Warm me up! Winter soup.

One of my favorite things about winter is all the homemade soups.  There's nothing better on a bitter cold day than to walk in the front door and smell the aroma of warm simmering soup.  What a wonderful way of saying "Welcome home".  Whoever invented the crock pot deserves a bowl.

Every week I buy a bunch of fresh veggies and whatever is left over goes into the soup at the end of the week.  The kids enjoy the soup and I enjoy the thought of how many vegetables they're are consuming. I try to always make some biscuits or whole grain bread of some sort, just to sneak in the extra grains.  I'll post some of the bread recipes another day.

On the weeks that I roast a whole chicken for dinner, the family looks forward to later in the week. I simmer the chicken carcass for about 3-4 hours or until the meat falls off the bone.  You'll be surprised by how much meat you will have.  Separate the meat and toss the other stuff.

Chicken broth
1 can of diced tomatoes with garlic, basil, and oregano.
1 onion diced
1 clove of garlic or more
1 summer squash and zucchini sliced
 2 carrots chopped or more
green beans
celery
carrots
about 1/4 cup of brown rice
Cook until vegetables are tender.

This one is my personal favorite.  Use the same base as before.  Chicken broth and Diced tomatoes with garlic, basil, and oregano.  Dump the whole can in, juice and all.

sliced summer squash and zucchini
carrots
onion and garlic
kale, chopped into bite size pieces
1/4 pearled barley

I never measure I just throw stuff in and it always comes out great.  Enjoy!

Little Homemakers in Training

Ever since the girls were babies, I have always included them in the cooking and baking.  They would sit in their high chair next to me as I prepared dinners.  As they grew they would pull over a chair and help dump measured ingredients into bowls.  When I felt they were ready, I would allow then to stir the simmering soup on the stove or sauteing vegetables, of course I'm always right beside them.  As they grew in their obedience and gross motor skills, I would allow them to cut soft foods with a butter knife.  Now, Elysia at age eight and Makenna at age five, are fully capable of helping me with most of the kitchen duties.  Not only do they cook but I've trained them to help clean up.  Elysia is able to load and unload the dishwasher by herself , although this is still my job on most nights.  Elysia has meals that she has learned to prepare alone with no help.  When she is finished I will put it in the oven for her.  Often when I make the week's menu, each of the girls will choose a new meal to make with me.  Not only do each of them learn a new meal, they also get to have one on one time with Mommy.  From time to time people will ask why I do this?  I truly have a passion for cooking and baking and wanted my girls to feel the same way, and it worked!  The girls are continuously asking to make something and they truly enjoy it. (As I'm writing this Elysia is begging me to allow her to make some cookies.) Not to mention it's an important life skill that they will one day need.  It's also a great way to teach basic math skills, nutrition, how to read and follow directions, and it encourages a sense of accomplishment of their behalf. I'm so grateful the Lord has blessed me with my beautiful daughters, I'm just having so much fun!  I can see the benefit of my labor as Elysia often allows Connor to help her bake.  I see her teaching him how to dump measured ingredients into a bowl and stir, not only did I teach her cooking skills but how to prepare to be a homemaking mommy.  I can only depend on the Lord to teach me how to be a loving mother as I train my little girls to one day cherish motherhood as well.

Makenna making brownies and Elysia preparing salad.

Elysia's famous pizza!

Face painting

I had the kiddos paint while I was cooking supper this evening.  Usually I would have them help me cook but tonight I just wanted to get it done quickly and with little to no mess.  Well,  I got dinner done but had a whole different kind of mess to clean up.  I think I will stick to the normal routine for now on.

Cookie Math

This is a quick video reenactment of what we did during cookie math today.  I should let you know that I had to bribe her with two cookies if she did it again in front of the camera.  Of course she didn't count as high as she did the first time.  Oh well, I'm sure you get the gist of our counting lesson.

Makenna is doing really well with her math lessons and can count without my help up to twenty nine.  She was having trouble understanding what number comes after, she wanted to say twenty ten. As I was thinking of a fun way to teach this new concept to her, I remembered back when I was doing preschool with Elysia, and decided it was time for cookie math!

She whipped up a batch of sugar cookie dough, rolled it out, used number cookie cutters, and then waited patiently until they were done!

I had her place the cookie numbers zero through nine in a line as she counted.  Then I place a number one above the line to represent the teens group.  She brought each number up to the one making a new number from the teens group.  As she came to the nine cookie she realized that there was no ten, ( here's when the light bulb went one) "Oh, I start back with the zero."  At this point I asked her what comes after one?  I replaced it with a two and explained that this is the twenties group.  We continue this for some time until she was tired.

Next, she frosted some circles with the peppermint frosting that Elysia made.  I chose a number and she had to place the same amount of chocolate chips on the circle cookie.

Outside Time with Daddy

The girls got new snowboards for Christmas from their Auntie. They were so excited and so was Matt!  He has been waiting for this for a long time.  When Matt was a teenager he worked on a near by mountain as a snowboard instructor.  He has been looking forward to teaching his own kids when the time was right.  He wanted to begin teaching them when he felt they were old enough to truly enjoy it and not get frustrated or over whelmed.  Well, here it goes...

Elysia is still smiling!  She is able to go a few feet before falling, laughing, and getting up again.  I have to say Matt was right to wait,  if we started teaching her last year I know that she would have been crying at this point.

Kenna is doing well too, but she still prefers to use her blue sled.

I'm happy to say that Elysia is now turning slightly and learning to stop now that she has mastered the art of falling gracefully.

Thank you Daddy and Auntie!

Baking Snowflake Cupcakes

The girls love to bake and I enjoy baking with them.  Today we decided to make home made cupcakes instead of buying the box, we don't typically make them from scratch. Of course, I had to some how tie it into what we are learning in our lesson time.  So we added candy snowflakes on top!  Oh yeah, I also made it into a math lesson on fractions.  Elysia got it but Kenna was kind of lost. 

Bake at 375 for 18 minutes.
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tea. baking powder
1/2 tea. salt
2/3 cup butter
1 3/4 sugar
1 1/2 tea. vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk

Beat butter, add sugar and vanilla.  Next, add eggs one at a time.  Now you can add the flour with baking powder alternating with the milk.  Oops... Just add the salt whenever you remember.

Spoon batter into the pan.  Don't forget to use your "Shh...I'm concentrating" face.

Whip up some yummy homemade frosting using butter, confectionery sugar, and a little milk.

You know what to do next! 

My Father's Dragon

Most everyday I read to the kids.  The experts say it's one of the best things you can do for your kids, so hopefully I get at least one thing right in this whole parenting thing. Currently we're reading My Father's Dragon by Ruth Chrisman Gannett.  Another homeschooling mom passed it on to us and I thought it would be a good starting place to transition from picture books to chapter books.  It's relativity short, only eight seven pages and ten chapters.  My goal is to increase Makenna's attention span and encourage her in vocabulary and language skills, but more importantly to foster a love of reading for well written literature.

I wanted to see how Makenna was doing following the story and if she was fully understanding it.  I had her narrate back to me what we have read so far, I was surprised to find out she understood it quite well.  I also had her draw a picture of the Dragon using the description found in a paragraph.

Connor on the other hand didn't really care for books, he just wanted to play with his trucks and trains. Never mind with that sitting down stuff!  So I began to pray about it.  My boy was very different from my girls who loved to sit on my lap and have me read to them, so of course I was a little concerned.  Not many days after my quick prayer, I noticed he wanted to look at a picture on his little board book.  Now he reads his books more than he plays with his trucks. :)  This is how he goes to sleep every night.  We keep his draw filled with interesting new material and then he drifts off to la la land in a pile of books.