Ten kids and a Dog: July 2009

Friday, July 31, 2009

Summer Faith Adventure--day 4

We began today's day-4 of the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure by saying the second decade of the Luminous mystery's of the Holy Rosary--The Wedding Feast at Cana.

I will take this quick opportunity to share this gorgeous rosary that my dear friend Ruth sent to me! It is such a special rosary, I will treasure it forever.

After saying our decade of the rosary, I took this time to read about Jesus' first public miracle in our children's bible. We discussed how Jesus performed this miracle for his mother even though He didn't feel it was time to begin His public life, from this we learned about obedience, especially obedience to your parents.

We then began working on our family tree to remind us of all the people close to us whom we should pray for everyday, even those who have died.

Our family is very large, so we just concentrated on grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins--and, of course, brothers and sisters.

The Collins' kids have 47 cousins---so we have alot of praying to do---and this is a great way to remind us to keep all this wonderful family in our daily prayers.

Another neat idea from the Holy Heroes kids was to make flowers to put near our family tree. These flowers have the names of our friends,they may not be in our family, but they mean so much to us, we want to pray for them everyday also.

We have a lot more flowers to add, and will do that tomorrow---I believe Gracie is offering everyone "peace" but I am not sure what Kimberly is doing.

I chose to have the kids color the picture of the Wedding Feast at Cana.

We learned that the last recorded words of our Blessed Mother in the Bible took place during the wedding feast. Mary told the servers at the wedding, "Do whatever He tells you." We talked a lot about what the words mean to us---and we know that they mean if we follow Jesus and "do whatever He tells us" we will live forever with Him and Mary in Heaven.

What would a Summer Faith Adventure post be without snacktime! Today was rice krispy treats--to signify that families "stick" together.

I was happy, because today's snack didn't contain the ingredient flour, so I thought it wouldn't be too messy.

We made chocolate rice krispy treats.

Grease the pan--ok--our technique is a little messy.

Mom was in charge of the melted marshmallows and butter--not messy.

Licking out the bowl--okay--this is going to get messy.

And sticky....

really sticky, on hands, faces, tables, hair, clothes, chairs, and the floor,

but they we were, oh, so yummy!!

You can check out:

Day-1 here

Day-2 here

Day-3 here

We Spotted a New Bird!! A Blue Headed Vireo!!

Or, truth be told, MARK spotted a new bird!! He is always the one---he has a great "nature eye" and spots anything new.

This blue-headed vireo showed up and seems to be fighting with our goldfinches. The goldfinches don't want to share their thistle seed feeder. This little guy may be a juvenile, because he is supposed to be eating insects.

We are always so excited to get a new bird visiting the backyard---and it is also exciting when we identify it and then check the range map and it actually lives in this area--we are in the blue headed vireo's summer breeding range.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Summer Faith Adventure--day 3

After a one day hiatus, it was on to day-3 of the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure.

You can check out day-1 here

and day-2 here.

This is how we watch the daily videos featured in the Summer Faith Adventure. Daddy has provided us with a way to hook the laptop to the computer in the dining room. This works great for a lot of our schoolwork. If you aren't familiar with Ten Kids and a Dog, you don't know that the house is pretty small, all 900 square feet of it, so the dining room is used for a schoolroom, for dining in, and for watching tv.

Today's craft was to make a personal prayerbook. Mark and Grace enjoyed this. Holy Heroes provided beautiful printable artwork to add to the books.

Kimberly also wanted to make a prayerbook. She found her own paper, so I knew we were going to make something. So I got out a little Lawrence Lovasik book to use to cut up for pictures. If you don't know about this great bargain, Amazon has many of these books for $1.50 for a 10 PACK of certain titles. It is also offered as a buy 3 get one free, which makes these little books less than .15 cents each. For this price we can afford to cut them up!! It is less money than printing pictures!! (Of course, they also make great gifts. I have packaged up several titles together and sent them all over the country as gifts for little ones.)

Cutting and gluing is one of Kimberly's favorite things.

She has now "read" her prayerbook over and over to anyone who will listen.

Today's snack was homemade pretzels. First we learned about the symbolism of pretzels to the church and then got busy.

There have definitely been a theme to the first three days of the Summer Faith Adventure snack: flour. Fluffy, puffy flour----everywhere, on the table, the floor and the children, but what wonderful memories. I don't generally let the kids get quite soooo involved in the baking process, but this gave us a great opportunity to get messy!

We began with yeast and warm water.

We then kneaded and kneaded and kneaded. I wasn't sure how this overhandled dough would do---but having 12 hands wanting to "work" on the dough didn't hurt anything at all.

Notice the abundance of flour!

Yep, flour is fun--especially paired with a Kool-aid smile.

My 20 year old employed baker had to show the kids how it is really done!

Looking good!

Daddy had to get into the act when Luke decided he wanted to keep his dough to make things with (think playdough), but with Daddy's encouragement, he gave up his dough for one more pretzel

Paint on an egg wash, sprinkle with salt, and we were ready to bake.

The finished product.

Matt had just gotten home from work and was hungry so Kimberly shared the first tastes with her big brother. They both agreed, and so did all of us, these are very, very yummy pretzels. We had never made any before and I had my doubts after so much "help" but they were so good, several kids wanted me to make more right them---so did Daddy! These will definitely be a treat that we indulge in often!

Check back tomorrow for more Summer Faith Adventure fun from TenKidsandaDog.

We have been featured!

Ten Kids and a Dog have been chosen as a "Featured Mama Blog" at Catholic Blogging Homeschooling Mamas.

Make sure to check out this great site! I have just begun to explore everything on this great "community" blog, and I look forward to learning a lot and "meeting" many, new to me, Catholic Homeschooling Mamas!