Weekly Wrap-up - The Missing Piece: August 11-17

In Our Life
With White Pine off to Advanced Culinary Camp at the community college, it felt like something was missing all week. Funny how that works, huh? And this weekend I'll be packing up the Saplings for a week visit with Grandpa and Nannie Lobster. I'm staying home to catch up on some household projects and gearing up for another year of school, which is set to begin September 4th. 

What's Cooking?
Bread Machine English Muffins!

Ingredients (Place in Order Except Cornmeal)
6-7 oz warm water
1 t salt
2 T butter, cut into small pieces
2 1/4 c bread flour
1/4 c dry milk
1/4 c wheat germ
1/4 c quick cook oats
2 T sugar
2 t active dry yeast
1/4 c cornmeal 

Place everything, but cornmeal in the bread machine and select dough setting and run. When the dough is done, sprinkle cornmeal onto the counter, place it on top, and roll out until 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch circles. (I just used a plastic cup for this. ::laugh::) Place onto an ungreased cookie sheet with cornmeal side down. Cover and let rise for 30-45 minutes in a warm area. Now, you can either preheat a griddle or dry frying pan to 250 degrees and cook about 8 minutes on each or side, or you can do it the lazy creative cook way like I did: throw them into a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes and call it good! ::wink:: Makes about 10 muffins.

(Now, I was planning on adding a photo because the muffins did come out really well, but for some reason Photoshop isn't loading up the the photo! ::sigh::)

Homeschool Happenings
Sugar Maple continued to work on her How to Write a Paragraph paragraph. "Mooommm, do I have to edit it again?" Yep! She doesn't see the point in going through the editing process, even to clean up Grammar and Spelling, but we're working on it. And looking up words in the dictionary? ::laugh:: She's been getting around it by changing the words she isn't able to spell into words she can! Sneaky, huh? 

And Balsam Fir continued with his on-line reading, writing and spelling lessons. (Stay tuned for our review later in the month.) I can't say he's crazy-liking these educational games, but maybe it's just being on summer break? I DO like the program though and think it's beneficial to his Language Arts.

I guess all of this doesn't sound like DELIGHT-DIRECTED learning, but sometimes we - kiddos and Mamas alike - need to just tackle something even if it's not on our Happy-to-Do Lists. Some things just need to be worked on! Wouldn't it be nice to skip dirty dishes though? or long division? So, as much as I would like school to ALWAYS be exciting it simply can't be, but I do try to make it as interesting and "painless" as possible.

We're Reading...

...a thriller entitled Gone Missing by Linda Castillo (and it's not from the Young Adult Room!) (me), WHO KNOWS (White Pine), a mystery book called Trixie Belden: the Mysterious Visitor by Julie Campbell (Sugar Maple), early readers Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat (still) and Henry and Mudge and the Bedtime Thumps by Cynthia Rylant (Balsam Fir), and The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden (still) (family read aloud).

A Few of Our Favorite Things
So, I've been continuing to get stuff ready for our new school year. My latest crazy creative idea is to fill a box of hands-on learning games and puzzles for Balsam Fir (and maybe Sugar Maple) to do when he's needing a break from more formal, challenging lessons. I've added Coin War from First Grade Frogs, Math with Roman Numerals from Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational, and now Silly Sentences from Instant Display. We probably won't use the games EXACTLY as described, but that's how we roll! ::laugh:: Silly Sentences will be used to learn nouns, verbs and adjectives, and write random sentences with correct punctuation and capitalization, and to read new words. For now.

Roman Numeral Game Board Slipped Into a Plastic Page
Protector. Balsam Fir will Learn to Values of Roman
Numerals First and then Adding and Subtracting

Roman Numeral Playing Cards and Help Chart Slipped Into
Back of Page Protector and Game Board

Colored Coded Silly Sentence Game Pieces

Game Instructions That We Probably
Won't Use

Silly Sentences to Organize, Read and Write into Complete,
Correct Sentences for Copywork

Add up Coin Values on Cards and Highest Gets the Cards.
First to get All the Playing Cards, Wins Coin War

Ponderings
Remember last wrap-up I shared that both boys had loose teeth? Well, Balsam Fir's came out...Well, ONE did. The other tooth was swallowed at dinnertime! Imagine his surprise to notice it was gone while eating cheese pizza! ::wink:: But White Pine is STILL waiting to lose that final molar! It's hanging on!

Giggles to Share

Blog Hops