This is my new favorite Science site.  The
link was sent through on the homefires yahoo group.
www.howtoteachscience.com

The article in homefires was about teaching the
peroidic table to children at a young age. It talks about
how overwhelming Science can be but if a child is
exposed to these things early it will be second nature
to them and not as complicated.

One of the ideas was to have the table out for children
and begin creating a basket with each of the elements
on it. I loved this idea and hope to incooperate more
from her free lesson newsletter that will be sent out
biweekly. You can join the biweekly newsletter too to
help you child learn about the peroidic table.
Click the link above. I think this mom is just starting
out with the site but it really looks like it is going
to be a keeper in my files section.

Nikki

As promised I am finally getting to some of
the new resources that I have come upon. So
sit back , relax and enjoy the links...

Hear history and politics out loud
with these free audios.
www.hpol.org


Need some new worksheets. Creating
your own is easy at this site.
www.worksheetworks.com


Are you teaching a pre reader this year?
You might want to check out this teachers website.
Some of the ideas are obviously classroom setting
only but some can be modifyed and used at home.  
www.jmeacham.com


Also for the prereader..
Click the freebies section at the top for
some printables
www.carriesfamilydaycare.com

Creative Pre K activies and elementary
Creative Make and Takes

Learn basic reading skills online
Online basic skills

Free Phonics worksheets

And last but not least is a resouces
I have talked about time and time again
called math wire. Right now you will
find morning math routine ideas, manipulative
ideas, math mats and much more.
www.mathwire.com

How do you plan you Meals?

At the heart of the Matter this week inquiring minds
want to know how I plan my meals and how you plan
your meals too. If you want to participate hop over
to www.heartofthematteronline.com and tell us all about it.

I like to keep things fairly simple. We are sort of a
meat and potatoes type family. Well, most of us are anyway.
Heart and I aren't real big meat fans. We aren't vegan just
like a bit less meat then we actually have. I could live on
pasta alone.  :) Basically I plan  our dinners.

Breakfast through the week the kids make what they
want. I just keep things in stock like pancake mix, muffins,
eggs, and cereal . (and other breaksfast type foods)
Saturdays is the only day we may make a special breaksfast
or try a new recipes. The kids actually really like to make
their own. It gives them a chance to be independent.

Scrambled Eggs in the Microwave..
Add a teaspoon of butter to your bowl.
Microwave the butter till it is soft.
Then crack your egg and wisk it.
Start microwaving the egg and
on occasion stop and stir again.
mircowave until it is no longer runny

Simple enough my 8 year old does this.
My 11 year old likes to make them on the stove. :)

My other favorite on Saturday is the oven omelet

8 Eggs
1 cup of milk
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
2 cups of shreaded hash
(or you can use cubed potatoes)
1 cup of ham
(you can add bacon or other desired meat)
1 cup of shreaded cheese
1 Tablespoon of onion

In a large bowl beat eggs,milk and seasoned salt.
Stirin remaining ingredients. Pour into greased 8 in.
Square baking pan. Bake uncovered at 350 for
45-50 minutes. Or until knife inserted into the center
comes out clean.


For lunches the children each sandwiches,soups or salads.
Well Spirit and I eat the salads. :)
Most of the time I create extra from the dinner menu
and then freeze it or create mini tv dinners that
they can pull out and heat up.

Dinner is where most of my planning comes in.
My family is fairly picky so we usually have the
same sort of meals within a two week block.
Then I add 1 new meal a week. My meals are
growing to what everyone likes. I just
pick  from the meals the family likes.
I created a sheet in my managment binder
for each meal. At the bottom of each is a
grocery list. So I simply get my calender for the
week. Write in that weeks foods and then
add the items to my grocery list. This took awhile
to create but now it makes life so simple.
When I find a new recipe the family likes
I just add it to the binder. Creating menus is
simple.

Now recently we have had a new problem.
Carl has been diagnosed with Diabetes. So we
have had to rethink our dinners. I had to rework
some of the recipes but it is possible.

Try these Sweet and Sour Carrots

2 cups carrot slices, 1/4 in. thick
1/2 cup celery slices 1/2 in thick
1 can (8onces) pineapple tidbits
(drain and reserve juice)
1 Tablespoon of vinegar
2 teaspoons of cornstarch
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of sliced green onions
1/4 cup Equal spoonful

Cook carrots and celery in meduim saucepan in a small
amount of water until tender about 8 min.
Drain and set aside

Add enough water to reserve pineapple juice to 1/2
cup liquid. Stir in vinegar, cornstarch, soy sauce,salt
Cook in med. sauce pan until liquid thickens

Add butter , drained pineapple, onions and still unitl
heated through. Add carrots, and celeryy, cook about
2 mins. or until heated through stir.


Some of my favorite sites...
www.cooks.com

And if you are into crookpot cooking
you can go to this site and make just about anything
in the crookpot
www.crockpot365.blogspot.com


I'll leave you with my families favorite
ranch pretzel recipe..

Happy cooking
Nikki

In case you haven't noticed, my Flashback Friday entries usually center around what is going on in my life at the present.  Well, this week was VBS at our church, and basically it was all-consuming, so I dug out the oldest pictures I could find in the VBS genre.

This was Annaleigh's first VBS...

She's the little over-dressed red head there on the front row.  She was two years-old and probably too young to even know why she was there.  The reason why she was there, in case you're wondering, was to give me a chance to go sip a cup of coffee at the Shoney's down the street....but don't tell anyone that, ok?

In the above shot, it's hard to tell if she's putting the offering in or taking it out.  I'd prefer to think she's putting it in, since we were trying hard not to raise a thief.

Boy, the years sure do fly!  Now she's too old to actually be an attendee at our VBS, but she's a helper.

You may think VBS stands for Vacation Bible School, but at our church it actually stands for Verging on the Borders of inSanity.  You see our church is small....very small.  We don't have enough children in our congregation to constitute a VBS.  Nor do we have enough workers to competently run one.  However, our church is located very near a government subsidised neighborhood that is swarming with children, so that's why we host one year after year.  It is cuh-razy!  Yet every year when I look at the photos of the smiling, happy faces while I soak my sore feet in Epsom salts, I realize it's worth it...every chaotic second.

I no longer go down the street to sip coffee (but believe me...it's tempting because our present church is near a Starbuck's...not a Shoney's).  I am the craft person, and it's just about the looniest room in the building. (Big D asked me to give him photo credits for the following...)

Those pictures may look all nice and sweet and tame, but trust me, being the craft person can bring on a headache the size of Montana.

Yet, I still do it because it's not really the crafts that are important.  It's not about the crick in your back.  It's not about the paint on your favorite maternity shirt.  And it's not about the room that you left in a massive upheaval earlier tonight because you were too tired to think about it.  It's the opportunity to share the love of Christ with children through spending time with them and showing them a brief moment of love and peace..

However I still suspect that some are just there for the food...

But then again, maybe not...

Please join me with a flashback of your own!  Then come back here and post the link so we can all come share in it....

Kieran's been doing the doing the "ready to walk" dance.  Every time he gets himself up from the floor into this awkward positon he's cheered and applauded by an audience of siblings, and he's been loving every minute.

He also gets a "golden scissors award" for letting me cut his hair without making a single protest peep.  What a little-big boy!

If you haven't done some research on dyslexia
you may not realize that another big block for a
dylexic person is memory. Most people think of it
more as a writing issue or reading. That letters and numbers
are reversed, backwords, or missing. Which is all true but
there is more. A child with dyslexia my struggle with
remembering math facts, remembering more than one chore,
where their belongs are, the name of simple ojects or
even direction or where they are.

In the past my princess had called tissues--
Those things you wipe your nose with. She often
Reverses the names of two objects if they are similar
such as up and down, or back and forth. She has on
occation even been confused about our location.
We travel through the same area daily but one day I
assume her thoughts were on something else . When
she looked around she thought she was at a local tourist
location that we often visit. Instead we were only about
5 miles from our home. These types of things often scare
me. I worry that one day when she is old enough to drive she
will lose her baring and not know where she is.

And so we work toward helping her memory.....

Here are some techniques I have found to help
a childs memory. You wouldnt have to be dyslexic to
use any of these just a person wishing to improve on
their memory.

1. Use the first letter of the word to create
a silly rhyme,sentence or made up name.. Such as learning
the colors of the rainbow..
Roy G. BIV
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet


2. Story Strategy- Make up a silly story with
all the words you want to remember.
example..
Bird, seed, Corn, nest
The red bird sat smiling in his next
eaching seed and corn.

3. Grouping-
Group words that are similar together.
Animals, kitchen items, etc... When you try
to recall them you can think of the group they were
located in .

4. Images - Draw pictures to go with a word
to help you remember. You can also try highlighting
that particular word for awhile in your writing.
You mind will remember the color then remember
the word and its spelling.

5. Location-    Do this exercise. Close your
eyes and imagine your church. Going through the
doors and any details you can remember along the
way. This one is an exercise in improving your memory.

6. List - If you have to remember a list of 10 items.
Associate the word with the number. 1 - bear
2- dog etc..

7. Visualize - Say the word, look up close your
eyes and picture the word, Write it in the air
and then write it on paper. Visualize what it means
a picture or action.


If you happen to have any other ideas
for helping improve memory please share them.

Nikki

We are awaiting much needed rain from Dolly, who hit the Texas coast at noon yesterday.  We have the clouds and 1/4" of rain.  Oh please let it rain, Lord!

One nice thing Dolly has brought us are cooler temperatures.  DH came home and after dinner he went to the garage to work on the wall unit. 

There is a file cabinet in the making....

Here is the tricky part...making sure all the measurements are correct. 

DH and I have an awful time creating from scratch. Usually something goes wrong and it doesn't work.  We are much better at reading someone else's directions (as long as they are well written LOL) and following them.  We are approaching the moment of truth here...will everything come together???