30 September 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up: The Pinteresting Project Edition

 

Most of this week was pretty basic. Wake up. Make steaming cup of morning goodness (hot tea for me, hot cocoa for the kids). Read the Bible, pray, write in my journal. Teach my lovelies. Consider how blessed I am because I get to teach my lovelies. Cook a few meals. Spend time with hubby. Discover Pinterest. 

Oh, Pinterest! That's worth mentioning. It's my new addiction. Do you know what it is? It's this fantastic site that lets you save every little thing you love that you find on the internet that you don't want to forget. And it's more than that, of course, but for me, this is what it is, and it allows me to organize these bookmarks and includes photos. It's social networking on top of this. I love it. I think I will have 50 boards on Pinterest by the time I'm done organizing everything I want to save. You should see my list of bookmarks on my laptop, and then you will understand my new found love of Pinterest. Go check it out (but please don't blame me if you become addicted).

Today was project day. I always plan a light day on Friday. This way, if we get behind during the week, we have an opportunity to catch-up, and, if we don't get behind, then we get to do some fun things or relax a little. On Wednesday, I decided to push a couple projects off and do them today. It worked perfectly.

Our first project for today was making dividers for the kids animal notebooks in science. I was supposed to purchase notebook dividers, but I didn't. Instead, we got creative by hole punching some white cardstock and using some post-it labels that I had on hand. This was Eric's idea (sometimes it's good when he's working at home). The kids loved this simple project as well as the animal charades we played during our science lesson on Wednesday. This was good news since, on Monday, they told me that science wasn't as fun because we weren't "doing" anything. I'm glad we're past that hump. I hope. More on that in future weeks.




Our second project of the day was a food groups collage. We spent the month of September discussing food groups, so today's final projects involved making collages and planning a meal using all the food groups. We'll make that meal next week some time and hopefully post pics for you. The collages turned out great! For those interested, I did tell them that they could overlap and put the pictures on crooked, but they insisted they wanted them this way.



Our third project was to make a Spanish meal. This is because we've been learning about Spain in our Five in a Row study of The Story of Ferdinand (we stretched it over 2 weeks because this book was so full of material). Side note: If you have elementary aged children, read this book. It is a new favorite in our house! Plus, Robert Lawson's illustrations are just fun to study from an artistic perspective.

I did a lot of research for this meal. My goal was to find inexpensive recipes that were authentically Spanish, NOT Hispanic, but actually Spanish. It seems like many people don't know the difference, and, while I knew there was a difference, I wasn't sure what the difference was. I am now much more informed.

The first recipe I made was this Cauliflower with Cheese casserole. I didn't bake it in individual ramekins as the recipe suggests, and, if you aren't someone who likes to spend time in the kitchen, you should know in advance that this one is a little time-consuming and slightly more technical than your average recipe, but it was worth it for me. My husband's reaction to this recipe was my favorite. He said, "This actually makes me like cauliflower," and then he got seconds. Recipe success!



The second recipe was Pasta in Chorizo and Tomato Sauce. The only downside to this recipe (other than neither child liking it) is that I couldn't find Spanish Chorizo. This is a small town. I was amazed that I found Mexican Chorizo. It totally changed the intended flavor, but it was still tasty(but so much for going 100% authentic). I would make it again if the kids had liked it, and I might make it again with a few less-authentic tweeks. Here's the sauce:

(I think this photo is kind of cool with the steam, don't you think?)

The third recipe was Arroz con Leche (Rice Pudding), which I didn't realize was an authentic Spanish dessert until my research this week. The entire family helped to make this recipe, and everyone loved it. Lukas said it tasted like oatmeal, which this particular recipe sort of did, but it was fun to make and eat it this evening. If we make rice pudding again, I may try a different recipe. This needed more milk as it was extremely thick and sort of pasty, but the flavor was perfect. Even Lukas liked it. Score!


(Don't you just love my super-creative labels on my different flour canisters in the background?)

That's a little window into our week. I hope that your week was filled with fulfilling moments!

If you would like to see how things are going for other homeschooling families and to borrow some great ideas, hop on over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to find links to lots of other blogs filled with great ideas!


1 comment:

  1. Lots of fun projects. I just LOVE the dividers.

    Popping in from the Wrap-Up.

    ReplyDelete