Monday = Baking Day

Hello, friends. 

We are moving right along with our homeschool rhythm and loving it. Mondays are the busiest days in our little blue house. Along with Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and Math, we always do our baking for the week. We've discovered Forest isn't too fond of sandwiches, so we are now adding weekly muffins to the baking mix. That way we can bring along a few muffins when we head ever to Sienna's homeschool co-op on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (I am planning to do a few posts on homeschooling very soon. I would like to write a bit about our homeschool environment, our plans for the school year, what the co-op is like and share some of Sienna projects.) For now, on to the muffins...

Last week we made Maple Glazed Pumpkin muffins. They were so good, but a tad bit sticky. The recipe called for a mix of whole wheat flour and white flour. It also used olive oil rather than vegetable oil. Honey and maple syrup were the sweeteners instead of sugar. (We are looking for more recipes made with whole wheat flour instead of white flour.)

Sienna likes to put in our ingredients after I measure them out for her. 

 She also helps by stirring the ingredients together.

 Maple Glazed Pumpkin muffins!  

Forest approved! 

So did Sienna! 

Sunshine wanted to do a taste test. (She no longer has to wear her cone. She is all healed from being spayed now.) 

This morning, we made Apple Cinnamon muffins. This recipe used all whole wheat flour and honey for the sweetener.

Apple Cinnamon muffins

These muffins were quite tasty! Sienna had two muffins for lunch and Forest had a muffin and a half. 

Happy Baking!

Happy First Day of Homeschool!

Yesterday was the first day of our Little Blue House homeschool adventure! (Why yes, we did change the color of our house from white to blue.) While doing our homeschool planning, I read about some fun and memorable ideas for our first day of school. 

One of the things that I read about was making a home cooked breakfast on the first day. So, we started our day off with some homemade pancakes that I made on our cast iron griddle and I managed to set our smoke alarm off twice. At least, we do know that they work and it was memorable! I also decided that every new school year, we will take a photo by our sunflowers in our garden. Or, a few photos, ahem!

We then, of course, had to pick a few sunflowers to bring into our little kitchen!

For morning snack today, we ate fairy steps (peanut butter on sliced bananas) with peppermint tea. We like to imagine these look like little wooden fairy steps in the forest. You can even arrange them in a little path on the plate.

They are quite messy, too!

I had to snap a photo of these two new additions to our little kitchen/dining room/homeschool room.

"Bee Happy" thrifted this weekend for $6.00. And it's handmade!

Also, handmade, but a craigslist find - our new spice cabinet - $20.00.

And, here was our rhythm for the day. We ended up doing things a bit out of order, but it worked very well for us to post our plans and Sienna could check them off throughout the day. We kept things simple for this first school day, but we will slowly be growing on what we are studying together. 

I love how she included her freckles into her self portrait!

We also baked two loaves of bread for sandwiches throughout the week. 

Sienna tried a piece of our warm bread, buttered with her dinner.

Today was our homeschool orientation and school pictures. Tomorrow, Sienna begins her homeschool co-op and Friday she will be a junior ecologist and learn about gastropods at a local estuary. It's going to be an exciting learning adventure together this year!

Waiting

All week we've been waiting for two very special packages to come. The first package to arrive today was our braided rugs we ordered from LL Bean. We ordered one bigger rug for the main living area and a smaller one for the play area. The second package to arrive was caterpillars we ordered from Carolina. We will be observing the life cycle as part of our homeschool happenings. 

(Please excuse the missing baseboards from the photos. That is one of our renovation projects and I still need to paint them, so David can put them up.)

And, Just Like That ...

... she is a reader! 

She's been reading the Frog and Toad series to me and she sounds out most every word on her own. We are so proud of our wee reader.

Sienna's Finds

On Monday, me and the wee ones ventured out for a little thrifting in the afternoon. We went to both of our local shops. At the first shop the only find was made by Sienna. When we went to pay for it, the man at the register told her that she could have it for free. Lucky girl!

$0.25, but FREE! 

At the next shop, all finds were also made by Sienna. 

A movie for Forest (he already has the board book) - $0.50

Fairy picture frame - $1.99 

Antique Pilgrim doll - $1.99

She has been having fun introducing her Pilgrim doll to these dolls we found at a garage sale in the summer.

Summer Garage Sale dolls - $0.50 each

And today, is a very dreary, rainy day. We are spending our Thursday homeschool day learning about the Mayflower together. We will share some of our learnings soon!

"Putting Friends Together"

One of Sienna's favorite new activities is sorting. She loves stickers and one day she started putting them up on the chart paper in groups. She calls it "putting friends together" and we've been recreating this activity for her, so she can practice sorting groups.

Putting the raccoon friends together.

Putting the deer friends together.

Concentrating!

All finished! Look at those new striped pajama bottoms. So cute!