Well after a year and a half break I think I will try my hand at blogging again! In looking back at the time that I did blog I am so happy with all the memories I was able to capture and it is good to see and remember all our school activities as well. So I am going to try to remember to get that camera out and get creative again so that I can capture the little moments in our days for us to be able to look back at in years to come! In the time off from blogging we had a beautiful baby girl we will call Tag Along.

She is now 16 months and is very active and insists on being one of the gang, involved in everything everyone else is doing! As you can see!!!

Here are all the children at the time I ended blogging

and now!

It is so fun to look back and see how much they change over the course of a year. I never notice the differences on a day to day basis but they all grew so much! With the baby and the move cross country and then another move from one town to another in CT this past year was a sporadic one for our schooling, so we have begun school again this week just with math (Everyday Math for Snow White and various activities for Flower Picker), handwriting (HWT), history (Connecting with History) and tbe FIAR curriculum. So far so good with our first week. It was super super hot here this week so we were a little slow moving and I need to throw in some more fun activities to make it more lucrative...for me and them!! I am looking forward to begin blogging again so we will see how it goes!! Katie

Crockpot Yogurt

I have been experimenting lately with making my own yogurt in the crock pot. Most of the recipes I found were for making plain yogurt which no one here will eat (myself included!) so I searched around to find some sweetening tips! I got the basic recipe from http://www.nourishingdays.com/2009/02/make-yogurt-in-your-crock-pot/, but added in some ingredients and tips from other blogs as well.

Crock Pot Yogurt
Recipe notes: This recipe uses a 2 quart crock. In using a 4 or 4 1/2 quart crock I found the yogurt to have a bit of a "springy" texture. I was able to alleviate this by heating the milk an additional 15 minutes for a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes.
• Turn your crock pot to low and pour in 1/2 gallon of milk. and 1/2 cup powdered milk
• Heat on low for 2 hours and 30 minutes.
• Once 2 hours and 30 minutes have elapsed turn your crock pot off and unplug it. Let the milk cool in the crock with the lid on for 3 hours.
• After 3 hours remove 1-2 cups of the warmed milk and place in a bowl. To that add 1/2 cup of yogurt with live active cultures and mix very well. Add 1/2 c honey and 1 tbsp vanilla if desired.
• Pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the milk and whisk thoroughly.
• Place the cover back on the crock and wrap the entire crock pot in a thick bath towel or two.
• Let it culture overnight, 8-12 hours.
• In the morning stir yogurt (if desired) and store in glass quart jars or a container of your choice.
• For optimum texture, refrigerate for at least 8 hours before using.
Strain if needed using a strainer and coffee filter in the fridge for several hours

The honey and vanilla make for a great final taste (although snow white would disagree! She still prefers the store sweetened yogurt!)

I also found through some trial and error that the yogurt had to be strained for at least 3 hours to get it to the thickness of the yogurt you would find in the store. I made ours with 2% milk and got about 1 1/3 cup of whey from each quart of yogurt strained. I read that whey is a great substitute for buttermilk so if you use buttermilk in you cooking than save the whey!

With my first batch I didn't strain and the children didn't care for it because it was so soupy that it was hard to get from spoon to mouth! However it made for EXCELLENT smoothies!!

I also did a little trial and error with adding fruit to the vanilla flavored yogurt. I had frozen strawberries and I put them in the blender (after they thawed) and then hand mixed them into a quart of yogurt. The taste was OK but they were a little tart so when I tried the blueberries I added just a touch of sugar to them in the blender and the taste was just right! I will try to do the same with the strawberries next time!

Overall I have enjoyed playing around with making just the right product and for the most part the children have too!!

Katie
PS the picture is not of my yogurt or crockpot...I forgot to take pictures of mine!

L is for Love, Length and Landforms

Well we finished L week almost 2 weeks ago so here is an overview of our week!

We talked about love and what it means to love someone (even if they are bothering you!) We had a love tea party with the tea set that Flower Picker got for Christmas. We had lemonade (tea) and homemade blueberry bread....which was delicious!





We then prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and wrote our prayer intentions on the pink paper hearts that decorated our love table.

For some handwriting practice Snow White copied part of the verse about love from 1 Corinthians. We turned it into a poster which she was very proud of! It is hanging next to her poster we made for JOY during J week.



L was also for length so we read a variety of books on measurement and length.





We did lots of our own measuring using our own feet, crayons, pencils, string and a
ruler.



We also did a little measuring of volume with the stacking cups set that we have and water at the kitchen table.



We measured weight on our bathroom scale and height as well. Snow White loved walking around with her ruler finding things to measure!



Finally L was for Landforms. We had begun our landforms study in I week with islands/lakes and isthmus and straights. So we finished up our landforms book with peninsula and gulf, archipelago and system of lakes and cape and bay.





I think the book turned out very nicely and we will be able to look back on it in years to come!

Our author for L week was Leo Lionni and we read a variety of his stories most of which we had not read before. The girls particularly liked An Extraordinary Egg and Little Blue and Little Yellow (which Snow White could read on her own and read to Flower Picker in bed a few nights!).



We had a great and very productive week but things have slowed down a bit since then and we are struggling to make it through our M week with outside commitments and some sickness. Oh well we learn a little each day!!

One fun activity that we managed to get in that wasn't related to our alphabet path was some indoor snow play!



I brought in some snow since it had been too cold to go out and play and the children played on a table cloth in their mittens with some spoons and bath toys. They had a blast and ate a fair amount of snow in the process!!










Katie

K is for Kindness and the Animal Kingdom!

Well we finished up a very successful K week this week. Snow White really enjoyed our study of the Animal Kingdom which I had only planned on doing for 2 days but we spent 4 days on it! We began by reading the book "What is the Animal Kingdom?" By Bobbie Kalman. It was FULL of great facts and most of it was just at her level. Even Flower Picker joined in which she doesn't often do!

We talked about invertebrates and vertebrates and the different types of animals in each group. We then made a book for each group. The invertebrate book has pages for worms, arthropods, mollusks and simple animals (such as algae and amoebas). The book for the vertebrates group has birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and mammals. We talked about what made each of these sub groups different from the others and Snow White drew and traced pictures of the animals in each category.



I got the idea for this type of book from Dinah Zikes Big Book of Books. I got this book when I was teaching and used it all the time in my classroom and I was excited to pull it out and begin to use it again! The link will take you to her web site so you can see her other products as well. You can see in this picture that underneath each tab has a place to add pictures or facts.



I was happy that the unit went over so well!

We also talked about Kindness this week. Snow White made a Kindness book (the format for making this book is also from Dinah Zikes book!)She drew pictures of ways to show kindness and I helped her to label them.



She and Flower Picker each colored a Kindness page that I got from Pondered in My Heart. We have been using one for each week and each of the girls have a binder with their virtue alphabet in it!



Finally our K week author was Ezra Jack Keats. We read several of his books including, Dreams, Hi Cat, Maggie and the Pirates, The Snowy Day and Peters Chair.



In the past we have also read Pet Show and Whistle for Wille. The girls were excited to see that some of the characters are in several of the books!



In addition to our K week activities we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany which I posted about a few days ago, Snow White is 2 pages from completing her 1st grade HWT handwriting book, we continued to add words to the her spelling notebook following the Writing Road to Reading, we worked on subtraction, the quadrilateral drawer from our geometric cabinet



reviewed fractions, and almost finished learning the poem "My Shadow" by Robert Louis Stevenson. Overall this was one of our most productive school weeks! See you for L week....L is for Landforms, Length and Love!

Katie

Montessori Print Shop Give Away

Montessori Print shop blog is giving away 2 free CD sets with their ENTIRE COLLECTION on them! Check it out here,



I have printed off some of their free products in the past and they are really really wonderful. Having their entire collection would really save lots of time in making materials of my own (which has slowed my Montessori approach at the moment!)

Good luck to all who enter!
Katie

Christmas Season Feasts

On Jan 2nd we celebrated the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus by making some bread in the shape of Jesus name. I made the dough in the bread machine and we then rolled and shaped the dough and let it rise again before baking.


Unfortunately we began our project too late and the eating of the bread didn't happen until the next morning!



For the feast of the Epiphany we made a Three Kings cake and decorated it liberally with sprinkles


and chocolate chip "jewels"!


The children each received a new movie for the feast as well. Snow White got Saint Perpetua,



Flower Picker got Saint Patrick



and Do-Do got Holy baby. We have been enjoying them all!



Also in celebration of Epiphany we make toile paper tube flowers using the tutorial that Lacy posted on Catholic Icing from "Muffin Tin Mom". We did ours a little differently as I did not have spray paint so the girls painted the stars and sprinkled glitter on them to make them sparkle. They were very proud of the results and I think they look nice above our manger scene.




Here is our complete creche set with our homemade stars!


K week is going smoothly so far and I will hopefully have some pictures to post at the beginning of next week. The three Kings fit in perfectly with our letter this week!

Katie

Our Christmas

Here are some pictures of our Christmas celebrations!


Our completed Jesse Tree




Setting up our tree on Christmas Eve day



Decorating the tree



Adding the Holy Family to the Creche scene




The children in their Christmas best!



A new Wagon!



Our Happy Birthday Jesus cake