk was just what THEY needed! In the end, there was no junk! We talked about how reusing thing is better then just throwing then away! Next we read the creation story right from the bible. After ward we talked about what Earth Day means and what we should do to protect they Earth and why we need to do those things.
Finally it was time to eat! We had a tea with all the food representing one part of the creation story! The kids thought it was so much fun and yummy! 😉 Do you want to see what food we had? Here they are:
God separated the light from the darkness.
Our food for this was eclairs, half dark, half light!
Next her separate the water from the sky.
Our food was jello with whipped cream clouds!
After that, God separated the seas from the dry land.
So we had dirt cake!
Then God created vegetation.
Obviously we ate some veggies.
Then God created the sun for day and the moon and stars for night.
This is our sun made from fruit with the darkness of space made from blueberries.
Next, God created the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.
We ate some Goldfish crackers for the fish and chicken salad for the birds (yes a bit disturbing, but we needed something for a main dish)!
Then, God created the animals.
Animal crackers are our food for this!
Finally God made humans.
We cut out bread in the shape of gingerbread men.
After all of this fun and celebrating our beautiful world, the kids got time to just play and have fun together! Of course after a while it got pretty rowdy! So we put the Lorox on which seemed like the perfect way to end our day! While the kids had some movie time, we moms sat down to plan out the next year of plans! It worked out really well! I hope you all had a chance to remember the gift that the earth is to each of us! Happy {late} Earth Day!
Sorry about the long break there! I have been having computer issues and we ended up getting a new one! Which means I have been adding alot of programs and trying to get the hang of Windows 8! But everything is up and running and I hope to get you some more amazing posts about what we have been up to! The other day was our Cooking with Books Day! We read a really sweet book about pretzels and how we came to have them and what they represent! Plus it follows a lovely number order as you count to 12! Pretzels by the Dozen is a little hard to get since it is out of print, we found it on our library search sight. We started by reading the book, and then we started making pretzel dough. We made two different kinds of dough, one white (the recipe was in the book) and the other was from Weelicious (by the way my new favorite food resource! Everything is good!). The kids loved all the measuring and we even got some fraction conversions in too! 🙂 After that the dough got to rise and the kids got to copy a little poem about the pretzel to share with friends! When they finished, the dough was ready to roll into pretzels and bake! We made some salted ones and some sugar ones! They were both pretty good! The kids wanted to eat them all! 🙂
Yummy! I am loving this monthly get together! Wonderful food, awesome friends, and great books! What’s not to love? Happy Baking!
Today was our second Cooking With Books day! Last year my friend and I decided that each month we would get the kids together to do a craft. This year we thought it would be fun to read a book and cook something from that book! Last month we did Soup Day, this month it was Pinkalicious! I love this book and so do my girls! If you dont know the story, a girl and her mom make pink cupcakes and after eating a bunch of them, the girl turns pink! The doctor tells her the her pinkatius can only be cured by eating green food! Since she hates green food that is a problem. I wont tell you what happens though! 😉 I found some fun idea for decorations online, so we put some simple things together to make it pretty!
So after reading the book, we made pink cupcakes! I didnt use a cake mix and it took me a long time to find a recipe that looked good. I finally found one and it was pretty good. I wanted to make them from scratch since we were baking! All the kids got to help and they loved it! When they were baking, the kids got to play and I got to get things together to make frosting.
For the frosting, we made a basic buttercream. I dyed most of it a light pink and made a pipping bag of darker pink for making pretty swirls. Then it was time to frost! Oh Yes….this is what everyone was waiting for! Time to taste frost the cupcakes! Everyone cupcakes looked great and everyone ate them right after they were done! Who needs lunch?!
I made lunch all green to cure our pinkatitus! 😉 We had green mac and cheese, green grapes, celery, cucumbers and pears. Plus we had green juice to drink. Food coloring is an amazing thing! The kids thought I was a little crazy, but they all agreed that it tasted just like normal! I love messing with their heads a little bit! 😉
Pinkalicious is a great book and a fun one to cook with! I cant wait to see what we have planned for March! Happy Schooling and cooking everyone!
Last Year my friend and I decided not to give gifts, instead we have our craft days! This year we thought the same thing, except, we are going to be cooking! That’s right! Each month, we will read a story and cook something from that book! For example, today we read Soup Day by Melissa Iwai and we made the soup from the recipe from the back of the book! Each month we will do another book and the kids will get a chance to cook! Its defiantly going to be a yummy year! 🙂 Like I said, today we read Soup Day! In the story today, the girl and her mother went to the store together to pick out the vegetables that they needed to make soup! So we started off at the store to buy celery, carrots, potatoes, onions, zucchini, parsley, mushrooms, and pasta!
After we bought our groceries we headed back to the house to get chopping! The kids had a great time choosing something to cut up into bit. According to the book, the girl got to help cut zucchini and mushrooms with her plastic knife, so even the littlest ones got to help! Once everything was chopped, it was into the pot!
In the story, the girl and her mom played and played and played while they waited to for the soup! So, the kids ran off to play and play and play!
Finally the soup was done and everyone was ready to eat! 🙂 What I think amazed me most, was that everyone ate most of their veggies! It was super yummy.
So there you have it! I am super excited about this new year of fun! My friend and I made a list of the books we want to do for each month and what we are cooking! The kids are excited and so am I! What a great way to learn and have fun at the same time!
