Month: June 2012

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Jenn Saves the Day: a My Glorious Disaster Sequel

So I called up Jenn and said “We’re going to play a game. I’m going to name two ingredients, and you’re going to create a recipe.”

Jenn says, “alright,” (with a tone conveying her real meaning of  “I think you’re an odd one, but I’ll humor you.”)

I named squash and whipped cream, and having already read my previous post, she knew what I was dealing with. And magically transformed my gloppy mess into a casserole of yumminess that I plan to eat entirely in one sitting. Over the phone, off the top of her head (and here her years in phone tech support shine through), she correctly chose a pan size, the proper proportions of crackers and cheese, and a baking time to create  a squash casserole.

I think she has a super power.

 

Blog

Another Glorious Disaster

From the kitchen of Chef Alison.

Seriously…why does Paul even allow me to walk into the kitchen.

I got some squash from a farmer’s market and wanted to try something different with it…mashed squash. Like mashed potatoes, but with squash. I’m not sure I could have screwed up my recipe any more. Maybe if I’d forgotten to put squash in it. Maybe.

I boiled the squash instead of baking it.

Apparently what I thought was butternut squash is not. It’s summer squash and like a quarter of the size. So when the recipe called for 2 butternut squash, it meant like 8 times the amount of squash I had. But I had already put in the ingredients to the recipe’s measurements. So the ratios are a little out of whack. Just a tad.

I didn’t have half in half, so I subbed heavy cream.

The salt was not kosher salt and was at the back of the cabinet, so I just didn’t put in any at all.

I don’t like pepper so I didn’t put that in either.

Then I skipped the butter, too, because I didn’t feel like putting it in there on top of all that cream.

At least I put in the brown sugar correctly. The only correct ingredient in this whole recipe.

I tried to mix it in my bowl with my electric mixer, but the bowl was too shallow so it splattered everywhere.

It came out goopy and not stiff like mashed potatoes. And ridiculously sweet. Kinda like squash flavored whipping cream.

Katrina likes it.

 

 

Kids

author and illustrator

Lucas’s artwork has evolved into drawing actual objects and not just scribbles and circles. People are faces with legs and sometimes hair. This story he told me as he was drawing the picture. He was drawing a baby and then decided it looked like a banana. He draws a line for a mouth and sometimes it comes out upturned and sometimes downturned. Then he says the person is happy or mad based on how the line comes out.

Click the image to see it bigger.

Kids

My Morning Thus Far….

I was awoken during some part of my sleep cycle where you are in a deep sleep and just can’t seem to wake up. So I’m lying horizontally across the bed struggling to wrench my eyes open and go get the crying baby and Lucas starts driving tiny trucks into my hair saying they are crashing and stuck in my hair and then a tow truck has to come tow them out. I just laid there.

Finally drag myself up and go into the office to feed Arianna, take care of “business” on the computer, etc. Lucas wants his M&M reward for having gone on the potty but I’m busy with Air so I tell him he hasta wait a few minutes. He decides to root in the fridge and find his own reward. He comes back in (nekkid from the waist down still) carrying a roll of sugar cookie dough. He has chocolate all over his mouth. I asked him where he got chocolate from and drag myself into the kitchen to see what he is getting into. He’s been drinking the Hershey’s chocolate syrup bottle.

So Arianna is falling asleep in my arms and I’m just about to carry her up to the nursery when Lucas comes tearing into the office, carrying a couch pillow over his head, shouting “I’m a Pillow Guy,” and kicks a toy garbage truck filled with other little toys to rattle loudly across the room.

And I’ve only been up 30 mins.

Kids

Home Preschool, Days 2 and 3

Day 2

Today I started over, looking more in-depth to a curriculum Lauren showed me online. I originally dismissed it because it had themes like “apples” and just had way too much stuff relating to apples. Seemed kinda pointless to me, but after the stuff from yesterday, I think that stuff is too old for him. The apples are about the process — not that we need to ingrain apples themselves into his brain.

So now I’m working on creating my own curriculum from this huge online packet. Since I didn’t have it ready for today, we did a mini-field trip to the library where they were having a little music class “Drumming the Beat: Join our drum and music circle as local teacher Wendy Campagna leads us in an African music and culture experience!” So for thirty minutes he banged on a drum and other little things attempting rhythm but mostly just banging. Then I took him to the playground.

We did a tiny bit of work on a website I subscribe to, ABCmouse.com where he learned to trace the number 1 and we sang the Letter A song.

Day 3

Today’s “school day” went great! We started the day with art class down in Marietta. They read a story and then created a watercolor project based on the story. It was a good class, but not sure if I want to go again just because it’s a 45min drive each way. Why can’t Cherokee have cool stuff like Cobb? Lucas was more open to doing school stuff today, and we got through all the planned activities plus an extra because he asked to do more when I said we were all done. I didn’t pay attention to the time, but we spent around an hour or so on all the stuff we did.

[Lesson] The new lesson of week is “A is for Apple” where we learn A, red, and #1 using apple themes. I guess this was more appropriate material. We started by reading a story about a little boy looking for a house with no doors, no windows, and a star inside. It was a riddle for an apple. Reading the story first (Lucas loves reading books) helped settle and focus him.

Next we did a science experiment to learn if an apple would sink or float when dropped in the water and recorded our results by gluing a little paper apple onto a picture of a bucket of water. I had him bob for the apple to take it back out of the bucket. He couldn’t get it so he used his hand to turn the stem up into his mouth and pulled it out by the stem.

He made an Aa out of red pipe cleaners and glued them onto a card. We will do a card letter project for each letter and then put them all together on the wall.

For math, I placed chocolate chips on apple cards and he had to count them as he ate them. (This activity makes more sense if you see the picture of the cards).

We took an activity break and went “shopping” for all the red items in the play room.

We did another science activity and learned the life cycle of an apple …seed -> plant -> tree -> flower -> fruit. I cut up our earlier apple and showed him the seed inside. Then we put the seed in a baggy in the window and ate the apple. Maybe it’ll grow, but I doubt it.

That was supposed to be our last activity for the day, but he wanted to do more, so I pulled out another math one. He rolled a die and then counted the dots to see what number it landed on. He had a worksheet of an apple tree with numbers 1-6 on the apples and a letter A stamp with red ink that he stamped on the apple with the corresponding number.

He was really enthusiastic about doing all the activities and seemed to have a good time doing them. I ordered a book, 
The GIANT Encyclopedia of Preschool Activities for 3-Year Olds, so I can keep going with the preschool thing.

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Kids

Home Preschooling, Day 1

After a lot of online research into preschool activities, I went to Schoolbox last night and bought a book of lesson plans. It’s written for teachers of preschool classes, so it has a few drawbacks for me to do on my own like lack of multiple kids for the games or lack of all the supplies and materials. I was going to buy some of the materials at Schoolbox to save time and effort, but then when looking at the stuff on the aisles I just kept thinking how I had all the stuff at home to make them by myself for free if I just put in the time. Thanks to scouts, scrapbooking, and leftover supplies from mom, i do have  pretty good stash of craft supplies to get started with.

This morning we started our first day. It hasn’t gone very well, but I think it will be better once he gets used to the routine of it. Right now I can’t get him to focus on what I’m saying and pay attention. So far I’ve already learned that I need to get alllll the materials out ahead of time and when he isn’t around rather than right before each activity because it interrupts flow, and he is a nuisance when I’m trying to find certain supplies. This is something I would normally have done anyhow, but since I only finished getting the plans together late last night, I waited until today to find stuff. I’ve also learned that each activity takes twice as long as it should even though I only have one kid doing it because the darn kid won’t sit still. So here is my dilemma that I will need to research: Is it better to force the kid to do the activity because he needs to learn to pay attention and try each thing because he can’t just do what he wants 24/7, or is it better not to force the issue because learning should be fun and I don’t want him to resent/hate school stuffs. This might be easier to solve when I have all the activities put together before hand because I could just switch to a different learning activity that he might respond to better.

The unit for the next two weeks is All About Me.

[Lesson] Today’s lesson was about how people look different and are all unique. We took magazine cutouts of people and compared how their hair was alike and different (brown vs blonde, curly vs straight). I had him glue down cutouts of people’s eyes close-up and then compare them to family member’s eyes. we also watched a sesame street segment about what would happen if we all looked the same. sesame street has a video player and you can search an attribute or lesson and it brings up clips from the show related to that. soo neat.

[art] we made a paper plate face of lucas making it look like him. i asked him what was on his face and he pointed to his eyes and said “eyes,” so i pulled googley eyes out of a bag for him to glue down – and so on until he had all the parts of his face.

[language] then on the back we listed words that describe lucas’s personality like “sporty, problem-solver, etc.”

[music] I tried to teach him a song called I’m Special off youtube, but he told me the song was terrible.

There were more parts to today’s lesson plan, but we didn’t get to them because a) I started too late and we ran out of time and b) they required materials I don’t have or multiple kids to do. Tomorrow’s activities are a continuation of today’s lesson.

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Pinterest

I’m starting to love Pinterest. When Lauren first told me to join, I didn’t find it that appealing. I was looking at the wrong stuff! My wall feed when I first log in of the stuff my friends had pinned was just not stuff I was interested in. Homemade house cleaners? I can’t even bring myself to CLEAN my house…you really think I’m going to take the time to make my own cleaners for it? Cooking recipes? Yeah, right.

Well a Facebook feed of something caught my attention and I went by my account to give it a look. And discovered the Kid’s Stuff. Now I can’t stop looking at activities to do with my kids. As usual, a lot of stuff mine are still too young to do (but I’m saving the ideas anyway for later), but there is tons of great stuff I’m finding we *can* do. And hey, I’m even saving some of those recipes onto my own board, titled “Food I’ll Never Actually Cook.”

Tonight I tried my first Pinterest inspired idea. The frozen yogurt dots. Prep time took literally 5 minutes and now they are in the freezer to harden. Mine don’t look as nice as in their picture…more like yogurt blobs than dots. Update: they took about 25-30 mins to freeze and are pretty good. I’m going to experiment with mixing them with other ingredients b4 freezing.

 

Another project I did today was one I made up on my own. Lucas helped every step of the way as we made a weather folder. First he used a hole punch and punched the holes alone the sides of a file folder. Then with yellow yarn he sewed the two sides together to make it into a folder pocket. Next he used my paper cutter to cut paper cards. I drew different weather pictures on each one: a sun, a rain cloud, wind, etc and he colored them in. Finally I cut the letters for “weather” out on my cricut and he glued them onto the front of the folder. The last step is I will take the cards to be laminated and then have him attach Velcro to the back of the cards and front of the envelope. We then take the folder outside and he looks at the sky and chooses the cards that match the weather for that day and attaches those cards to the front of the folder pocket with the Velcro. Today he chose blue skies and windy. He said it wasn’t sunny because he couldn’t see the sun (which was on the other side of the house).