Living, Loving and Learning at Bluebonnet Academy Homeschool - Homeschool Blogger

Adventures in Cookie Baking

Fri, 1 Jun 2007 15:13:00 -0500

Our church small group was meeting here at our home tonight and it is the birthday of one of the kids (Happy 9th, R!!). Bean decided she wanted to bake some cookies for the occasion and she invited one of her best friends, Tiger, over to help. Bean and I have baked cookies together many, MANY times, so I figured an almost-12-year-old and a just-turned-13-year-old would have no problems with baking a batch of cookies from a recipe.

HA!

As I was upstairs, they were downstairs working in the kitchen and I heard much giggling (they are girls, after all!). I finally ventured downstairs to see how it was going. Oh, how I wish I'd had the camera with me. Bean and Tiger were both liberally coated in flour. There was a *mound* of cookie dough on the island, surrounded by what was possibly enough flour to make another batch of cookies. Now, keep in mind that these were Oatmeal/Chocolate Chip/Walnut cookies, your basic "drop by rounded spoonfuls"/KEEP THE DOUGH IN THE BOWL cookie recipe. Yet, somehow, Bean and Tiger had managed to use almost every one of my Pampered Chef kitchen tools (the cookie scoop I could understand, but I'm still not clear on how the Mini Tart Shaper got involved! There was also some rolling pin involvement--I'm grateful she doesn't know where I keep the cookie cutters. LOL). The story I ended up getting was that once they had stirred in the oats and chocolate chips, there simply wasn't any more room in the bowl for them to mix in the walnuts (BTW, they used my bag of walnut halves, not the bag of walnut pieces I had purchased with this project in mind), so they thought mixing it on the island would be easier (not neater, just easier). About the Mini Tart Shaper, I was told they were trying to use it to break down the butter ("Did you put the butter in the microwave for 10 seconds to soften it?" I inquired. Blank looks ensued.). No satisfactory answer has been forthcoming about the involvement of the rolling pin, though.

It looks like this summer might be a good time for a refresher course in Cookie Basics 101!

The cookies turned out a little lumpy looking (the walnut halves), but they *are* delicious. Bean & Tiger have dubbed them "Choc-O-Dough Cookies" and plan to put them in a cookbook they have decided to write together. I can't wait to see what else they create.

TTFN~

Memorial Day

Mon, 28 May 2007 16:50:00 -0500

There is so much history around here to think about on Memorial Day. We are only a few hours from Normandy, from Flanders Field, from loads of places where Americans gave their lives to protect the freedom of us and others.

Did you ever wonder why the veterans give out poppies on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day? Throughout history, people have noted that poppies often appear on battlefields and the graves of soldiers. Poppy seeds lie dormant until the ground goes through a major upheaval, such as it does in battle. At Flanders Field in Belgium during WWI, poppies bloomed everywhere after the battle and inspired Canadian Major John McCrae to write this poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

We can never forget that freedom is not free.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Dad!!!

Argh!

Tue, 29 May 2007 16:37:00 -0500

So, "Baby Basil" outgrew the nursery over the weekend as well and we moved it outside to live next to "Baby Dill". It rained every day for the past 5 days and I think the Basil drowned!! Are you kidding me? Next time, I'm just going to keep it on the windowsill in the kitchen so Bean can monitor the water intake.

Wow, I can't believe it's only two weeks until we get to visit my parents. Bean and I are so excited!! Our new LL Bean backpacks came in the mail yesterday, so I'm working on finding stuff to put into Bean's so she'll be occupied on the flights. Mine, of course, will be filled with all my meds, glucometer, contact lens stuff and a "few" books. I have to say, these backpacks are much more roomy than they looked in the catalog. I hope I can find enough stuff here to make Bean's look "not too empty".

Not much else going on around here. All of Bean's dance classes are gearing up for the recital next weekend. I'm desperately trying to get the steps to the Treble Reel up to speed for my recital dance. Pray for me!!

TTFN~

Done with 6th grade!

Fri, 25 May 2007 05:13:00 -0500

Great news! We wrapped up 6th grade this morning with 5 Daily Grams (yeah, yeah, I know it isn't supposed to be 5 a day, but it was all we had left!), a final exam in Botany (Bean got 100%! WOOHOO!), a completed IEW composition and the last few chapters of The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.

Her composition was one where she had to try taking notes out of her own head. She chose Irish Dance as her topic and did two paragraphs: one about how frustrating it can be and one about how much fun it is in spite of the frustration. I thought she did great!!

We had a great year and are SO looking forward to our next year in homeschool. I can't believe we've finished six years already!

TTFN!

Book Club

Wed, 23 May 2007 03:31:00 -0500

For the past four weeks, Bean has been participating in a homeschool book club run by one of the other moms in our local homeschool group. The first book she chose for them to read was Island of the Blue Dolphins. One of the things I love about this club is that the leader assigns each kid a project to do based on the book. Bean's project was to write a report about a real-life survival story. She chose to write about Bethany Hamilton.

Soul Surfer

Surfer Bethany Hamilton, 13, lost her left arm to a vicious tiger shark attack in Hawaii. She went surfing October 31, 2003, with her friends in the “tunnels,” a great place to catch up to 80 foot waves. She was on her surfboard lying parallel to the waves when the ravenous 14-foot tiger shark chomped off her left arm and took a big bite from her board in 2-3 seconds. Bethany told her friend, Holt, that she was attacked by a shark; he didn’t believe her until he saw the blood in the water. Holt swam towards her and used his rash guard as a tourniquet. All she could do now was pray, while her friend’s father rushed Bethany to the hospital. Fortunately, Bethany’s father was going to have a routine knee surgery there and she took his place in surgery. Bethany lost 70% of her blood volume that day. It was her favorite board, with the Scriptures she had written on it, that got bitten. Within a month of the attack, she was back on her board and within three months, she was competing again. Bethany has chosen to overcome her circumstance through the power of Jesus Christ. 2 years ago, she visited the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to pray for and talk to the wounded troops. She has written an autobiography of her life titled Soul Surfer and this year a movie is being released on DVD about the attack and her recovery. She is Bethany Hamilton: a soul surfer without a left arm.

Bean has been working very hard on incorporating what she has learned with IEW into her other writing assignments. I love to see how her confidence has grown in this area!! Last year at this time, if she had been asked to write a report, she would have tried to convince me to let her drop out of the book club. When she was given this assignment, she didn't even bat an eyelash. She knew right away what her subject would be and just went about it like she'd been writing reports for years! I'm so grateful that homeschooling affords us the option to try different things so that kids can overcome their difficulties (instead of being faced with a lifetime of failure!). I love homeschooling!!!

TTFN!