A Birthday for Tristan and Ana
I love having Valerie Bendt's guide-book full of thoughtful comprehension questions and comparisons. Our week was very full last week, and I leaned heavily on the pre-planned lesson in the curriculum guide.
We had a few fun projects last week. We made book jackets for the story, A Birthday for Frances, by Russell Hoban. The kids now have a better understanding of what information should be found on the cover of a book. They really enjoyed this project and were very proud, showing these off to Grandma on Skype. Tristan continued to put his on any book the same size, and I found myself announcing A Birthday for Frances, by Russell Hoban while opening Ankylosaurus, by L.L. Owens.
The children also enjoyed making chocolate covered pretzels for party favors and coloring the labels for the favor bags. I felt that this activity mirrored Frances and Gloria helping their mother decorate place cards for Gloria's birthday party in the story.
We spent time looking through the scrapbooks at pictures from Tristan and Ana's first birthday celebrations. We talked about how they each had very special parties for their first birthday. This helped them as we spent time preparing, shopping, and getting the house ready for Gwen's party. Thursday we took the day off from our normal school schedule to play with Gwen in the morning and we all enjoyed making her birthday special. We fit in a few things during her nap time.
We enjoyed many books about birthdays and cake making. What's Cookin'? by Nancy Coffelt is a cute counting book, and we enjoyed Lars Klinting's, Bruno the Baker.
For Spanish, we read Eight Animals Bake a Cake, by Susan Middleton Elya. We read this book every day of the week during circle time. I enjoyed how the vocabulary flows seamlessly into the story and there is a nice variety of Spanish vocabulary words.
We are still counting money and working through a worksheet about money for math.
I found a few great books about Pumpkins that we have enjoyed. P is for Pumpkin by Kathy- Jo Wargin, not only an alphabet book but also a book about God's blessings during fall.
Also, The Pumpkin Runner, by Marsha Diane Arnold based on the true story of Cliff Young, who won the Sydney to Melbourne Ultra marathon in 1983.
I also baked a pumpkin from the local patch and pureed it and made pumpkin butter. The butter is delicious; it tastes like pumpkin pie on a piece of bread.
Recipe:
Puree from one baked Cinderella pumpkin
1 cup of spiced apple cider,
Ground ginger to taste (1 tsp.)
Cinnamon to taste ( 1tsp.)
2-3 cups of brown sugar
Cook on low in crockpot 6-8 hours stirring occasionally until desired consistency and flavor.
I am pleased with my first attempt at this new fall tradition, however, I learned after some research that pumpkin in pureed form cannot be canned. I was prepared to can and keep my pumpkin butter in the pantry, but it will have to be kept frozen due to risk of botulism poisoning. I'm glad we did the research before I sealed it into the jars.
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