CSA share #4

Things I'm most excited about this week:

Beautiful rainbow chard for smoothies!
Kohlrabi to try on the grill!
Beets for juicing!
Spinach for Michael!
Cauliflower for Ed!
Green Leaf lettuce for Andrew to try!

Mashed Cauliflower

Really wanted to do something fun with that stunning cauliflower, but kind of ran out of time, so I steamed up the whole head of it.  I gave some plain steamed cauliflower to Ed, because that's how he likes it.  Then I used the rest to make cheesy mashed cauliflower.  While the cauliflower was steaming, I sauteed some diced onion in butter.  I drained the steaming water, added a dash of milk, the butter and onions, and some mixed shredded cheese.  Then I mangled it all up with my immersion blender and added a touch of salt and some pepper.  Pretty tasty.

Stir fry goodness

I wanted to use up the bok choy and rest of the sugar snap peas from last week's CSA share, so I made this Stir fry:

It's little strips of organic ribeye steak, broccoli, bok choy, sugar snap peas, garlic and green onions- stir fried in a little bit of peanut oil, with a tiny swirl of sesame oil added at the end, and some wheat-free tamari sprinkled on.  All served over brown basmati rice.  So green and so good.

2012 CSA share #3

Used the broccoli and onions in a stir fry last night.  Can't wait to use that beautiful cauliflower.  Eddie wants to make pickles with the little cukes.

Huh, so that's what kohlrabi looks like inside.

I wasn't paying too close attention when I was putting my CSA shares away.  What I thought was fennel turned out to be kohlrabi ( I guess I didn't notice that the little frondy part was missing, lol!) and what I thought were turnips were actually these beautiful chioggia beets and golden beets:

They looked so lovely, I had to juice them with some grapefruits and drink them immediately:

Mmmmmm!  Need to make some more of that!  I hope we get more beets next week!

Last night, my sister Laura and I were talking about how since we're eating gluten-free, we have a tendency to want to wrap everything up in lettuce.  I got some gorgeous green leaf lettuce today, so I made a tuna salad with a little mayo, dijon mustard, green onions, carrots and slivered almonds and wrapped it up like a burrito with some extra large lettuce leaves.  I could eat these things till the cows come home.  So yum!

So, next I decided to make something with my "fennel".  I took it out of the fridge and thought, "Something's wrong with this fennel."  Then I noticed the leaves were all wrong and realized it was kohlrabi.  I've never cooked with kohlrabi before, so I went online and looked up a few recipes and decided to make this soup.  It's pretty delicious.  

CSA Shares 1 & 2

This year I joined a different CSA, Geauga Family Farms, and so far, so good!  Everything has been wonderful!

Books for the Year

Audio Books:

• Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
• The Pepins and Their Problems by Polly Horvath

Book Club Books:

• Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater (Reviewing because we read last year)
• Sees Behind Trees by Michael Dorris
• Ribsy by Beverly Cleary
• Frindle by Andrew Clements
• Big Trouble in the Big Apple by Thea Stilton
• A Dolphin Named Bob by Twig C. George
• Baseball Fever by Johanna Hurwitz
• The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling

Read Alouds:

• • Longwalker's Journey by Beatrice O. Harrell
  • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Great Illustrated Classics version)
  • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  • The King's Shadow by Elizabeth Alder
  • Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary
  • The Jungle Book: The Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling
  • Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
  • Jason's Miracle: A Hanukkah Story by Beryl Lieff Benderly
  • The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
  • The Three Musketeers (Great Illustrated Classics Version) by Alexandre Dumas
  • The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck
  • Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
  • The Best Halloween Ever by Barbara Robinson
  • Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla
  • Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen Without a Country by Kathryn Lasky
  • The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
  • Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

And literally hundreds of picture books, some of which were for history, as well.

Eddie's Independent Reads:

• The Double Life of Pocahontas by Jean Fritz
• The Village That Vanished by Ann Grifalconi
• The King's Day by Aliki
• Galileo's Leaning Tower Experiment by Wendy McDonald
• The Legend of the White Buffalo Woman by Paul Goble
• The Cat Who Walked Across France by Kate Banks
• Slugs and Snails by Claire Llewellyn
• Planets! by Lisa Jo Rudy
• The Fighting Ground by Avi
• Of course, dozens of Star Wars books, Phineas & Ferb magazines, Captain Underpants books, Pokemon books, etc.
  
  
  
• Andrew's Independent Reads:
  
  
  • Pocahontas by Lucille Recht Penner
  • The Village That Vanished by Ann Grifalconi
  • The King's Day by Aliki
  • Mapping Penny's Day by Loreen Leedy
  • Berenstain Bears Collection by Stan & Jan Berenstain
  • Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner
  • Birds Build Nests by Yvonne Winer
  • It's Science: Hot and Cold by Sally Hewitt
  • A Play's the Thing by Aliki
  • The Shark God by Rafe Martin
  • The Printer's Apprentice by Stephen Krensky
  • And the ever-present Beast Quest books, Pokemon books, and random picture books out the wazoo!

Interesting dish

I had purchased some asparagus and garlic scapes at the farmers market on Saturday because they looked good.  I didn't really have a plan for them, so I just started looking through my cupboards and tossed this dish together with stuff I had on hand.

Brown rice- pre-cooked
Mung beans- rinsed and cooked

Saute chopped asparagus, garlic scapes, carrots and green onions in a little olive oil.  Add cooked mung beans and rice and stir fry until heated through.  You could eat it just like this with a little salt and pepper to taste.  I had a jar of Trader Joe's curry simmer sauce, which I added.  It gave this dish a little heat and indian flavor.  Tasty.

Game Week

We finished most of our school work last week, except for some things we are still reading, so we are having a Game Week to finish off the school year.  I will post more pictures later, but I'm posting what I have so far so that I can finish printing my blog for our portfolio review.

We will be playing lots of fun games, some of which will be educational and related to what we have learned this year.

We played "Main Idea Bingo"

Math Dice Game

I had them close their eyes and write . . .

 . . . Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now!

Ed's came out pretty good.  They both did better than I thought they would.

Then we started putting a puzzle together.

This may take all week!

Some of the other things I have planned for this week are:

Another Mystery Box

Badminton

Online games in grammar, health, math, chemistry & French

French Word Search

Multiplication Bingo

History Game about Simon Bolivar

Making up stories- one sentence at a time

Frisbee

Mad Libs

Sudoku

Boggle

Flash Card Bonanza

Soccer

A fun art project

Board games of the boys' choice

AND

I froze a bunch of their toys in a block of ice, and they are going to have to get them out using a squirt gun!

The Last of the Lesson Plans

So, we've finished the last of the lesson plans.  Next week we will finish up any loose ends and have a game week.

The highlights for these last few weeks have been:

Language Arts:


They did several more pages of sentence analysis, a capitalization review worksheet, and a mini unit on dictionary skills:

In spelling, they had words ending in -le,  and words with silent letters:

They worked on reviewing all their poems.  Andrew read The Printer's Apprentice and did a book report on it.  Eddie is still reading The Fighting Ground, and will do his book report next week.

We are on the LAST DISC OF INKSPELL!  THE END IS IN SIGHT!

In handwriting, we finished up the upper case letters and did practice pages with all the letters:

Obviously, we will still need to work on cursive handwriting next year!

Math:

We did multiplication review, timed tests, and also did a few Kumon Geometry pages.  We continued learning about Roman Numerals as well.

History:

We read a book called Thomas Jefferson by Cheryl Harness.  We learned how he charged Lewis and Clark with exploring and mapping the new Louisiana Territory purchase.  We started reading Longwalker's Journey by Beatrice O. Harrell in anticipation of learning about the displacement of Native American nations that was soon to follow this westward expansion.

I scanned this prior to his making corrections.

Gotta love when a color blind kid picks his crayons!

We learned about the pointless War of 1812 and we visited a re-enactment of the first siege of Ft. Meigs.  This was by far the best field trip we've ever done.  It was entertaining, educational, and the weather couldn't have been nicer.  The boys (and mom and dad) had a blast.  They had all kinds of activities- You could join the army for a patrol around the outside of the fort (where you were ambushed by the British and Native Americans!).  You could enlist in the militia and practice musket drills.  You could watch a battle re-enactment.  You could listen to music of the era.   There were musket and artillery demonstrations.  It was all around cool!

Eddie was captured by a Native American.  We had to bargain with him to keep our boy! He wanted to take Eddie back to his teepee and teach him to hunt and fish. 

The boys had to pass inspection to be able to join the militia.  They had to have at least 4 teeth and all their fingers.

After that, we learned about the Napoleon's attempts to conquer Europe, his fateful invasion of Russia, and his eventual exile to Elba.   We learned about the brief restoration of the French monarchy, followed by Napoleon's futile attempt to regain control of France.

Then, we learned about Simon Bolivar and Jose San Martin and their efforts at freeing the South American colonies from Spanish rule.

Science:

We did an experiment to see how temperature affects the rate that something dissolves:

Since we are basically finished with our chemistry, I let them do some independent reading in the Usborne Science Encyclopedia.  I didn't even ask them to write anything, but they both did.  Andrew wrote something about planets in outer space, and Ed did this:

French:

We did review and they played games on the computer.

Latin:

They took a test on all the Latin vocab they have learned so far.  The only new phrase introduced was dura lex, sed lex

Music:

They reviewed several songs and started learning Four in a Boat.

Art:

We had a free art day, and Andrew drew some pictures on a notebook cover, and Ed made this design with stencils:

P. E.

There is one last Swim & Gym next week where they learn about kickball.  We went to the sled hill and they tried to sled on grass.  That was amusing.

We've been going on a lot of walks, and I've been making them do calisthenics also.

Health:

We did a review of pool safety.  I thought we'd be swimming a lot by now, but the pool heater is being repaired and the water is just too cold for now.