I have always wanted to learn how to bake bread.  It is one of those earthy, connecting with the homemaking part of me that yearns to leap out in the middle of all of my techie interests…

I think NyGirl caught my bread-baking bug, and she decided one school morning she wanted to help me bake italian bread sticks for that day’s dinner.

Forming the dough into shapes:

Finally on the pan (not perfectly shaped, but the best we could do!)

Oh, and the pot on the back of the stove top is lentils.  We have begun a new healthy eating regiment in our family that I think is working out okay…though, I won’t say perfectly.

The way it works is very similar to the ideas found in Deceptively Delicious.

The basic philosophy behind the book and my ideas of how to incorporate veggies into my kids’ diets is pretty much all about camouflage.

For example, today I used one of the recipes found in the book that helped me to get some spinach into my girls’ tummies.  Here is a paraphrase of the Pita Pizzas recipes and how I got my kids to eat spinach for lunch today:

Pita Pizzas (with hidden spinach)

• Whole wheat pita pockets
• About ½ cup spinach puree
• About 2 cups of tomato sauce or pizza sauce
• About ½ bag of mozzarella cheese
• About ½ bag of cheddar cheese

Set the oven to 400 degrees.  Spread spinach puree  on each pita (if you don’t want your kids to detect the spinach only spread it to about ½ inch from the edge).  Spread the sauce over the spinach.  Cover the sauce with cheese.  Bake for about 10 minutes.  Let the pizzas cool for about 5 minutes so the cheese doesn’t pull off and expose the spinach!

My kids love these, I like it…and I even think hubby likes it too- which makes it a hit in our house!

As for the Italian bread…it turned out really well that evening last week. We paired it with plates of spaghetti and pasta sauce (blended with a puree of steamed broccoli- another hidden green!)  Turned out well

And though I haven’t turned full fledge into a bread baking mama, I am enjoying skirting around the idea of it.  Meanwhile, I get a kick out of baking up cupcakes, cookies, and other sweet treats.  My next goal: to find fun ways to “healthify” our sweets.  I think I may try some sweet potato purees…

We shall see.

And I promise, in one of these next few posts I am going to get back to the techie stuff!  So hang tight.

Twitter This

Usuario: Password:

One of the things I enjoy most about homeschooling my kids is observing them and watching them grow close together.  The love these two sisters share is inexpressible:

Twitter This

Usuario: Password:

iprompts, a handheld adaptive for iphones and the ipod touch, is a handy little tool that allows kids with special needs to use the pictures (or visual prompting) to help them transition from one activity to the next.

According to the official site, this tool allows a caregiver of special needs children (autistic, ADHD, Down Syndrome,  or autism) to offer the following:

PICTURE SCHEDULES: Allows caregivers to create sequences of pictures, guiding those they care for through activities of any sort. Captions can be edited for each image, allowing users to create SOCIAL STORIES. Caregivers can also create simple FIRST THIS, THEN THAT picture prompts using only two images. Choose from hundreds of stock photos and illustrations provided by iPrompts®, or take pictures “on the fly” using the iPhone’s built-in camera.

VISUAL COUNTDOWN TIMER: Displays an image of the caregiver’s choice along with a graphical countdown timer (set to any duration). Useful for demonstrating how much time is left before the next pictured activity begins.

CHOICE PROMPTS: Lets caregivers select any two images which may be offered as a choice, empowering those who cannot vocalize their preferences. When rotated horizontally, the Choice Prompt and Picture Schedule features enlarge and orient images for display to individuals needing visual support.
IMAGE LIBRARY: Includes hundreds of useful illustrations and digital pictures across numerous categories. Additional categories and pictures can be created and supplied by users.

It’s $49.99. http://www.handholdadaptive.com/

Twitter This

Usuario: Password:

In one of my latest blog posts, I talked about how we restructured our homeschool for 2010.

It’s been a month of trial and error, and pretty much, that routine has held fast and has become our school “core”.  It’s how we “do school”, wherever we are.  The cool thing is the flexibility the workbooks and schedule checks give us.  We’ve done school at Barnes and Noble, a local coffee shop (if you haven’t figured it out by now, I love coffee shops–not so much for the coffee, though I’ll take that too- but I think I may addicted to the coffee smells and being surrounded by books and chocolate!)…oh, and we have finished up school at doctor’s offices (January was a sick month for our fam as everyone seemed to be catching bugs and sniffles).

So we got the core down.  Basically it’s the three r’s (reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic, as they say).

We’re layering the electives week by week.  These past few weeks we’ve been working diligently on our online American History class, learning about Columbus and the early explorers.  Hopefully before the end of the month we would have reached the segments on slavery, which will fit in nicely with Black History Month.  NyGirl is also taking an online art class through Free K12 Homeschool. I keep saying I am going to post some of her art pics…I am hoping to get around to a lot of that this weekend.

In January I didn’t give NyGirl a new piano lesson, but she has been practicing all of her old songs.  So that’s one thing we’ll change for February (taking one month at a time).  We’re also kind of thinking ahead to the summer camps.  I may sign her up for vioiln again, since I definitely do not play or teach violin.

So back to the idea of restructuring our school.  In my last post I mentioned how that we made it so that our faith is the backbone of our school process.  I like to teach my children  the Bible and Christian foundation and principles daily (I try at least).  For that we are using Bible Lifepacs, Children’s Illustrated Bible, and other workbooks and online resources. These lessons naturally progress to our math, language arts, history, and other electives.

But there is one important point I seemed to have left out of that post:

Technology.

After re-reading it, I thought “Wow!  I didn’t even mention how we integrate technology into our curriculum.”

So, I wanted to salvage that.  Here’s how we do it:

• Typing, typing, and more typing.  Check out http://sense-lang.org/typing/
• If we can find subject matter games and resources online, we use them so the kids become familiar with using the computer.  Safe online resources like Zoodles or even the famous JumpStart CD’s help with tech integration.  We’ve never used it, but I heard StarFall is good for teaching kids phonics.
• We do voice narration recordings whenever possible.  What I do is let NyGirl take my voice recorder and answer questions either in one of her textbooks, or I might have a conversation with her about what she’s been learning, which we record.  Then later, I download those audio clips onto my computer, piece them together into a little “online radio show”, and upload our podcast.  She watches the process, and is currently learning the smaller steps to creating a podcast.
• From time to time I also like to teach her how to use productivity software.  NyGirl recently began using PowerPoint to do a slideshow on the solar system. We took that Power Point document and uploaded it to VoiceThread where she was able to combine both her voice and the presentation and make it available for people to comment, so it was kind of a social media thing too, but for education.  Fun!  I think next we will work on basic word processing (example- typing up a letter to a friend, etc.).  Nothing major.

So these are some of the things we’ve been doing and plan to do to integrate technology.  This is probably one of my favorite parts of home schooling.  If I were to ever teach in an actual school setting, becoming a technology specialist would probably be my goal.  Nonetheless, it is ultimately rewarding for me to watch my kids grow and learn- about technology, about God, about life.

Twitter This

Usuario: Password: