My Father's World--The Letter A (Apple)

We learned about the letter A and apples last week!  Unfortunately, the local orchard where we picked lots of free apples last year didn't have a good crop this year so we weren't able to go there on a field trip.  But, my good friend Amy has a tree in her yard and let us come look at the apples and pick the few remaining ones.  They were tasty!

We made lowercase "A's" into apples, an idea we got from my friend Kristin's blog.  My friend Amanda was having some severe neck pain, as well as being in the process of moving, so I invited her 4 year old daughter to join us for the day for school.  She loved doing the crafts just like Ali does.  Funny how little boys and little girls are so different!

We cut apples different ways and painted with them on our binder pages which had the theme for the week, "If I stay in Jesus, I will have much fruit."

I invented a new lunch for the kids, which they absolutely loved!  I have a bunch of frozen rolls from a bulk food order through a friend's ordering club.  I thawed them so they had raised by lunch time.  Then I smashed them flat and put pizza sauce and a slice of mozzarella between two flattened rolls for homemade pizza pockets!  To make them look like apples I added a green pepper for a stem and a tomato for a leaf. 

For a dessert, I took some of the rolls and put a caramel and some chopped apples between two rolls for a caramel apple pocket.  We made leaves from apple slices and stems from grapes.  They were sooooo yummy and soooooo easy!  The kids went ga-ga over this meal!

One day we observed the differences between the 4 kinds of apples we had and then taste-tested all of them.  All of the kids liked the Golden Delicious apple best, with the Gala one taking second place.

We had to make our favorite fall snack, which I have always loved and looked forward to making in the fall.  They peeled caramels and then dipped them in the melted caramel all by themselves.

We read books about apples and one of their favorites was Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie.  They love the crazy antics of A.B!  So, we had to make homemade apple pie too!  They all got to make their own little crust, chop their apples, add the spices and sugar, and help me shape the dough into 3 individual little pies.  I made a large pie for Daddy and I too.  They were thrilled to be allowed to eat a whole little pie for snacktime!  I think it was the first-ever snacktime where they didn't beg for more snacks and complain that they were still hungry!

We learned a lot about Johnny Appleseed.  I didn't know much about him myself so it was fun to learn along with the kids.  We watched several cute youtube clips about him (and also about how an apple tree grows) and sang the Johnny Appleseed song.  I even dressed up like him to amuse the kids and then they wanted to do it too!  Here Ali is holding her "bag of seeds" and a toy apple, with a ragged cloak and a pot on her head.

Several friends who are teachers or have homeschooled have given me craft/preschool extras and this Johnny Appleseed craft was one of them.  The kids had fun putting the pieces together with glue.

Pumpkins don't have much to do with apples (other than that both are popular harvest/fall foods) but the homeschoolers in our area had the annual field trip to the Pumpkin Patch so we enjoyed a morning there.  I even crocheted my little nephew Jed and Katri a beret and a headband for the event and found them outfits for the occasion at the wonderful local thrift shop for 35 cents each!

Aren't they darling!  I love this pic!

We tried this week to focus more on Ali's schoolwork than the boys'.  The boys' work (MFW Kindergarten) involves more crafts, hands-on stuff, and projects, aka "fun stuff" so sometimes it can swallow up most of our schooltime, making it hard for me to get Ali to focus on the work she needs to be doing for MFW 1st Grade.  So, I'm trying to blend the two, and make sure Ali gets her stuff done too.  She is reading for Book-It and read some easy readers about apples to the boys.  We did an A-words treasure hunt like we do each week for the letter of the week and she practices her writing and spelling putting the words down on the list.  They colored their A pages and practiced writing A's on whiteboards and their binder pages.   We did Math-U-See and our regular things like chore chart, weather chart, Bible verses, prayer time, etc.

And.....I didn't take a pic, but I decided to try this recipe on Wednesday and make some caramel apple cheesecake for the first time.  Yummy!  We had a few unexpected visitors this week (and one of my friends also had a birthday) so we were happy to share a slice with them!

My Father's World--The Letter L (Leaf)

Making pictures out of leaves we collected

Leaf rubbings

This delightful book our cousins got us a while back was perfect for this week's lesson and I enjoyed the gorgeous illustrations and the storyline as much as the kids each time!

We have been learning place values and counting by tens in Math-U-See so I had Ali collect 100 leaves from the yard and we sorted them by tens and counted them.

One afternoon Jer and I just laid under the trees in our yard and watched leaves fall.  Capturing the falling on camera was difficult!

Have you ever had an afternoon where the kids were actually playing together nicely for hours on end?  This rarity occurred on Monday afternoon, so I grabbed a magazine, my focus chart, and rustled up some chocolate and enjoyed laying on a blanket outside near the kids.

On Tuesday we took a ramble through a nearby canyon and enjoyed a picnic and the beautiful colors and sites

The kids LOVE to feed the fish!

I brought my tripod and used the self-timer for this pic.

The kids call these "choke-berries."  We picked a few to take home.

We read about trees and read the story "Johnny Maple Leaf" which is really cute.

I learned a lot about leaves this week too!  Look how the chlorophyll is breaking down in such a neat pattern on these leaves as they change colors!

I had a hard time coming up with "L" snacks this week so we really didn't do anything with food for school.  We practiced writing the letter L, did some leaf coloring pages, made a little fall booklet and reviewed the letters we've learned thus far.  I really enjoyed the theme for this week "I will live and grow in Jesus" and our song of the week "Read your Bible, Pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow....."

We also got a special musical treat this week!  A friend gave me some tickets to a local concert that she wasn't going to use so I took the two older kids to this fabulous concert done by a group of family singers that were amazing (and their last name started with L!)  They played and sang all kinds of music (classical, opera, broadway, 40's, 60's, jazz, gospel, country, patriotic), and they did some ballet, ballroom dancing, and river dancing.  It was quite the show!  The kids were thrilled to stay up late and to get to go to McDonald's for sundaes afterward!

For more MFW inspiration visit my friend Kristin's blog.

To see what we've done in previous weeks, click on the thread at the bottom of this post that says My Father's World.

Cozi Saved My Homemaking from Certain Disaster!

My super-amazing new friend Nicci Anna (Neech-ee-On-uh) who homeschools 5 boys excitedly told us about Cozi one day at our Play & Pray group.  She showed us how she had her whole life accessible on her touch phone.  She even talked about how FlyLady and Cozi had formed a partnership so that you could link your housekeeping chores onto your Cozi schedule.

I was intrigued, but not sure if it would work for me or not.  I don't have a cell phone, so I didn't know how it would work for me to digi-tize my schedule.  I've given it a month and I'm here to say that....

....I LOVE COZI!!!!  It has truly been the biggest help for me this fall in staying on course with homeschooling and raising 4 children.

Cozi is free and  has lots of options for you depending on whether you want to link it with other online calendars, such as FlyLady's cleaning schedule, etc.  I love that it remembers your schedule so that you aren't having to fill in the blanks every week with the same ol' stuff.  For example, I took my personal chore chart and entered things into the master schedule like: clean the van on the first day of each month, water plants every other Tuesday, pay bills on the 10th of each month, write to grandparents, etc.  It remembers these things and automatically brings them up when it's time.  Maybe this isn't so exciting to all of you if you've been doing this for years, but this non-techie is impressed with my first computerized schedule!  I love that it automatically color-codes the schedule for each person in your family.  I love that you can have it automatically send your husband and yourself a weekly e-mail reminder of the upcoming week's schedule.  I love that you can make grocery lists and menu plans on it and then print them out before you head to the store.  I love sending my hubby little notes from my Cozi page saying, "So-and-so called for you" or "Your wife is having a rough day--you might want to bring home some dark chocolate!"  Cozi even has a journal feature which I use to jot down baby milestones and funny things the kids' say.  You can choose to have your journal routinely e-mailed to relatives or uploaded to your fb page if you want to!

I even put my homeschool lesson plans on Cozi so my whole life is all in one place.  When I get up in the morning, I have my game plan, and that makes things a lot easier.  I always struggle to stay on top of written planners or to keep track of paper lists with lesson plans, but because I'm in the habit of checking my e-mail throughout the day, checking my Cozi page is a snap.  I leave my page up on the screen throughout the day and have it set so that my Cozi page always comes up when I click Internet Explorer.

I have to agree with Nicci, just being able to put all the details of motherhood, ministry and life-in-general down frees your brain to forget it.  I'm now remembering all the stuff that so easily fell by the wayside with a written schedule.  My brain feels less tired because I release those details the minute they are entered onto the calendar.  Have I become a slave to the schedule?  Absolutely not!  I still procrastinate on some chores I should be doing or choose to bump a chore to tomorrow that I just can't get to today.  I still have lots of flex with my schedule, and I see the FlyLady zones as suggestions, not imperatives. 

If I want to carry my schedule with me I can quickly print off the weekly or monthly chart.  I'm constantly talking about preparation on this blog, and how essential it is to motherhood, and this wonderful and free tool called Cozi is keeping me prepared and focused during this stage of life!

(And I'm in no way getting paid to promote Cozi!)