Kids in the Kitchen--Cinnamon Sugarplums

 It's that time of the week.  The time to enjoy a good book and then make a yummy treat.

This week's book is The Cookie-Store Cat. It's the story of a cat that lives in a bakery and enjoys the easy lifestyle that comes from being loved by the bakers and neighborhood children.

There are quite a few recipes in the back of the book.

We made Cinnamon Sugarplums, and they were absolutely delicious...light and fluffy and gobbled up quickly in this house.  This recipe is going into our regular rotation of cookie recipes. 

 2/3 cup butter, soft

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 egg

4 tsp. milk

1 and 1/2 cup flour

1 and 1/2 tsp. baking POWDER

1/4 tsp. salt

cinnamon sugar

 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla

 Add the egg and beat until fluffy.

Luke cracked his first egg and he did a perfect job.

 He wasn't so happy about the egg on his fingers after his great success.

Stir is milk.

 Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Kim is using a whisk to sift our ingredients. (That's how we sift around here)

Drop by a teaspoon scoop onto your cookie sheet.

 Sprinkle the cookie dough with cinnamon and sugar.

 Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes.

These cookies are delicious...light and fluffy and with the cinnamon and sugar they remind me of snickerdoodles but are  much more soft.

This recipe will need to be doubled the next time we make them, because everyone was home and they were all gone within an hour of baking!

Cay is hosting a Picture Perfect Potluck...sharing picture books and cooking in the kitchen.

Head on over and join the fun.

Giant Miraculous Medal Craft

 Catholic Icing provided this great craft--perfect for my 10 year old Gracie.

We love our Blessed Mother, and what a perfect way to tell her so by making this giant Miraculous Medal.

 Catholic Icing provides complete directions and a pdf printable needed for this project.

It is also simple.  All you need is a dull pencil and the ability to trace.

 The Miraculous Medal as it looked after being traced onto heavy duty aluminum foil.

 Grace then colored Our Blessed Mother with sharpie markers.

 The front

The back...it is now hanging in the living room...and Grace is very proud of her hard work--and so am I.

2012 Summer Olympic Lapbook--Part 1

 I wanted to give you a little information on our 2012 Summer Olympic lapbook.

The main components of the lapbook are from A Journey Through Learning.  This unit consists of a lot a information about the ancient Olympics,the  modern Olympics, and has a printout for individual events, so you can keep track of the winners in your lapbook.

 Another resource was the Modern Olympic Activity printable.

 This is a short printable booklet with some reading and fill in the blank questions.  It also had the Olympic rings, and the areas of the world represented by the rings.  We cut these out and added it to the middle flap of our lapbook.

Some great Olympic coloring pages can be found at Activity Village. 

 We started our Olympic study by reading aloud Hour of the Olympics...a Magic Tree House book.

I found a wonderful sight with online chapter questions.  It also has a vocabulary section for each chapter.  I printed out the vocabulary and did it orally with my 6, 7, and 10 year olds.  They loved answering the chapter questions on the computer.

You can find this unit at this location.

 An inside pocket of our lapbook..We work on our lapbooks in the morning and include the 2 first graders and 5 grader together.

 I am incorporating a study of the city of London into our lapbook.

I found this Mini Travel Lapbook--Cities Around the World: London.

This mini lapbook is being placed into our bigger lapbook.  It contains a perfect amount of information about London to keep it interesting for the different ages for which  I am gearing our lapbook.

Make sure to also check out the free Olympic lapbook available at Homeschool Share. We are also adding a few of these elements to our super big lapbook.

I will be back with more lapbook fun as we progress.

Does Sunscreen Really Work??--an experiment

 We have had nothing but sunshine and hot temperatures for the last month...in fact, we are in the middle of a drought.  This past week, Laura received a terrible sunburn, so I set out to demonstrate the importance of sunscreen use.  I saw this experiment somewhere out there in the world wide web.

Fold a piece of black construction paper in half.

Cover one side of the paper with sunscreen...we used 50 spf...We went a little overboard with the sunscreen, after the initial globbing...we rubbed most of it off the paper.

 After about 2 hours in the sun, we found these very impressive results....sunscreen definitely protected the paper for the suns harmful rays.

 After using the construction paper, I wondered what results we would get using our sun sensitive paper.

 At first, I made a traditional sunprint.

 Scissors...The paper begins dark blue...what the sun hits, it lightens, leaving a great print of the scissors.

 We then made a circle with sunscreen on the paper and then headed outdoors.

 After a couple minutes, these were are results...Sunscreen once again provided plenty of protection against the sun.

Make sure you wear your sunscreen everyone!!

Shaving Cream Notecards

 Amy was a wonderful big sister today and planned a fun craft to do with the little kids:  shaving cream painted notecards.

All you need is:

shaving cream

cake pan

spoons and forks

index cards

liquid watercolors (I use Color Splash Watercolors)

ruler

 We added about a tablespoon of watercolor into 1/4 cups of water.

Put a generous amount of shaving cream into a cake pan.

 Spoon (or use a medicine dropper) to drop color onto the shaving cream.

 We were quite generous with the color.

 Drag forks through the shaving cream...gently mixing the colors.

 Place the index cards onto the shaving cream...press down very lightly.

 Lift the cards off the shaving cream.

 Now take a ruler and rub the shaving cream off the card. 

The colors are amazing....This photo doesn't do them justice.

It's pretty messy business.

Allow your cards to dry and then get busy and write notes to your friends.