I Like this Raisin Bread Recipe (Yum!)

We eat a lot of raisin bread in our household. In the past six months the price of raisin bread has gone up 50 cents. Plus, the ingredients in the loaves at our local grocery store make me shutter a bit.  So, the past few months I've been baking my own raisin bread.  I've been experimenting with different recipes. Last night I came across one (here) and modified it just a bit.  I think this is a keeper!

In a large mixing bowl:

4 cups of unbleached white whole wheat flour 
3 1/2 cups (or so) of unbleached whole wheat flour
1/2 cup softened butter
1 Tablespoon salt
6 lightly beaten eggs
1 1/2 Tablespoons yeast in 1 1/4 cup lukewarm water

1 1/2-2 cups raisins

I let it rise for an hour. Then I split the dough into 3 sections. I used a rolling pin to spread out the dough, then sprinkled on a mixture of ground pecans and brown sugar. (I ground up about a cup of pecans and added about 1/3 cup brown sugar which was plenty for all three loaves.) If I had remembered I would have sprinkled cinnamon on as well.

I rolled the dough up, pinched the end to the loaf, and pressed the ends together to fit into the bread pan. I let it rise for another 30-40 minutes.

I baked for about 25 minutes at 365-370degrees or so.

I let the loaves cool, slice them and freeze two of them for later.

Guess what I'm having with my coffee in the morning!

Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Rugs

We looked at the brilliant colors of Mayan rugs visiting these sites: here, here, and at the Mayan Culture websites. We talked about the patterns they saw.

Then the kids spent a lot of time while listening to our novel coloring their own Mayan rugs.  They worked really quite hard over several days: They used oil pastels for this project.

 

Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: God's Eye -- Yarn Craft

The Huichol Indians of Mexico and Aymara Indians of Bolivia make "eye of God" yarn crafts. Originally they were placed on alters, but now they are often sold in markets. I thought this was a perfect craft for the kids to go along with our talks about the ancient Mayan Indians. I used to make these in Girl Scouts, but came across this website which has details on how to make them as well if you need step-by-step instructions.

This project was absolutely wonderful for LD and DD -- and even ED had fun wrapping the yarn around!

There is a beautiful Huichol Eye of God craft at this website. Check it out, it is gorgeous! I'd love to make something like that!

DD made all the small ones (in this first photo) except the one with the blue center with black and rainbow yarn.

ED worked diligently on her project and wanted NO help or advice from Mom.  No worries!

LD made decided to make a huge one -- and then the next morning woke up early and made FIVE more small ones!

Ancient Mayan Civilization

In our slow, but steady move through history we have talked about nomads, ancient Egypt, ancient China, ancient Greece and Rome and then up into the Middle Ages. From here we're going to turn to the Americas. Our next history unit study will be on Native Americans. I hope to incorporate some good literature books into our studies over the next few months (let me know if you have good suggestions for young listeners).

We started this week with the Ancient Mayan Civilization. I pulled a National Geographics map out (our library had old back copies of NG for 10 cents a piece a few months back). I also bought a book on the Mayans for 50 cents. It's full of great photos not only of ruins, but of artist's recreations of Mayan civilization.

When hubby and I were dating, we went on a trip down to Chichen-Itza and Uxmal.  Chichen-Itza was one of the most important capitals of the ancient Mayan civilization.  I brought out the old photos and shared them with the kids for the first time. Hubby and I weren't married so we also have an over abundance of tourist nick-knacks.

The book we're reading is called The Corn Grows Ripe (with Newberry Honors).  Funny enough this dovetails nicely with our current enthusiasm for gardening. (LD is still doing a lot of work on his plant/garden unit, but more about that another time.) It's about a modern Mayan boy who doesn't work as hard as he could.  When his father is injured while trying to fell a tree, the boy really steps up to help his father out -- first by getting help and then by getting the field ready for planting. In the picture (above and below) the book I have actually show a modern Mayan using the same hooked tool described in the book to cut the brush.  And there's also a photo of the field being burned.  We talked a lot about why that was done (to keep the soil healthy) and how hard it would be for us to cut down and burn the trees in our woods to clear out an area for a new garden. In the book, the boy spends a lot of time pondering the ancient ruins around him. When I asked the kids what they would think if they came across a skull carving like the ones in some of the photos I took, they looked at me blankly, shrugged their shoulders, and said they wouldn't think it was that interesting.  WHAT?!  Guess they don't (yet) have the anthropology/history intrigue that their Mom has!!

Reorganizing The Homeschool Den's Links

I developed this blog in large part for me.  It helps me keep a record of what we've done and it also helps me stay organized and keep track of websites where I've gotten activity ideas and printables.  You should see my drafts!!  Whenever I'm cruising around trying to find information and activities for new units I create a "draft" and link lots of the websites I come across. I have about three or four times as many draft posts for myself as "real" posts about what we're doing.  That way if I come across a wonderful activity about money or a cool website about Native Americans that we won't use until later I can keep tabs on it.  I always wonder if other peoples blogs are as much of a mess as mine is behind the scenes!

Anyway,  I had lots (and lots and lots) of links on the side bars, so I could simply follow my own links to the websites I wanted to visit.  It was starting to look really sloppy, though, so I placed all my favorite websites on another page. The links at the top left will take you there and it's organized in sections by color:

Homeschool Blogs I Enjoy (pink)

Useful Homeschool Websites (purple)

Teacher's Blogs (Blue)

Random Websites I like to Visit (art, music, stories, file folder games, etc.) (peach)

Montessori Websites (yellow)

So, there you have it. A tad bit of organization here at The Homeschool Den. Now I'd better go tackle the house and dishes! :) 

Colors in Milk -- Science Experiment

Here are the other two experiments LD and the girls did.  It sure was nice just stepping back to watch the kids do this themselves this time round.

Color Changing Milk

1) Pour milk onto a plate
2) Add three drops of food coloring (red, blue, yellow)
3) Place a Q-tip in dishsoap. Then carefully place the Q-tip in the center of the plate without moving it around.  The colors start to move and swirl as the soap displace some of the milk fats.

This last experiment is pretty simple.You simply place three skittles (or M&Ms) in a bit of water.  The kids then try to predict what will happen as the colors dissolve off the candy. The kids predicted the colors would mix, but as you can see they didn't. We talked about the fact that there was equal pressure from all sides as if we had our palms out and were both leaning a little bit toward each other.

Oil and Water Fireworks -- Science Experiment

LD was itching to do some of his old science experiments this morning.  We had all of the directions collected on a 3X5 ring (from when we did them a year+ ago). LD leafed through and chose several experiments.

Here is the first one he and the girls did. It's been over a year since we last did this experiment, but it still had a real "wow" factor for all of us. The kids each took turns doing it (LD did it four times!)

1) fill a glass jar with water
2) put 2 Tablespoons of oil in a pitcher and add 3 drops of food coloring each of red, yellow and blue (not too much or the color will drop out of the oils when you pour it into the water)
3) stir the oil and food dye well to break up the dye into small droplets
4) pour slowly into the water and after a few moments you'll see the fireworks begin as the food dye slowly drops out of the oil suspension.

You can see we had a bit too much yellow dye, but all the other photos turned out blurry.

Here is an example from when we did this another time:

We did a similar experiment with shaving cream that was just as spectacular! See this post: Shaving Cream Fireworks

You may also be interested in these preschool science posts:

Free Science Experiment Pack (at our new location, homeschoolden.com)

Chemistry Experiments and Activities for Young Learners: You'll find a half-dozen chemistry experiments my youngest did during our chemistry unit (she's 7). Some of these make good science activities for preschoolers too even if they don't understand the complex science behind it! 

 

Animals Around the World Montessori Cards

Preschool at Home: This link takes you to 20 or 30 of our preschool posts... everything from science experiments, math activities and games to letter activities, phonics games, activities for small more skills and more!

You might be interested in these related posts as well:

• Science Activities for Ages 4 to 6 or so
• Beat the Cold with these Science Experiments about Ice, Blubber and More!
• Science Experiments: Water Molecule Attraction
• Summer Science Experiments – Tasty Lemon Soda
• Preschool Science at Home

See you again soon! Remember our blog has moved to homeschoolden.com and we update our Homeschool Den Facebook Page a couple times a day during the weekday! ~Liesl

Precious Words!

LD actually told me, "Mom, I like reading more than TV!"  In the past few weeks he has zoomed through a fantasy series called Beast Quest and he would read one and often two books a day! The series is about a young boy who goes on a quest to release various beasts from a spell that was placed on them (the beasts protect their kingdom).  I've always loved sci fi and fantasy (and so has hubby) so it's interesting to see LD so caught up in that genre as well!!   Luckily, our library had up to book #18 (we had the first few). The series continues after that, but it looks like the other books have not been released in the US yet so they are harder to get.

Is there a series of books that you might suggest for LD (who is seven)? He has read the Magic Tree House series and this Beast Quest series. He read the first two Boxcar Children books, but wasn't interested in continuing.

Math Movement Game for My Preschooler

 ED (age 3) needs more work identifying her numbers 4-9 and counting consistently with one-to-one correspondence.  This is an action game I put together for her to work on some of her preschool skills.

There are two dice:
1) with the numbers 4 through 9
2) with the shapes -- star, square,
oval, rectangle, circle and triangle

There's a game board with 24 spaces and these symbols on them.

There are wooden numbers 4-9 and a set of numbers on the game board to match the numbers.

Each player needs to perform an action in order to move along the gameboard. Let me explain:

When a player takes a turn she rolls both dice.  Let's say she rolls a star. She moves her piece to the next available star on the gameboard.  Then she looks at the number on the other die.  Let's say it's an eight.  She finds the wooden eight and places it on the 8 on the gameboard (see picture below).  Finally, she does the action (a star=run) 8 times. So she runs around the room 8 times.

Finally it's the next player's turn.  The first person to get to the end of the road and roll the correct symbol (ours was a triangle or a star -- see the gameboard above), wins.

DD does 6 somersaults (above) while ED does the tabletop for 8 seconds.

 

I've been trying to add in a lot more games with our math curriculum. I'll be blogging about that more this next week.

Making a Fairy

Today we used wool to make fairies.  We were going to use a fairy kit, but somehow wound up with skeins of fairy wool instead, so we had to make due with a bead and some ingenuity! But the girls love the end product and that's all that matters.

Here we tied the arms in a knot.  We also tied a bit of wool around the end of the arms to make 'hands.' You can see the hands best in the last picture.

DD wanted her hair braided, so we braided in extra wool to the bits at the top.

This was DDs finished fairy and below is the one ED made (with my help, of course).

 

Eagle Mom with her New Hatchlings (Live Feed)

I heard an interview on NPR this past week about a live camera feed in Iowa on an eagle's nest. As the gentleman was speaking he panned in and out on the eaglets.  As of few days ago two of the eggs had hatched (one April 2nd and one April 3rd) and one more had yet to hatch:

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

**Update -- the third egg hatched last night. You can see a quick one-minute video about that at NPR:

Oh so sick...

This has been a very hard year for us.  We've been here in the house just 8 months and we've had upper-respiratory infections, the flu, pneumonia, strep -- twice, ear infections, weird rashes (all of this hitting most everyone in the family)... and this past week we've had gastro (my guess is rota-virus).  It started with ED early last week. Then we went out of town to visit Grandma and Grandpa.  The night we arrived DD started throwing up every 15 minutes. This lasted for the next 20 hours. Then every couple hours for the next two days. She couldn't keep down any liquids.   The next night LD got it, but recovered quickly. But DD never got better.  We drove back home and took her in to the doctor today.  He gave her an anti-nausea medication and the advice to take her to the ER if she doesn't improve in the next few hours.  Sigh...

On a nice note, Grandma and Grandpa took LD and ED to the shore and they had a wonderful time collecting shells and things.

Geography: Europe board game

We've done a lot with geography of Europe this semester. That's in part because three of our unit studies have focused on Europe -- our world music class, the Middle Ages unit and our fairy tale unit.  I ordered this game back in February, but with the flu and pneumonia descending upon us we never got to it.  We've had a blast with it the past week or so.

Here's the set up. Each player has wooden slots and gets 10 cards which they set in one by one.

There are three discard piles and one pick up pile.

On a player's turn they can pick up a card from any of those four piles.

The official rules say you can't move the cards around. That would be too long and hard for my kids (5 and 7), so the kids move the cards around freely.

The object is to travel through Europe going from country to country in 10 days (10 slots).  You can connect by plane if the countries are the same color. You can also take a ship if that country touches the appropriate water body (the Mediterranean, Baltic or Atlantic Ocean). You have to begin and end in a country (not on a ship or in a plane).

LD won the game and is showing how he made the connections by car, ship and plane.

LD started in Italy took a ship to Portugal, traveled by car to Spain,  took a plane to Austria, took another plane to Belgium and took a ship through the Baltic Sea to Latvia.

Spelling: ou, ow word sort

I got this cute word sort mat from Finally in First.  Thank you, Jenn!

There are other cards that address this ou/ow spelling/pronunciation pattern here and  here. Worksheets (like fill in the blank, etc.) that use the oi/ow diphthongs -- here.

Online spelling game with ou/ow.

Fairy Tale Unit

These are the two fairy tale collections we've been reading from. I strongly recommend the one on the left. The pictures are beautiful and there are more illustrations. The one on the right is good as well, but it's a little more difficult for ED to follow.

**One thing I didn't think to add when I first wrote this post was that we LOVE LOVE LOVE the stories read by Natasha at storynory.com.  You can listen to them free online or you can download them (free) and burn them onto a CD to listen in the car (or wherever) as we do.  It is an AMAZING website (and I love Natasha's voice). I feel like most people must know about it, but if not -- check it out! She has a huge selection of fairy tales, plus Greek myths, Oscar Wilde, Alice in Wonderland, Bible stories, Knights of the Round Table and more.

Rapunzel
After reading this story, I taught the kids to braid (a skill we never tackled before) just as Rapunzel's hair was braided for the witch to climb up. LD eventually caught on fairly well. It was harder for DD.  I thought we might do a craft where Rapunzel peaks out of the top of the tower/paper towel roll with her braid draping down the tower.  It was too busy at the end of the week last week, though.

Hansel and Gretel

After reading this story, we decided to make our own a bread crumb trail. We let some time go by just as Hansel and Gretel had to wait for their father and step-mother. Then we tried to find our bread crumb trail and realized just how hard it is  since the bread blends in so well with the leaves, stones and other forest debris.

It took a lot of hunting, but we finally found one lone breadcrumb out in the woods (next to the leaf).  No wonder Hansel and Gretel had such a tough time out there!

The Three Little Pigs Puppet Show
Followed by lots of new fairy tale performances put on by the kids!  In LD's version the knights had a long extended battle!

We've talked about where these fairy tales originated (mostly from England and Germany) and we've been locating them on our map of Europe.  I printed out an outline map from activity village one day to color in some of the countries. We've also been playing a geography game of Europe, but it's such a good game I'll make another separate posting about that.