Daily Photo – October 31st

Happy Halloween!

~S

Daily Photo - October 30th

Nate figured out how to open the jack-in-the-box without actually winding the handle…

 

Now if he could figure out how to close it too : p

~S

Daily Photo – October 29th

Kahlen made a spiderweb throughout our house…

Nate helped me clean up

 

Wish I had gotten a picture of my non-clutter-liking-husband’s face when he got home ;) Let’s just say it didn’t survive the dadoo monster for very long

~S

Daily Photo – October 28th

~S

Wordless Wednesday/Daily Photo – October 27th

~S

Daily Photo – October 26th

Might her actually be done by Friday?? I think there’s hope!

~S

Tasty Tuesday – Creamy Potato Soup

Welcome to another week of Tasty Tuesday here at The Young'ns!
There’s a recipe index under the food tab above if you’re ever looking for a recipe I’ve already blogged.
Every Monday, I plan on trying a new recipe. If it goes well, that’s what I’ll be posting on Tasty Tuesday. If not, I’ll post a tried and true (i.e. something I don’t have to think about too hard) ;)

I got the cookbook Deceptively Delicious awhile ago and just now have gotten around to looking at it. I really wanted to read all the front matter before diving into the recipes, but I just never got to it. So, this week, I was scrounging for new recipes and found two that sounded pretty tasty. Here’s the one that was a hit all around. I also made the sloppy joes, but I’m the only one who liked them (except for my parents, glad you guys liked them too!). The premise of the book, in case you’re not familiar with it, is about hiding vegetables in everyday foods so that your kids will get more veggies in their diets. In reality, I bought this book for me because I would like to eat healthier, but I just don’t really like the way vegetables taste by themselves. SOO, here’s a cheater way to get more vegetables into YOUR diet ;)

Creamy Potato Soup

{Ingredients}

• Nonstick cooking spray
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, cut in half
• 2 (14-oz) cans reduced fat low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 pounds potatoes, any kind, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup cauliflower puree
• 1 1/2 cups butternut squash or carrot puree
• 1 cup lowfat buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• croutons (optional)

{Directions}

• Coat a large pot with cooking spray and set it over medium heat. When the pot is hot, add the oil, onion, and then the garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft but not brown, 5-6 minutes.
• Add the broth and potatoes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until the potatoes are tender, 20-25 minutes.
• Carefully spoon the mixture into the blender or food processor and add the vegetable purees, buttermilk, and salt; puree until smooth. Not everything fit in my food processor, so I left some of the broth in the pot and didn’t add the buttermilk to the food processor. I then dumped the pureed soup back into the pot and added the buttermilk, mixing to combine well.
• Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with cheese and croutons.

~S

Menu Plan Monday – October 25th

  
I have a recipe index, just for recipes that I’ve blogged about. You can find it by going to the food tab above.

Here's the plan for this week:
Mix-it up Monday (something new) ~ Sloppy Joes with Creamy Potato Soup and Crème Brule Cheesecake Bars 
Taco Tuesday (Mexican or Oriental) ~ Plain ‘ol Tacos
Wow Wednesday (Date night or something like restaurant food) ~  Mongolian Beef & Broccoli
Simple Thursday (Crockpot or less than 30 min prep)~  Bob’s Red Mill Bean Soup with ham 
Favorite Friday (A family favorite) ~ Pizza
Lazy Saturday (leftover buffet) ~ Leftover Buffet
Saucy Sunday (Italian) ~ Shipwreck

Come visit me for my Tasty Tuesday linky party for some more deliciousness.
So, what are you having for dinner this week?
Link up at Menu Plan Monday over at I'm an Organizing Junkie or leave me a comment!
~S

Daily Photo – October 25th

Nate abquatulated with the remote control. He sat in the corner and played with it “discreetly” ;)

~S

Daily Photo – October 24th

Nate grabbed the birthday cake before I could do anything about it! Good thing it was for him anyway, but I was going to try and get him a bib at least :/ Oh well, at least he enjoyed it!

~S

Picture of the Day – October 23rd

Enjoying the fall weather with a friend, nothin’ better!

~S

Preschool Corner / Raising Rock Stars Preschool – Ee is for Elephant

Kahlen is 3 years, 10 months

Almost caught up!! We did this unit two weeks ago, I’m getting there :)

Ee Plan Sheet

“Even a child is known by his deeds” ~ Proverbs 20:11

Kahlen had no trouble with the verse this week, although in her squirrely moments, she likes to say “needs” instead of “deeds”, which I find hilarious. She enjoyed having a short verse this week.

She attempted to write “is” and “Nate”, but struggled with the S and then turned the board sideways for a reason unknown to me.

After tracing the “Getting Ready for E” page, she glued beads onto it to make it prettier.

She colored her verse page “just like it tells me to, mommy” meaning she took our popsicle prop and colored the page exactly like that :)

Cutting out her vocab words.

Our other set of vocab word. Finally got some baseball card holders (Thanks, Mom!), so she helped put them all in.

This week was E is for Elephant.

She did her lacing card on the way to the park this week, so now I know for sure that she can do it by herself!

Her first color by number (that she’s actually been able to do). Turned out great! (This is why she colored the verse page by following their directions. Smart girl)

EVERYTHING has been an AB pattern lately, so I’ve been trying to explain that there are more types of patterns. I think she’s finally getting it. She did a 5-color pattern with this dot painting.

  Here she used our colorful jumbo links to put the right number on the elephant counting cards. (Got the links from Oriental Trading, but they don’t seem to have them anymore).

Spelling out ELEPHANT with our bottlecap letters

Matching upper/lower case

Prewriting (notice how the squares are a “pattern” purple/red/purple/red)

We continue to work through our Kumon books: My First Book of Drawing and My First Book of Cutting. Overall, they’re going well. She doesn’t really like to color the drawing in, she claims her arms are tired nearly every time. She still likes just about anything that’s easy to cut, and often asks me if it’s time to do our cutting sheet yet.

This week, she drew a fried egg.

She cut an airplane zooming along. The point of this one was to have her pay attention to which way she cut it apart. Of course, it had to be all taped together when she was done and spent the rest of the week on her desk :)

We did a lot of things that weren’t really part of RRSP or Letter of the Week for this unit.

Alphabet butterfly puzzle that Nana got her for Christmas last year. She hasn’t really been able to do it until just now because it matches the upper and lower case letters and the pieces are smaller and sort of finicky to get in the board.

Letter Find E from Beginning Reading with our dot markers (Tip: if you use these letter finds, I save them to my computer, then print full screen using the default windows picture printer. If you print straight from the website, they end up being about 1/2 a sheet)

 

Tracing shapes. The other side of this sheet has more shapes on it too. I laminated this one so we could use it over again.

After we were done one day, she wanted to know if there was anything else she could cut. SO, I printed the trace the shapes again and had her cut them out. Since it was her idea, she did a *great* job! (Now if it had been my idea, it wouldn’t have turned out so well.)

I just love the look on her face in this one! It’s a letter matching game that I also laminated. It fits great in a sliding pencil box that I got for less than a quarter on back-t0-school clearance.

When we end up down near the school stuff (which is also by my craft stuff) with no plan, I just let her pick an activity to play with.

Like these geoboards

Or play dough or her easel or the colored links I mentioned earlier or any other number of toys that we don’t play with often (on purpose) so they’re new and exciting.

We’ve also been enjoying We Give Books, which has lots of free books to read online. The best part is that they donate a book for every book you read online.

What have you been doing for your preschooler? Come link up at Homeschool Creations! Interested in learning more about my curriculum choices? Check out this post about my plan for the year.

~S

Picture of the Day – October 22nd

~S

Picture of the Day – October 21st

~S

stART – Elephants Can Paint Too!

Last week when we were learning about Elephants, we read Elephants Can Paint Too! by Katya Arnold

Easy art project after reading this delightful book is to paint a picture :)
She wanted to paint a flower just like the elephant in the book, so here’s her flower with grass. Not sure what the cage thing or the long purple line are supposed to be, but I don’t think she did either ;)
Come join us at A Mommy’s Adventure for more great stART – A Story and Art projects!
~S