Churning Butter

We have been reading "Little House In The Big Woods" and comparing that era with ours. We have been discussing how we would have liked to live back then and also some of the hardships of then and what we would miss from now. We definately like the simplicity back then.
In Chapter two Laura, Mary and Ma made butter from the cream from their cows. We've made butter many times by shaking cream in a small jar. We have a butter churn that has been in my family since it was made. We hadn't used it but thought that we would give it a try today.

Lucy pouring in the cream

We thought that we would start small. We used a half gallon of cream and began churning.

My girlies started churning but only lasted a few minutes each. Then it was my turn. I churned for 20 minutes and check out what our cream turned into. 

We scraped down the sides, strained the contents and got...

two containers of butter and about a quart of buttermilk. We all tried the buttermilk and it actually tastes pretty good. We also enjoyed our freshly made butter on crackers and bread. Too bad we didn't make our own bread today to put the butter on. For any of you who are I Love Lucy fans, like I am, "homemade bread with home-churned butter".

thanks for reading.

Our Presidents

We have had the pleasure of celebrating Presidents' Day today and remembering two of our countries amazing presidents. George Washington was our Founding Father and Abraham Lincoln, who was our 16th president, abolished slavery.
So, in preparation of our vacation day we learned about and did some fun activities about these two great men.

 Washington and Lincoln Books We Read

These are great biographies written for the 3-4 grade level.

Washington and Lincoln Portrait 

When you were a kid did you put crayon shavings between two layers of wax paper and then melt them with an iron? I thought of this the other day and had an idea. I found an image of Lincoln and Washington online and printed them. We put one of the images under wax paper and drew the outline of the facial features.
Then, we made shavings of crayons that were face color, black and greys. You can use a pencil sharpener. Just don't push too hard.

You will want to put a paper towel onto an iron safe surface and place your wax paper on top of the towel. Now, fill in the areas with crayon shavings. Just as Lucy is doing here.

This one is ready to be ironed. (On the first one, we put too much crayon so you may have to play with the amount of shavings.)

When you are done, place a piece of blank waxed paper on top and then another paper towel and iron with your iron on a low setting.

We did Lincoln and Washington. We ran out of white crayons from our Crayon Valentine Hearts so Washington has grey and black hair.

They didn't turn out exactly like I envisioned them but we had fun. Let me know if you make these and how they turn out.

Lincoln's House

We also made a small replica of Lincoln's first house out of "Wooden Skill Sticks". They are popsicle sticks that have notches on them. So you can build like you do with Lincoln Logs.

Lucy's House on left and Mommy's on right

I decided to paint my house brown. So, after we constructed our houses Lucy wrote words on the sides of hers that described Lincoln.

Front: "Lincoln"

Back

Side: "ended slavery!!!!!"

 Happy Presidents' Day! and Thanks for reading and please leave a comment.

Valentine Crayon Hearts

 

As a child, I loved making hand-made Valentine cards for my classmates. I still love making Valentine's cards but now they're for my favorite people, my hubby and two amazing daughters. My daughters are carrying on the tradition of hand made Valentine cards.

Lucy and I went to our homeschooling PSP's Valentine party today. The children had a card exchange. So, of coarse, we wanted to make fun Valentine's cards. Last week, I saw a great idea for cards. Lucy decided that it would be fun to make them. We found out that she needed to bring 40 cards so we knew that it was going to take a little while but it would be fun.

Do you have a bunch of broken up crayons? If you are a mom, I'm sure that you do.

So how about making Valentine Crayon Hearts?

What you'll need:

1. crayons

2. silicone heart baking mold

3. oven

4. x-acto knife (optional)

Step 1:  Remove the wrappers. Some wrappers slip off easily while others don't. For those stubborn ones, use an x-acto knife and slice the wrapper and it can be removed easily.

Step 2: Break or cut the crayons into small pieces

or you can put the crayons in a bag and smash them with a hammer.... my girlies chose this route.

Step 3: Put the broken crayons into the heart mold. You need enough to completely cover the bottom.

Step 4: Bake in a 230 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until all of the crayons are melted. (The smaller you make the pieces of crayon, the faster they melt.)

Step 5: Cool until completely hardened. (We put ours into the freezer to speed up the process.)

Step 6: Once hardened, remove from the molds.

Here are a few of the Valentine Crayon Hearts we made.

And a few more.

We loved making these! And yes, we made 40 of them. Well, actually a few more than 40. All of the children in Lucy's class (and the moms) thought that they were a great idea.

My girlies (and I) have decided that they (we) want to make more this weekend. They definately are a fun craft to make. We thought about getting different shape silicon molds and making different shaped colorful crayons.They are pretty plus they do color. Let me know if you make these.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Our Gumbie Cats

Last weekend I had the privledge of attending an amazing performance of Cats with my brother. My Sis-in-law was sick and not able to attend with him. I didn't know much about Cats other than people dress like cats and the music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I decided to research Cats. Well, as much as I could in the few hours I had before going (which included eating and getting ready to go). What did I find out? Cat's is a musical that was adapted from T.S. Eliot's book "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", which was written in 1939. It is a collection of whimsical poems about feline psychology and sociology. Well, I love cats so that sounded good to me.

I thouroughly enjoyed the musical. The performers did a fantastic job. In fact, I couldn't imagine that the Broadway performance was much better. Being an owner of two cats, one who is almost 18 years old and one who is almost 14, I was moved to tears and laughter while watching and listening to the poetry.

If you are reading this, at this point you may be wondering how this pertains to our homeschool. Thanks for being patient through this long introduction but I felt that it necessary to explain what we are doing.

The day after watching Cats, I went to the bookstore and purchased T.S. Eliot's book "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". Initially I purchased it with the interest of reading it myself. My daughter loves music and cats so I showed her one of the songs on you tube. She was hooked.

Today, I introduced the book to her. We read "The Naming of Cats", "The Old Gumbie Cat" and  "The Rum Tum Tugger". We analyzed each poem and compared our cats to the cats in the poems. Lucy decided that she wanted to write her own poem about our Gumbie Cats. My plan was to read one or two poems and talk about them. So when Lucy said that she wanted to write her own poem I was thrilled. I wanted to share her poem with whoever is sharing in our story.

Our Gumbie Cats

   by Lucy Waterbury

            inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Old Gumbie Cat”

We have two gumbie cats.
They sit and sit and sit and sit.
And that’s what makes a gumbie cat.

Jakey sleeps in the little house
And he drinks water and meows really loudly for food.
He sits and sits and sits all day.
That’s what makes a Gumbie Cat.

But when it’s night time,
He sneaks out
And teaches the guinea pigs to behave.
He teachers Bear to be the boss.
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

Eddie sleeps in the computer room and
sewing room on top of the desk.
He sits upon the windowsill
and sits and sits and sits and sits
And that’s what makes a gumbie cat.

When we’re asleep
Eddie will creep out into the living room
He chases bugs and teacher the baby bugs to fly.
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

In the morning he creeps back into the computer room and
That’s what makes a gumbie cat.

------------

If you haven't read this book, we highly recommend it. We will read more poems tomorrow. When we are done we plan on watching a production of Cats on dvd. We'll see what more inspiration comes to us.

Getting the hang of things

It's been almost 2 months since we started homeschooling. This past two weeks we have really felt like we are successful. it takes awhile to "get into the swing of things". I still have a ways to go but definitely getting there. My daughter and I are really enjoying the experience of homeschooling.
I just installed the blogger app on my iPhone so this post is short just to make sure it works correctly.

Learning About Composers

Music is an important element in all of our lives. I believe that it is important to introduce my children to different types of music. This school year my daughter and I will be learning about different composers. What a fun way to introduce music and history together. Lucy loves "The Nutcracker Ballet". It has become a family tradition to attend "The Nutcracker" this time of year. For a few years in a row we went to Golden West Colleges production. Last year we went to a different production and will do the same thing this year. So we figured that it would be great to learn about than Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Upon Googling him I came across this website that looks like a great resource.
http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_mmf_music_library/hey-kids-meet-peter-ilyich-tchaikovsky.htm

What An Amazing Park!!

We found a park that is only 15 minutes from our house but took us back in time to the 1770's. What an amazing find this was! Like most parks, there is a playground, a big grass field and basketball courts.

The incredible part of the park is an island that is accessed by a covered bridge. A moat runs around the island and is home to many birds and ducks including mallard ducks, white ducks, greebs and a few seagulls. We even saw a Red Eared Slider Turtle. As you adventure towards the island, a statue of Paul Revere welcomes you.

Once we crossed the Charlestown bridge we were transported back in time to a miniature town of Boston, circa 1770.

The little Boston town has a group of "stores" including a print shop, an apothacary, ropemaker and saddlemaker. Inside the shops are slides and poles and ladders that the girls played on. Upon climbing up a very narrow staircase, you can walk across a bridge to other stores. The brick wall in the photo below is the bridge.

Next to the shops is a replica of The North Church Tower with two slides. You can see one of them on the left side of the church in the following photo (along with my beautiful little girl)

There are non-working cannons to protect Boston. Here is one of them with my beautiful older daughter.

The island closed early today so we didn't get to explore the whole town. There is also a replica of Paul Revere's house and a replica of a cemetary. We will definately go back and do some more exploring but we had a great day!