Vocabulary Lessons (part 1)

As many of you that follow me on facebook know, my dd is struggling with vocabulary and flying through everything else.  So I decided to slow down and focus part of each day on vocab from both her science and grammar books as well as anything else that comes up. 

We had started with the book suggested method of look up the definition and write it out. Good suggestion but, my daughter tends to not read as she is copying, and the more you make her write anything out, the more she shuts down. I still have her do this with new words because learning to use a dictonary is important, but I no longer expect her to retain anything from it.

 

I then moved on to making her worksheets: some sentences with a bunch of blanks and then a bank of words to fill them in. This went a little better.  Unfortunately, there is no way I can keep up with the pace, and that is a whole lot of paper and ink.

I also had her create sentences for each word. This we will also use again but it is not enough for the amount of vocab we are learning.

So, tradition out the windows, I got out my word program and created many pages of note cards (I made ours business card size), printed them on some paper and laminated. ** strong suggestion here: make sure you set your printer to mark corners if you're not actually using perforated card paper. We had a long night of drawing lines and trying to figure out where to cut the cards.

Now for the fun!  Here are the games we've played so far this week. I am planning to do a couple of posts with all the games we come up with.

 

For the first one I laid out all the cards we were learning on the table, in this case words from her grammar book. Words on the left and definitions on the right. I then gave her clothes pins to make sets out of the words. I took turns with her to make it seem more like a game, but if you have multiple kids I am sure that will not be an issue. She paired far more words than I gave her credit for. The couple that got confused happened to be synonyms, such as fly and soar.

For the other game I came up with this week, I had to dig out my old white board and tape the cards on. She then had to match them with a wipe off marker. I tried combining some she would know with some she could figure out when the rest were eliminated. If you do not have a spare wipe off board I would suggest taping them to the table and giving the kids some lengths of string/yarn to match them with.

This was an instant hit, and instead of avoiding her vocab box, she's trying to skip to it.  Both of these made her read the cards many times to familiarize herself with the words. I also found her now using these words when we make sentences for our grammar work.

I have some new games up my sleeve for next week.

If It Looks Good and Tastes Good, Must be Homemade!

You can thank Penny over at A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned for motivating me to dig these pictures out of storage. :) My family has a history of homemade birthday cakes. You know something isn't going well if there's a store bought cake in the house and, well, you feel a bit jipped. My grandmother had made us all our favorite cakes from scratch for as long as I can remember.  Now, unfortunately, she is gone, but her cakes live on! We have taken the same recipes and added a twist.

 

For DD's 1st birthday, my sister made her this cookie monster cake along with some cupcakes to match. I believe she got the dye for the icing at a party/baking supply store. This will always be my favorite. It was made to match her sesame street peek-a-boo book that was never far from her side. DD had a cupcake to her self and, boy, was it a good thing I had stripped her down to a onesie before she got her hands into it.

I have to thank my sister once again for these princess cakes.  It's amazing what can be done with a cake topper and some imagination.  Oh, and a steady hand doesn't hurt.

My daughter is lucky to have a January birthday, which means we can come up with all sorts of themes most people can't use.  For DD's 3rd bday, nothing would do but Rudolph. Ever have that one DVD you are tempted to hide? Yup, thats right!  For us it was Rudolph.  I think I packed it away with the tree that year, but it gave me a great place to start.  We did reindeer cupcakes, reindeer paper supplies and pin the nose on the deer games along with a bunch of crafts and reindeer ornaments as favors.

I will thank my sister once again. I was scrambling trying to come up with a tinkerbell cake and she saved the day by making it a lot simpler than I was trying to. DD got a pretty cake and birthday gift all in one for this one.

For dd's kids parties I try to stick with cupcakes. The less work I have to do during the party, the more time I have to talk to socialize myself, and that's what parties are really for right? ;) So that the parents can get our time in as well.  Here you see some cute little doggies all with different color eyes.  You can tell the eyes are candy-covered chocolates, the ears are cookies, the mouth is one piece of a twizzler, and the nose is a rootbeer jelly bean.

For the family party I show off a little.  By no means am I a master icer or cake maker, but a lot of icing, toothpicks, twinkies (yes, a rare treat, but you do what you have to), candy, some crackers, patience and a bit of time, and everyone's so amazed at the creation no one notices you can't ice a cupcake evenly to save your life.

Tom the Turkey was a family effort. We made it for Thanksgiving, but it would be cute for a fall birthday also. You can see how the cake was cut and layered on the left. Pyrex bowls and loaf pans make great building blocks. My daughter happily decorated the feathers.

Winter birthdays definitely have an upside in creativity. DD's second favorite animal after dogs just happens to be penguins.  If you're like me and just don't get along well with icing, remember sprinkles are your friend. I find them in Target dollar bins and the Stop and Shop bakery area.  I would love to know if anyone has found food coloring free sprinkles! For now, I will consider it a once a year treat!

The downside of having a January Birthday tends to be a lot of snow, and last year was definitely a record year. We made the best of it by having a Valentine's Day party instead. These were just simple stencils I picked up from the craft store and some sprinkles. DD had great fun picking the designs and colors each cake would have. They had an extra suprise of some sprinkles thrown into my white cake mix to liven it up a little.

I hope I have given you some inspiration and courage to try your own cake. With a little planning, and creativity, it's so easy to make a homemade cake. Between the cost and the taste you can't go wrong. Once again, keep it simple and make use of what's on hand. Also avoid anything that costs a lot.  You can buy confectionary sugar and butter for a couple dollars instead of canned frosting that is always the wrong consitency and way more expensive.

1 down and 9 to go... Months that is :)

We were on a short week with a three day weekend. My DD spent some time with her aunt and cousin on friday, while I had a doctors appointment and some errands to run. I have to say, a four day week does seem to fly. Here is what I managed to record. We did manage to fit in some science projects, but I was busy helping, so I didn't get all the pictures I wanted.

The family had a picnic in the park. This is a shot DD took of Buddy.

This is her favorite way of working on time, so who am I to refuse! You can find the printable here on Mr printables.com

We worked on some multiplication skills. Hard to believe she's on multiplication! Seems like she should still be learning to count.

And of course, we learned about Rosh Hashanah.  The apple is a symbol of a good year, and so far, ours is off to a good start.

Though we don't normally have a three day weekend, the shortened week helped us to recover some of our seemlingly lost energy.  The weather hasn't been the greatest up here, and we needed a day to play.  Next week we'll come back nice and strong!

Meal Planning Challenge-Week 3

Winter is around the corner, and if you're anything like me, you will be trying to cut the food budget in order to buy heating oil. Considering that I do not love living on chicken (it's the only anywhere near cheap meat here) or beans and rice, it means getting creative. We almost always replace any ground beef in a recipe with ground turkey, and many times go one step further and replace a lot of it with beans. Believe it or not, this does not change the taste, or it does so little that even my picky 7 year old has yet to pick up on it. See the recipe at the bottom of the post for my little tricks.

Monday

Breakfast: cereal with banana

Snack: peach slices

Lunch: pork roast and veggies

Snack:  veggies and dip

Dinner: sweet and sour chicken with rice

To Do: Make Bread

Tuesday

Breakfast: eggs in a basket

Snack: apple sauce

Lunch: Tuna sandwiches

Snack: banana and pb sandwich

Dinner: leftovers from last week (yes, somehow they are still in the fridge)

Wednesday

Breakfast: cereal with craisins

Snack: apple slices with pb

Lunch: macaroni with sauce

Snack: trail mix

Dinner: Cinnamon Pancakes

Thursday

Breakfast: pancakes

Snack:  apple sauce

Lunch: egg salad

Snack: fruit bar

Dinner:  Fish, rice and steamed veggies

To Do: make chili

Friday

Breakfast: waffles

Snack: yogurt

Lunch: chili

Snack: veggie and dip

Dinner: pizza

Saturday

Breakfast: french toast

Snack: banana

Lunch: Leftovers

Snack:  veggies and dip

Dinner: stuffed acorn squash

Sunday

Breakfast: Omelets with peppers, onions and ham chunks

Snack: apple

Lunch: Mac and cheese

Snack: juice pop

Dinner: Orange Chicken with sweet potatoes

How to doctor ground turkey:

1) Saute some onions (we use about a 1/2 cup onion for a pound of meat)

2) break up the ground turkey (we are using about 1lb here)

3) add 1 tsp-2 tsp of ground cumin

4) add 1tsp of chili powder

5) finish cooking turkey, stirring occasionally

6) drain

7) add 2-3 tbsp of worcestershire sauce- We use Lea and Perrins reduced sodium, read the lables here, a lot of them contain soy

8) give it a couple stirs and let soak in and you're ready to add it to your recipe

To add beans:

I normally replace about 50% for DD or 100% for us. It's better to start low and work your way up and do it when the kids are playing elsewhere.

1) heat some EVOO in a skillet and add a can of beans. Dark red kidneys seem to work the best

2) Smash with a potato masher or back of a spoon till they are chunky.

3) Add some onions, and 1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce.

4)Cook till the onions are done and then combine with your meat.

For sauces, I normally just put the can of beans and some water (add in small quantities until consistency desired) in a the food processer and blend. Then add them to the sauce at the end of the cooking period. This gives a meaty taste to a vegetarian sauce as well as adding protein. Do not add them at the beginning or they will burn.

 Don't forget to check out Keeper of the Home  and I'm an Orginizing Junky every monday for more meal planning ideas.

Wow week 3 is over already?

Time really does fly.  Then again, we are half way into All About Spelling Level 1 and almost done with Singapore Math 1b.   Unfortunately, when you start a new book in second grade, you sometimes have to work through some of the work in previous editions so you have the right foundation to move on. Once DD picked up on the format of Singapore Math she started trucking right along. It won't be long before she's gotten multiplication and division mastered, or at least understands the basics.

This weeks taste test was Peach, Plum and Nectarine. I know they don't quite go together, but I am running out of combinations here. While these were fruits she loved as a toddler, she's been turning up her nose at them lately. Once again the taste test worked wonders and she's asking for them along with apples now. 

Following our Road Trip U.S.A. We visited Delaware this week. Did you know that Delaware is the First State and that Peach blossoms are the state flower? We built the bridge suggested in the curriculum.  I was surprised DD didn't seem as impressed with this as she was with coloring her peach blossoms. Maybe the bridge wasn't as impressive because it was so wobbly, it took both of us to hold it up until it was tied.

We did some work in the car while waiting for Daddy to meet us. Love the page protectors!  They make reworking an assignment so easy.  It took some time getting used to the Shurley format.  DD knew the answers, just not what they were asking.

More on our cells this time in Jello.

Can't forget our Pinwheels for peace. This is just a cute way to celebrate Peace day.

We also moved from cells to skeletons.  The Femur is the longest bone.  DD couldn't belive this till she compared them all.

On Friday, to celebrate Maybon we read "The Little Red House with No Doors and No Windows and a Star Inside" We did not get to make our star prints using apples, unfortunately.  Hoping to fit it in this week.