Memory Monday :: Halloween

I am revisiting past Halloweens for the first Memory Monday.  I hope you will enjoy these few photos.  

2005: We had some kind of lizard (or was it a dragon?), and two unicorns!

Sick Pumpkin 2008

Cannibal Pumpkin 2008

2009: We had a corpse bride, a witch, and Harry Potter!
Orion had a black halloween shirt on, but he wasn't too impressed.
He did enjoy all the walking though!

Happy Halloween!

Feeding my family :: being sneaky

I tend to stay focus on homeschooling here at Canadian Home Learning, but lately I have felt the desire to share a bit more of our lives. I keep a personal blog where I share my adventures in quilting, photography, reading, and other "stuff" (you can visit my corner here).

I am not sure how often I will post in this new category of posts that I am starting called "feeding my family". I think a lot of us moms have an interest in what we feed our families. I like to make meals that nutritious. I also make a conscious effort to keep artificial ingredients out of our house, or as I usually call them "fake stuff". We are not vegetarians, but we don't eat meat often, and when we do it's usually chicken, turkey, or fish.

I am always trying new recipes. I have always been that way and my family is used to looking at something new to them at dinner time. My kids know that they need to try the food I make for them and that I won't make them something else.

Anyway, what I would like this new series of posts to be about is food. Recipes I have found that pleased my family or a particular cookbook that has become a favourite.

This past week, I have tried several recipes from the Sneaky Chef cookbooks. I took three books out of our local library.  The titles are "The Sneaky Chef", "The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (in the Kitchen)", and "The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue", all by Missy Chase Lapine. My oldest daughter helped me make our meal planning for the two weeks and chose many recipes from two of the books (the man one and the kids one). We both narrowed it down to a few to try and so far, we have been very pleased with the results.

The Sneaky Chef's recipes all include a little boost of nutrition. The boost comes from purees (best made in advance) full of healthy vegetables and fruits, or extra grains. I made these purees last Sunday afternoon. It didn't take very long and I froze a batch of green and orange purees for the week ahead. The rest of the purees I used I made right before starting on the recipe.

Our favourite recipes so far are the Enlightened Enchiladas (kids), the Doctor's Choice Chili (men), the Blockbuster Blueberry Muffins (men), and the Roasted Squash Soup (kids). [kids or men refers to which cookbook the recipe came from].

The Enchiladas were my husband's favourite. The kids loved them too. At that point, only Adrienne and I knew what was in them! I didn't tell them until yesterday that the delicious meals they had been eating contained extra veggies! These had ground turkey and extra veggies were sweet potatoes, carrots, baby spinach, broccoli, and green peas. All those were blended with the meat so you couldn't see anything! I didn't use whole wheat tortillas this time, but will next time. We'll be making this one again.

Another favourite was the Doctor's Choice Chili. I forgot to take a photo of that one, but we all liked it. Made with ground turkey again, it contained extra veggies too: baby spinach, broccoli, green peas, cauliflower, and zucchini. It also had red kidney beans and tomatoes.

Another recipe that I missed taking a photo was the Brainy Brownies. They didn't last long! Very moist and tasty, they had purple puree (blueberries and baby spinach)!


Today I made some soup, the Roasted Squash Soup from the kids cookbook. It has extra veggies from the orange puree (sweet potato and carrots). I love butternut squash soup and this one is delicious.

We will be trying a few more recipes, some drinks and breakfast recipes from the Sneaky Chef.  

Sneaky Chef has a great website with lots of information, free recipes and videos. You can visit here, and also find her on facebook and twitter.  I always recommend checking your public library before buying books. I think it's a good idea with cookbooks to try a few recipes first, then decide if the book is for you or not. So far, this is a winner in our house!

Weekly Wrap Up :: Week 11

While I was getting organized for this wrap-up post, I noticed I didn't have many photos this week, so this post will only have the one photo. 

It was a busy week with school work and watching our mail box!

Adrienne and Celeste both spent some of their savings and got American Girl dolls for themselves. Celeste has been wanting one of these for the last 4 years! I finally agreed that she was old enough and now she has her very own. She is so happy. I think these dolls are extra special to my girls because they saved their money for them too. I love giving my children gifts, but I think it's important for them to have the satisfaction of getting their own things too.

Receiving their big box was the highlight of their week, I am pretty sure!

Homeschooling wise, we had a great week. Last week seemed a bit relaxed and almost unfocused, but this week was the opposite. We had five full days of school work and accomplished lots. Here is a run down.

I usually don't share what we do in Math and Language Arts but this week, I thought I would.

In Math this week:

Adrienne's chapter is called "Freeing the Trapped X" with problems like "solve 2[4(x+6)+1]+3x=17. I am so glad she is using Teaching Textbooks!

Andre has been learning about fractions in the real world (clearance sales, ratios and recipes, advertising, carpentry). He also uses Teaching Textbooks. I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. Math isn't my favourite subject, so I am very very pleased to have found it!

Celeste and I started subtraction this week in Saxon Math 2. She is picking up Math really fast, it's amazing to see!

In Language Arts this week:

Adrienne and Andre completed several lessons in their grammar workbooks and both had one test this week as well. Adrienne finished her unit on sentences (run-on, comma splice errors, and sentence fragments) and Andre also finished his sentences unit and started on grammar and usage with nouns.

Both also worked on their Lightning Literature. Even though they are at different levels, they are both working on analyzing poetry at this time from a variety of poems found in Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages.

We haven't been working on spelling lately or in our vocabulary workbooks. We will get back to it soon. We did pick up our poetry memorization book though this week and started on level 2 with How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll.

Andre continues on practicing his handwriting with the Italics workbooks. Celeste also uses the same series and she has improved a lot since August with her handwriting.

Celeste worked in her Explode the Code workbook #2. The words she worked with this week were melt, lift, hunt, raft, belt, tent, ant, and bent. She really likes these workbooks.

We have been working along with Writing with Ease. It's mostly copywork and narration so far, but we both enjoy it. Caddie Woodlawn was the story we worked with this week.

Celeste practiced her reading aloud every day with her old reader too.

Adrienne and Andre read their own choices of books throughout the week and I read from Pippi Longstocking to Celeste.

In other subjects, in Science we moved on to the respiratory system and digestive system. Adrienne does her biology independently but I still correct her work. She has been learning about mitosis and meiosis. I went over to the Khan Academy to refresh my memory! I then shared the video with her. She said it was helpful and explained it well. I thought so too!

In Ancient History, we studied Hammurabi and the Babylonians, and Shamshi-Adad and the Assyrians. We also read several Aesop Fables.

We finished our study of Switzerland this week in World Geography and started Spain. We also continued reading Free the Children.

Adrienne is progressing with her Spanish lessons too!

Quite a busy week! I think next week should be similar as we don't have any field trips planned yet.

How was your week? If you would like to read other weekly wrap-up posts, visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

We love library book sales!

Before grocery shopping Saturday morning, Adrienne and I stopped at the library book sale. It was really busy, but we managed to find some nice books!

Prices were 10 cents for soft cover and 25 cents for hard cover.

I especially like the DK travel guides we bought for 10 cents a piece. We'll be using these this year as we study our world geography. I thought we could read them and then use some of the beautiful photos for our notebook pages.

Not in the photo is one of Shane Peacock's Boy Sherlock Holmes books that Adrienne was so pleased to find.

We ran into a few other local homeschoolers at the book sale. Homeschoolers love books and great prices!



Weekly Wrap-Up :: Week 10

Another week flew by! This past week, we had the opportunity to go see a production of Alice. It was a great experience and I briefly talked about it here.

The rest of the week went well, we completed all our main subjects and continued with some of our science, history, and geography as well.

In science, we watched a Magic School Bus dvd about the human body. Celeste hasn't watched many of their videos and she really liked it. I will have to remember to check our library for other titles that relate to our studies. Here is one episode we watched:







In Geography, we spent some time learning about Switzerland. I couldn't get our usual Enchantment of the World book on that particular country from the library, but we enjoyed reading Cultures of the World: Switzerland. We also made some Swiss dishes, Muesli for breakfast and Alplermagronen for dinner, which is similar to macaroni and cheese, and is served with apple sauce. It was delicious!

Alplermagronen

Celeste was not feeling well this past week, so part of Tuesday was spent at the local walk-in clinic to get her checked out. She is much better now, just a little bit of coughing left.