Tis the season!

For yummy goodies, that is. Every year I do some baking and such for Christmas, and this year is no exception. Today I'm planning on making fudge and buckeyes, and I may make some sugar cookies too if I feel up to it (and have enough butter lol) Now I already know, what are the recipes I use for these goodies? Well, I'll share now.

Buckeyes

3 lbs. powdered sugar
2 lbs. good creamy peanut butter (I use Jif)
2/3 slab paraffin (aka Gulf Wax)
1 lb. butter (or margarine sticks), softened
1 large package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Combine the powdered sugar, peanut butter, and butter in a large bowl. Roll by hand into small balls, you'll have about 200 balls (about the size of a golf ball, maybe a little smaller) Chill them overnight. The next day, melt chocolate chips with a double boiler (I use a big pot with a small metal bowl as a makeshift one, it works) and then add paraffin. Stick a toothpick into each ball and dip them about 3/4 into the chocolate, leaving a cirle undipped around the toothpick. Place on a cookie sheet to cool, and chill until hard. They should look kind of like actual buckeye nuts.

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Peanut-butter fudge

18 oz. jar creamy Jif peanut butter
1 small tub marshmallow creme (cheap stuff is fine)
2 sticks butter, softened (NOT melted)
12 oz. can Carnation evaporated milk
4 1/2 cups sugar

Put the peanut butter and marshmallow creme each on a plate for easy adding when its time. THEN get a heavy saucepan out. Combine milk, butter, and sugar in the pan without heat and mix well. Then put on heat and cook on medium-high heat until boiling, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Set a timer for 7 minutes as soon as it starts boiling and continue to cook, stirring constantly, for that 7 minutes. Immediately remove from heat when timer goes off. Whisk in peanut butter to creamy, then add marshmallow creme and whisk until fully combined. put in greased (or cooking-sprayed) 9x13 pan and refridgerate FLAT overnight. (Oh yeah, when you pop it in the fridge you MUST hand that sppon to the husband for him to lick clean, or to the kids or yourself to lick clean in his honor if he's unable to do it because he's at work like mine or deployed like my little brother)

I've not made the fudge recipe before, but it looks really promising to me. My great-granny used to make some awesome fudge when I was a kid but never taught me her recipe for it, so I've been searching since she died in 2003 for a recipe that is really close to hers. This one from the looks of it may be a very close match, but I'll know for sure tomorrow when the fudge is chilled and ready to eat. I have soooooo much butter on my counter getting soft right now, its not even funny lol And I still have to hit the store for more butter and a few more things to make the fudge, but my father is going to come over so that I can do that. I caught him early enough in the day that I know he'll be sober for it, so I'm taking advantage (I was planning to go tonight after Scott got home from work but I don't need to now)

preschool galore week 1

Well, its official, miss Kimberly is in panties full time now! She's been wearing them for a week with no accidents, so we have officially graduated her to preschooler status. She starts lessons today. Here is her preschool lessons for this week:

letter Ff
number 1
counting to 5
color red
fishies is our theme

Sooooo, we'll be doing a variety of activities this week that all surround the above topics. For the letter, we're going to learn how to print the capital F and recognize capital and lower-case Ff, learn the sound, and find objects that start with /f/. In math, we'll learn to recognize the number 1 and model what 1 obect is, and work on counting to 5 (she can already do this one so its a review for her) For the color, we're going to learn to recognize the color word, find red objects, and color pictures of red things. For fishies, we'll learn about some of the different kinds of fishies, count fish crackers (and then eat them lol), color different fishies to make unique ones of our own, and visit the pet shop to look at some of the different kinds of fish that you can have as a pet. Oh, and I may also try and get a hold of "Finding Nemo" to watch, and we may look at different exotic marine life online and such. I'm not sure how far we'll go with fishies yet, we're going to play it by ear.

The big kids are having a different load of work. In history, Melissa is still in ancient Egypt, currently studying Judaism (I probably totally misspelled that but am too lazy to look it up lol) and Lydia is in Asia learning about China and Japan. For science, we are *finishing* our unit on the states of matter, today Melissa has her unit test. I haven't looked yet at the next unit, but I think I remember something about weather from when I pulled the student pages for it a couple weeks ago. In math Melissa is working on counting patterns and skip counting while Lydia is working on measuring distances and comparing lengths of objects.

In a half hour I have a teleconference with our teacher, and we'll be discussing how Melissa BOMBED the 1st grade diagnostic testing. She did ok in everything except her math, I was very happy with her reading and writing scores. But math, the girl totally froze up and couldn't even count, which is why we are taking a little time with counting right now. I want to be 100% certain that she knows how to count as well as I know she can, so that we don't have her freeze again at testing. Poor kid, she doesn't test well. But the meds for her ADHD are working great, as are the tricks that the doctor suggested.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! preschool galore!

Well, its that time. At 3 years old, we start watching each child to show signs of being ready to learn their letter sounds and begin some easy reading at their pace. Nothing too major, and we always go at their speed. Well, last week Kimmy started spending more time listening to her big sisters' phonics lessons, and has learned how to say the alphabet. That is the sign we look for, so I started thinking about her lessons in this area. I always pick a theme for the child who is learning her letters, and this particular child's theme is based on her favorite book of all time, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. So what is a homeschooling mom to do with THIS theme? Well, allow me to share some pictures and tell the tale..............................

I started by telling little miss Kimberly that she is going to be starting her own school lessons next week, and THIS was her response to it.


Yep I think she's happy. So next I got our supplies for the project out..........................

Its hard to see, but that green paper does have some drawing on it. I drew a leaf outline on several sheets of green and cut them out.


This is where the theme is centered at, before I put it up. Yes, that is a part of my huge fireplace that we are looking at right there, and unfortunately it is painted brick (what a wate of such beautiful brickwork, but we had to paint over it because it was originally LEAD BASED paint)

And this is the result, a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree! I just need to add a few coconuts to it and we'll add a letter to the top of the tree as we learn its name and sound. Notice the beyond thrilled 3 year old there standing where she's not allowed to stand normally LOL

Now, for how I'm going to do this. I am a FIRM follower of Sonlight language arts K for teaching reading. There are great activities and we learn one letter a week, following a specific order that will enable the child to start reading after learning just a few letters in week 9. I also intend to add in activities from the Brightly Beaming site for each letter from the preparatory program. And NEW for us this time around, I am going to be doing the alphabet lap-n-tote from Homeschool Share to give us a record of all the letters we've done as we learn about them.

Every Monday, I will try to remember to post that week's letter and what my activities for the week will be. We will explore a variety of different things each week, and just have fun with it all. I only spend typically around 20 minutes or so a couple times a day at the most on lessons with preschoolers formally, doing worksheets and crafts. So this will be sprinkled through the days and we'll prepare foods starting with that letter, read stories that go with the letter (using daily and weekly themes like fish and firefighters and flowers for letter F week)

Now, doesn't that just sound like a barrel of fun and games? Preschoolers are my favorite students so far, I always look forward to lessons with my preschool children.

vacation

Scott had this past week on vacation from work. The last time he was on vacation we didn't do squat for schoolwork, and I spent 2 weeks catching back up again. So I set myself up with a plan to do 4 days' worth of schoolwork during the time he's on vacation (this includes the 2 weekends) and just be happy if I get that much done. So how did it go you ask?

Well, Melissa finished 6 days of math, which was 2 days more than anticipated. Lydia kept up with her math as well. We stayed on target with lang. arts completely with both kids, although we did skip a few more activities than usual. I don't think the kids really noticed. We did only half the history we needed to do (one lesson each instead of 2) and I don't think we even touched science with Melissa, but that's ok. Phonics, well we were planning a week more of no lessons for Melissa for this week anyway and Lydia is still working on making a connection that she needs to make before she can move forward at all. So we spent time just reading together, they spent time playing at www.starfall.com and we just had fun with it. Oh, and Melissa did a few pages in her Explode the Code workbook that we add to the phonics to help cement things better.

Yep, I'm ok with how this week turned out. Last time he was on vacation I had soooooo many lessons to catch up on, so having just a few to catch up isn't really a big deal. Its really easy to add extra art, history, and science to my days because the kids like those subjects and do really well with them.