$150 Multi-Level Solid Wood Dollhouse from Melissa & Doug {GIVEAWAY}

So I absolutely LOVE Melissa & Doug products! They are so practical and encourage hours of imaginative play. They have a wide variety of products as well: puzzles, puppets, play food, plush toys, magnetic activities, music and many more educational items!

Personally I've just ordered ALL Melissa & Doug stuff for Lively's Christmas gifts, and I'm super excited about blessing her with the Cook's Corner Wooden Kitchen, along with accessories for cooking :-) 

So I jumped on the opportunity to enter this *giveaway* at Mom Spotted! Melissa & Doug has offered to give away one Multi-Level Solid Wood Dollhouse - a $150 value, complete with "nineteen pieces of hand painted furniture with working doors and drawers." 

So head on over to Mom Spotted and enter for your chance to win this cool toy as well!
 

From the Mouth of [Impressionable] Babes

Last night we were reviewing our Bible verses. Cutlet has now learned Genesis 1:1, John 3:16, and John 1:1. We've been trying to get Romans 3:23 down for awhile now, but for some reason he cannot remember "For all". He will say "For God" ... then stop. Or he'll just keep going with that and say John 3:16 altogether. But once we give him the word "all", he runs with it and knows the rest by heart. It's been difficult knowing what to do to get him to remember it. Granted we only review at night before bed, and I've thought maybe I should work with him in the morning as well. I just haven't. So finally last night I just had him repeat over and over: For all... For all... For all... For all... He was finally able to say it once by himself with no prompts. 

But the amazing thing was that in the middle of our frustration with Cutlet in trying to get him to say Romans 3:23, our little 2yo Lively just started into it all by herself in her cute little 2yo voice:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

WHAT?!? Did I just hear that right?

Amazing. I'm constantly reminded of how quickly and easily little minds grasp words, phrases and concepts. I just pray that "the words of my mouth ... [may] ... be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer" so that my kids would hear and reproduce Truth and not foolish, crass talk. Amen.

The Amazing World of Ants ... (and how to get rid of them!)

Ants aren't really something I get excited about... unless they are biting me or all over my kitchen counter (both of which have happened more times than I can count living here in the jungle!) But seriously, they have never captured my attention before until living where we are now... because our living room, kitchen & dining area are all basically "outside". So they pretty much come and go as they please: under the doors, through the screen windows and squeezing through the numerous cracks in our walls. And I never realized how many different KINDS of ants there are. Within the first week we were here, there was an ant crawling across our living room floor that was almost the size of Hubby's pinky finger!!! Conversely, there are your everyday "tickle" ants, as we call them (because they are so tiny, many times you don't notice them until you feel them tickling you as they crawl over your skin). Then there are regular fire ants that hurt like the dickins! And there are black ants in enough sizes that your toddler would be challenged in doing a Size Sort activity... According to National Geographic, ants are so prevalent in tropical forests that they may make up half of all the insects living in some areas!!! I can believe it.

The kids & I were outside having a snack one afternoon. Cutlet dropped a piece of cracker unknowingly, and within a matter of a minute or so, a team of ants had swarmed the cracker, hastily carrying it off like a miniature team of bandits with their stolen treasure. The kids & I decided to watch where they were taking it. (I was curious as to the location of their hide-out amidst all the grass in our yard).

It was a captivating sight... I was amazed at how they managed to finagle their way across tiny sticks, limbs and leaves, at times the ants dangling themselves as they desperately hung on to their loot. And of course they all worked diligently together to get it back to their nest.

(And did you know that an ant can lift or carry something more than 3 times their own weight?) ...

Which brings me to the well-known leaf-cutter ants. This may look like just a scattered batch of leaves, but beneath each leaf is a mighty leaf-cutter, transporting this small plant morsel to an underground city. 

According to Wikipedia, "next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth," and " the central mound of their underground nests can grow to more than 30 metres (98 ft) across." Wow!

Even more interesting to me is the reason for all these leaves. These ants are actually cultivating their own little fungus farm. They feed this fungus with all the leaves they bring in, cultivate it, and feed the fungus to their larvae, and the adult ants feed off the leaf sap. The fungus needs the ants to stay alive, and the ants need the fungus... which, in scientific mumbo-jumbo, is called ant-fungus mutualism.

Well, as I mentioned previously, I've had more than my fair share of ant invasions all over my kitchen counter... enough to make me just about go nuts and start spanking them with a kitchen towel. So last year when my in-laws came for Christmas, my FIL hooked me up with my new secret weapon for killing those resilient insects. He found the solution here, and after I set it out, I was absolutely amazed at its result. I've put it out on 2 or 3 occasions since then... sometimes it seems to take a bit longer to have an effect, but I can vouch for it's effectiveness in the end. Of course some ant types may not be affected by this, so it's just a matter of trial and error. Either way, it's worth a shot!

In conclusion, I don't mean to belittle the importance of these tiny bugs. I do realize that God has created such an intricate, elaborate, awe-inspiring world. And there are SO many facets to the functioning of it. If we didn't have ants, I'm sure all sorts of natural processes would cease to work properly. Ants are a vital part of nature... I just don't care to have them as my house guests.

Starting Letter Fun

From time to time Cutlet likes pulling out an activity idea book I've got called Learning FUNdamentals (by Colin Rose) and wants to do something new.
On this day, he picked one that had to do with identifying objects that begin with a particular letter (sound).

So I grabbed a few items from around the room... items starting with /P/ and items starting with /B/. I randomly asked him, "Grab something that starts with..." And he would repeat the sound over and over, looking at the objects until he identified one.

Items displayed: pillow, paper, ball, bottle, panda, bag, book, blanket, penguin

Quick and easy! He enjoyed it and felt very proud of himself too :-)

Spanish Immersion, Morning 1

Today I started "Spanish ONLY" ... up until lunch anyway. 

During weekdays my kids (4 & 2) have "preschool" with a Peruvian gal, K, who comes to our house and plays with them and does learning activities while Hubby and I do ministry projects. She mostly speaks to them in Spanish, but sometimes my 4yo gets frustrated because he doesn't understand, so she'll give him a break and speak to him in English. Now that we're getting closer and closer to our departure from Peru, I'm wanting to start implementing more Spanish into our home life, so I spoke with K about working with me on this. I told her that even Hubby & I will be using Spanish with the kids in the AM in order to make it only Spanish across the board. I've explained this change to my 4yo so he won't be caught off-guard. My 2yo is much more go-with-the-flow. It seems she doesn't even realize there's a difference between me speaking Spanish or English to her. She responds equally and never shows frustration.

Well so I got up this morning to a bare-bottomed Cutlet telling me he'd peed the bed (which he rarely does anymore!) ... and THIS is how I'm gonna start our first Spanish only morning??? So I didn't say anything... just got up and went to take a look at the damage. I finally just picked him up and sat him on my lap and reminded him that we were gonna be speaking Spanish today. After that, I mustered up my gumption and just started in, albeit somewhat timidly... Although it was after 7AM and K would be here around 8, he wanted to lay back down for a bit, so I changed his pajamas and, to curb the crankiness he was emitting, I relented to his wishes. I didn't want his morning to be more difficult than it was already starting out to be. About 5-10 minutes later, he gets up happily and is ready to put his regular clothes on. Yay!


Well I think the morning went quite well. No fusses from Cutlet about me speaking Spanish... and definitely no attitude from Lively... she takes things in stride. I have to say that at this point I am very glad I've got K coming every weekday morning because I really don't know how I could handle 4-5 hours of only Spanish with my sweet little ones. I did notice that as I was in and out of the house during the morning, speaking Spanish to them just felt "strange". Hubby had the same sentiments. How can we do this?!? English is how we can best express our feelings and love and silliness with them! Honestly we missed that closeness. I don't want to give up yet though because this trial deserves a good test run... and I hear that it starts feeling more "normal" as days go by...

Spanish... "Naturally"

As mentioned under the 'My Family' tab, we are moving back to the USA in December... and although we are not officially homeschooling yet, I feel it is my duty (and would be a disservice otherwise) to make sure my 2 wee ones continue to be surrounded with the Spanish language. Up until now, I've just let the kids take in the language outside of our home by native speakers; however, it's about time for me to step up to the plate and take charge of this area myself. And although I've been exposed to, formally studied or have taught the Spanish language for around half of my life (!!!), I still have doubts about how effective I can be in successfully transferring this knowledge to my two little ones because I am not a native speaker... Get a grip, right?!?

OK, so I'm the kind of person who takes her time in making decisions and if I'm going to do something, I want to do a good job. I also need to have a plan (at least to get me started... then I can change things up a bit once I get going and see how things work in real life!) So I've done some searches on Amazon and ebay for Spanish resources to incorporate into our home education in the near future... books, poems, nursery rhymes, folk songs...

Also I've been doing a bit of Q&A with some folks online to gain some insight into how they go about teaching a foreign language in a natural context, no curriculum. I used the Discussion Forum at Simply Charlotte Mason (SCM) and posed this question. I got some really helpful responses. Thanks to Richele at Barefoot Voyage for a glimpse into her life, teaching her boys Russian as a non-native speaker. She schools in English until around noon, then the rest of the day primarily uses Russian. In addition, she incorporates Russian folktales, cartoons, audio stories and music throughout their daily life.

Another SCM member known as missingtheshire has taught her daughters German as a non-native speaker. They are now in high school and using a German curriculum, but when they were small, she just used everyday conversation with them and taught them the names of common objects in the house. Once they could read, she labeled items all over the house for them to see. In addition, she reminded me that finding someone to practice with (for myself as well as for them!) is a great supplement to keeping language skills honed.

I have also conversed a little bit with Silvia at Homeschooling in a Bilingual Home . Silvia, who is Spanish, told me from her own experience:

My daughters didn't speak much Spanish two years ago (and they are now six and almost four). I was devastated because when we went to Spain last time my oldest, four at the time, didn't have much Spanish, the little one had some words in Spanish and a great vocabulary at two. But now they seem to be flourishing in Spanish...

Silvia speaks to her girls in Spanish most of the day and incorporates additional opportunities to interact with each other, such as reading and hanging out with other Spanish-speaking families. She admits though, that oftentimes their homeschooling sessions are a mixture of both languages and that is totally fine. She knows that as they continue to grow and learn together, the girls will eventually be equally as strong in Spanish as in English.
 
Amy at Fisher Academy International Teaching Home has also been helpful in giving me her two-cents on the matter, as she's quite a seasoned missionary in Peru with 5 kids who are also acquiring Spanish as they all minister to and fellowship with Spanish-speakers. She states:

We'd been here for several years and [my kids'] Spanish was really quite sketchy.  Even though they heard it spoken, they would not speak (couldn't really). ... Honestly, my kids didn't hardly learn a speck of Spanish until they had Spanish speaking friends.  

In addition to echoing what others have already mentioned, Amy also tells me that they have family Bible time (in Spanish) together in the mornings, and afterward each child takes a turn in narrating back in Spanish! Of course this requires a greater command of the spoken language, but what a great goal!


Just recently I've come across another blog dedicated to bilingualism: MommyMaestra. The blog author, Monica, is a Latina homeschooler and has lots of great resources and links to other useful sites and blogs as well. Through her blog I found the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism hosted by Letizia, an Italian, at Bilingual for Fun, which led me to realize just how many other moms and dads are dedicated to bringing up their children bilingually. 

In fact, just recently I encountered a gringo (white) family here on a 5-month teaching assignment. The husband grew up speaking Spanish since about the age of 5, and after he and his wife had their first child (now 5), he began only speaking Spanish to her. Now they have a son (2) and speaking Spanish to his children is automatic now after these 5 years. This is another motivator to me that in order for bilingualism to occur, I've got to get over the hump of that "unnatural" feeling, and after a few days/weeks/months, it will come to feel more natural that I speak Spanish with my children. (the habit of discipline on my part!)

So I wanted to share a really cool contribution by Letizia, entitled 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language. Wow! This is the shot in the arm I was needing! Below are highlighted those 8 reasons she mentioned. You can go over to her blog to read up on the elaboration of those reasons if this piques your interest a bit :-)

1. Language is a living organism
2. There's not such a thing as a pure accent
3. Languages are a tool to communicate
4. You can and should provide multiple input for the second language
5. Children have an impressive ability to incorporate input from different sources
6. This might be the only chance at hand
7. Whatever your knowledge of the second language you can find the right approach for you and your family
8. If you really want it, you'll make it

 And so, although I've still got a few reservations as to how effective I can be, I'm more determined to face my fears head-on. I am also more aware now that there is a very experienced (and LARGE) community of dedicated parents in the world who are committed to the task of interacting with their children in a foreign language on a daily basis. Thank you to the select few that I've happened upon. You've been an inspiration! 

Our Jungle Apple Tree

The tree is in our front yard and is a great shade tree!

The pomarosa, or mamey (mah-may), as it's called in the jungle area of Peru, is something we had never heard of before until we moved here. The most common name is the Malay Apple due to the presumption that this fruit originated from Malaysia. After researching a little, it appears that this fruit is strictly tropical (not even being able to produce fruit in California or Florida) and is found all over the world with a number of different names.

Right now we are enjoying the sweet, juicy goodness of this interesting fruit, which is in the Myrtle family. It is a pear-shaped piece with very thin, deep red skin, and soft, white flesh you can easily sink your teeth into. It tastes somewhat like a pear... with a hint of floral essence. Yum.

And as you can also see, the tree itself is quite attractive with amazingly bright hot pink flowers.  The petals are stick-like and when they fall, the sheer quantity of them makes a beautiful natural carpet on the ground.

Quick Mexican Cheese Enchiladas

Alright, so I don't know if this looks appetizing to you or not, but it was really super delicious! While I was preparing it I realized that while I thought I'd made this before, it was actually a new recipe for us. And that's always cause for concern around here because Hubby is not a fan of my experiments! Anyway, I know he loves cheese enchiladas, so I figured I couldn't be too far away from an enjoyable meal. (and how can you ever go wrong with LOTS of cheese?!?) 

So I'm posting this meal because I was incredibly surprised at how quick and EASY this was and thought of all you busy folks (homeschoolers or not!). We are in the midst of getting our furniture ready to ship back to the States, and I was running around helping Hubby. Time was getting away from me and I really didn't know if I could pull this nice, hearty meal off by lunchtime. I was almost resigned to just making PB&J, but I figured we needed something more substantial to keep our energy level up.

Anyway, for all of you who have easy access to those American/Tex-Mex staples, such as tortillas, cream of chicken soup and sour cream, this should be very easy. Here in the Peruvian jungle area we have none of these things available ready-made. So if we want it, we have to home-make it! Fortunately, I had a batch of cream of chicken soup in the freezer, a small can of crema de leche, which I mix with about a tablespoon of vinegar to make sour cream, and I'd had my maid make a batch of flour tortillas the week before. So I was good to go! (By the way, I halved this recipe and it turned out just right for our small family). Oh, also we don't have green chili peppers here. We have a yellow pepper, and that is what I used. 

I found this recipe at Food.com...

Ingredients

12 flour (or corn) tortillas

1/2 pound to 1 pound cheddar cheese (we can't get cheddar here, so I used Edam)

Sauce

8 oz. sour cream

4 oz. chopped green chili peppers

4-6 green onions, chopped (including 2 or 3 inches of the stem)

1 (8 oz.) can cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup enchilada sauce (which we can't get here either! Below find a quick recipe for this*)

Garnish

salsa

sour cream

green onion

Directions:

1. For sauce, combine sour cream, peppers, green onions, soup and enchilada sauce.

2. Spread a thin layer of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan.

3. Place a small amount of grated cheese in each tortilla, reserving some for the topping. Roll up and place seam side down in the baking dish. Pour on remaining sauce, covering all tortillas.

4. Sprinkle top with more cheese and bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes til cheese is bubbly.

*Enchilada Sauce Recipe

Put a sauce pan on a medium-heat burner and mix together:

4 T corn oil

6 T flour

1 1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

3 T chili powder

1/8 tsp red pepper

3/4 tsp garlic powder

My total prep time was just under half an hour and I just popped it into a preheated oven. When we sat down to lunch, Hubby asked, "Did you just make this?" (read: impressed with how quickly I put a hot meal on the table with everything else I was doing). "It's pretty good!" 

...I'll take that as a sign that it can become a regular in our menu rotation now :-)

Scripture Memory

This is one thing I wish I were better at. I remember back when I was a kid and my mom came up with a list of Bible verses we were going to memorize during one summer, but I don't remember what ever happened during the course of those school-less days... I'm the type of person who needs structure, lists and goals, and I thrive under the auspices of a coach and cheerleader to help me get the job done!

As I was perusing the Simply Charlotte Mason website, I came across the Scripture Memory System and read a few reviews. I am impressed at how it works, and I was also pleased to see that even the wee ones can start in on this right away! My ds is 4 years old, and even though we aren't officially homeschooling yet, this is something we can begin NOW and develop into a good habit (as a family even). And this will be one less new thing to introduce. I want my kids to begin to hide the Word of God in their hearts and let the work of the Holy Spirit begin to mold their hearts and minds.

We just started about 3 weeks ago. Since we were beginning again in the Jesus Storybook Bible, I decided to delve deeper into the story of Creation (see earlier post on our Creation lapbook). In addition, I figured this would be a good place to start with memorizing an easy Bible verse. So I am pleased to announce that Cutlet knows by heart:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Now we are working on:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever

believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Last night Prince Charming & I delved into the Bible, looking for more verses to teach Cutlet as he begins mastering verse after verse. We came up with about 20 or so (for now!), including longer passages like Psalm 23.

We look forward to the upcoming days, months and years... hopefully being able to look back on these precious times with satisfaction of having accomplished what we set out to do ... and not wondering whatever happened during the course of those school-less days.

Creation Lapbook

Well since we've read through 2 children's Bibles now and have done another children's devotional book, I was looking for something different to read or do that covers basic Bible stories. I decided to search the internet and look for online devotionals, but instead came across an absolutely WONDERFUL website called Christian Preschool Printables. It's geared toward early childhood/Pre-K & Kindergarten and has a fantastic amount of resources and activities. I love this site!!! After doing a couple of Creation activities with the little Cutlet, I ventured out a bit and decided to try a lapbook, which Christian Preschool Printables has linked to. What is a lapbook?!? Well I'm just figuring it out myself. In a nutshell, it's a manila file folder with the flaps folded inward toward the middle crease in order to make a "book" which easily rests on your lap. This book is a representation of a particular unit of study, such as Creation in our case. It can hold a wide variety of informative snippits that can subsequently be used for review of the topic... or the lapbook itself can be used to introduce a topic. We found this cool Creation lapbook among a few other Bible lapbooks that are available at the Lapbook Lessons website. This site is dedicated purely to lapbooks!!! You can view uploaded completed projects of other homeschoolers as well as peruse a wide variety of uploaded videos of samples or how-tos. With my bent toward scrapbooking and paper crafts, this is lots of fun for me! However, I want it to be a learning tool for the little ones, so I'll have to continue to evaluate whether its value is merited in this regard as we venture out and try a few more... In the meantime, enjoy the result of Cutlet's (and my!) first lapbook...

Cover: He drew a picture of himself in the "me" cloud, Daddy, me, Lively (playing on the floor) and himself in the "my family" cloud, and water, fish, a boat, a tree with a snake, a cross and a bird in the "the world" cloud.



Inside: On the left flap is the Creation worksheet (folded in thirds to fit), the Days of Creation mini-book at the bottom, and a few things he wanted to stamp! On the right flap is his little section about himself. The bottom of this section is "my favorite number", "my favorite food", "my favorite animal", and "my favorite color". The middle section has a really cool Creation Wheel I found a link to. It spins around and shows the days of creation. The rest of the page is filled with stickers & stamps of animals and things of creation found in the water, on land and in air.

This is his drawing of his favorite food: FISH!

Cutlet's favorite animal? ... A SHARK!!!

This is a representation of himself. He LOVES "Calichines" (or sports) shirts, so he had to draw number 4 on his shirt :-) ... that's his favorite number, just like me!








Following is the back side of the lapbook. he drew his hand (complete with a ring on his finger and freckles on his arm!). I attached the world he colored and the words to the song He's got the whole world in His hands...

And that's it!

A lapbook project can take a few minutes or a few days, depending on how intricate and elaborate you want to make it. We enjoyed doing this project a little bit at a time over about 3 days, the bulk of it being completed during the 24-hour period we were without electricity here and there was little else to do!!!





Psyched about Charlotte!

In the past several months of research about homeschooling, I've come across a variety of methods... from the extremes of unschooling to a rigidly curriculum-packed agenda. As I've gone along, I've been attracted to certain things about certain methods. I like the idea of unit studies. I like the pre-packaged ready-to-go curriculum because there is little prep time required on my part. I like literature-rich methods. I like Bible-based programs... But I have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options to choose from! During my research and reading, several times I breezed by what is known as the Charlotte Mason Method. I dismissed it after glancing at a brief summary of it due to the fact that it seemed antiquated and Victorian. So I continued reviewing other methods; however, after weeks of more study, I came back across Charlotte Mason and figured I'd best give it at least a thorough investigation in order to make a well-informed decision as to the education of my children. I had to search a few days to actually get a good grasp of what is involved. (By the way, she wrote volumes of books about her ideas!) Charlotte, born in 1842, was an English woman, a classroom & Sunday school teacher, devoted to children's education. She transformed the face of the English educational system in her day, saying that a liberal (or generous) education for ALL was her goal, no matter if they were impoverished, young, male or female. In an era when not all were considered equal, this was quite a claim!

After reading through a general description of her educational approach, I wanted a clearer understanding of what a modern-day, real-life picture of this method looked like. After a few more days of looking I came across a wonderful resource: http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/. I spent the next several days reading through this amazingly in-depth description of how Linda Fay, the blog author, implemented the CM Method in her family. I couldn't get enough of it and had to finish it all. I am now a whole-hearted fan of the Charlotte Mason way of education!  Here's a basic list of methods, each of which focuses on communicating ideas... not just facts (taken from Education Is, a free e-book downloaded from http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/):

• Living Books - reading a book written by one author with a passion for the subject and written in narrative or story form.
• Narration - asking the child to tell back in his own words what he just saw, read, or heard.
• Book of Centuries - each student adds information, sketches, and reminders into his timeline-in-a-book as he reads about historical events and people.
• Hands-on Math - an emphasis on understanding the concepts, using manipulatives, before working with the symbols on paper.
• Nature Study - spending time outside looking at God's creation, sketching and describing in a nature notebook any item of interest, then identifying and labeling it with the help of field guides.
• Copywork - practicing handwriting by carefully copying passages from living sources, like Scripture, poetry, or living books.
• Dictation - learning spelling (and reinforcing punctuation and grammar) by studying a selected sentence or passage from a living book rather than just alist of words.
• Picture Study - looking at an artist's work until you can close your eyes and see it clearly in your mind, then hiding the original work and narrating what it looks like.
• Music Study - listening to a composer's work unti lyou become familiar with his music and style of composition.

Now here is a list of subjects to be covered in a Charlotte Mason education, keeping in mind that the basic principles for ALL subjects are short lessons (10-15 minutes), habits of attention & perfect execution, and a varied order of subjects:

• History

• Geography
• Bible
• Math
• Science
• Foreign Languages
• Writing
• Spelling
• Grammar
• Art
• Music
• Literature
• Poetry

Now I have to say that what I was looking for in a homeschooling method, I have found described in Charlotte Mason, a truly generous education: unit studies, relatively little prep time required on my part (due to the use of living books), lots of good literature, child-centered, the use of the Bible and Scripture memory, nature study, cultivating good habits, plus the really wonderful incorporation of art and music studies (both of which I believe my 2 little ones have a knack for). And I can cover all this wonderful material in a handful of hours a day by doing short lessons, which will help the kids always do their best work and will keep them motivated to learn. Want to get psyched about Charlotte too? Spend some time in research starting with the Educational Aids posted on my blog!

I Spy

The kids & I enjoy taking walks in the late afternoon from time to time. Lately I've been researching more about homeschooling methods and curriculum and have started to delve more into what the Charlotte Mason method involves. I don't know if this is just another one of my whims, but I am drawn to this teaching style for a number of reasons, one of which includes the study of nature and taking nature walks. So yesterday we went walkabout here and I decided to encourage the kids to observe more of their surroundings; hence the game "I Spy". I would notice something and say, for example, "I spy some bananas." As this was the first of a series of things, I had to help them a little to look up into the trees!

Then as we went along, they (mostly my ds) started to see more things that I was seeing...
Papayas...

Kumquats...

Cherries...

And even a wild mushroom growing out of a tree trunk! (which, by the way, today is MUCH bigger than it was yesterday!)

So the kids & I had a productive outing and we look forward to our next walk through the jungle...

Five in a Row

Five in a Row is a curriculum I've happened upon in my research of possible homeschooling options. There are so many positive reviews. (check out www.homeschoolreviews.com) I like that it is a literature-based unit study guidebook with very little preparation and includes lots of hands-on activity and project ideas. The guide comes with a list of literature selections you can check out from your local library, and each work contains positive moral values reflecting Biblical principles. Interestingly enough Five in a Row is so named because you read the same book for 5 days in a row; however, each day focuses on a different subject area. A Christian character & Bible study supplement is also available. For the Starter Kit (3 volumes plus the Bible supplement), it runs just $125 (good for children in Pre-K through 3rd grade). From what I can deduce, each volume is equivalent to about a semester of study. Each volume can be purchased separately as well for $35 each. Additionally, there is the option of buying each literary work to have in your home library (individually or as a package deal). All of the Five in a Row materials can be found at www.rainbowresource.com. The FIAR curriculum can be used as a supplement to others or as one in and of itself. It is recommended that you purchase phonics and math programs to complete this curriculum when using it with older children. All-in-all I'm interested in finding out more about this curriculum.

Pros:

• inexpensive
• little planning/prep time required
• unit study approach
• includes Bible focus
• good for various ages
• literature based
• lots of possible activities

Cons:

• not sure about reading the same book all week long!

Green Bean Harvest

As the kids & I were taking a walk this morning around the mission, we came by the green bean garden and saw how many beans there were! Cutlet wanted to pick some, and I figured if we didn't help ourselves soon, they would go to waste. So we got our plastic bags and returned to the garden to harvest some beans. We looked for the long and slender ones... not too small and not too big. I love tender green beans! The ones we find in the market here in Pucallpa are always so huge and tough.

After getting back to the house and washing them up, I went ahead and blanched the majority to freeze. We probably gathered about 2 pounds. 

For blanching green beans:

• Bring a big pot of water to boiling
• Dump in rinsed green beans & start timer for 3 minutes
• Meanwhile fill a sink full of cold water & add ice cubes to make really cold
• When the timer goes off, quickly drain the green beans and transfer them to the cold water bath until completely cool
• Drain & package in freezer bags

I kept out a few fresh ones to have with lunch today and then divided my blanched beans into 3 quart-sized freezer bags. I'm so excited to have garden-fresh veggies!!!