Natural Marshmallows

I’ve made homemade marshmallows in the past – they’re surprisingly easy!  I think my first attempt was the Martha Stewart Candy-Cane Marshmallows – good, but not nearly as pretty as the picture! 

Since removing many refined foods from our diet I’ve wanted to try a natural marshmallow recipe using honey or sweetener other than white sugar, and I finally decided to give it a go with rapadura.  We had just dropped off Phil at the airport and I was really sad, craving a treat to lift my spirits.  When we got home I decided to make homemade hot chocolate and – on a whim – a batch of marshmallows.  I dug out a recipe for Basic Vanilla Marshmallows that I’ve used in the past with success; the last time we made it I tried the chocolate swirl version – yummy! 

I used the amounts called for in the half batch so I wouldn’t have a huge pan of marshmallows staring me in the face, begging me to eat them, and simply substituted rapadura for the white sugar and honey for the corn syrup.  Since the natural sugar has the original molasses content, it makes for a unique color and flavor.  I was surprised how much the mixture lightened during the mixing process!   

Letting the mixture boil on the stove till the soft ball stage while the gelatin softens in the mixing bowl…

 

After the sugar mixture reaches the correct temperature, you can see how the color and texture change during the mixing process…

 

  

I have to be honest, I like it best before it sets, when it’s like marshmallow fluff. 

We put some in our hot chocolate right away and I spread the rest in a buttered parchment paper-lined pan.

I let it sit on the counter all day then cut it into squares, covering all sides with a mixture of powdered rapadura and coconut flour.

Next time we go camping I’m going to bring along some homemade marshmallows, homemade graham crackers and dark chocolate to make s’mores.  They are, after all, a camping rite of passage.

Any other suggestions how I can eat them?     

Finished: Another Elf Hat!

I enjoyed making the first elf hat so much that I made another for a friend who had a baby recently.  I started off a few times in pastels and different striping patterns but ended up settling on some brighter colors and original stripes.  Since I had already made the hat once and was familiar with the process it made more sense this time, and finishing it off with the i-cord, twisted i-cord and pom pom were simpler.  I made some alterations to make it slightly bigger and think I’ll use this version for future projects. 

 

Are you on Ravelry?  Check out my project deets and some of my favorite takes on the Munchkin Hat pattern - like the Girly Striped Munchkin Hat, Who-hat from Whoville and this beautiful version with a crocheted flower and twisted tail.

Raw Applesauce

Did you know you can make applesauce without cooking the apples?  Cooked applesauce is actually pretty easy, and I’ve done it plenty of times either on the stovetop or in the microwave, but this was a revelation! 

I don’t remember where I found it – perhaps while looking for a recipe for apple chips, which I have yet to try – but I immediately knew I had to try it.  Just cut your apples  (you could use an apple corer, but I just cut around all four sides), put ‘em in a food processor, and process till smooth.  You could add a splash of lemon juice to keep the apples from browning, some cinnamon, even some honey or other sweetener – but I find the fresh apples sweet enough already. 

 

Don’t even bother peeling your apples!   The skin contains fiber, antioxidants and all sorts of good stuff, but you may want to get the organic apples since the peel retains pesticides from the growing process.  I find it most cost-effective to get bagged apples, and the organic brand is only a dollar more.  Not only is the apple peel nutritious, but it makes the applesauce look pretty and rosy with flecks of red (if you use red apples, like I did!).

I first started making my own applesauce when making homemade baby food, but it has since become a staple in our home.  We like our applesauce plain, with walnuts on top, as a substitute for some of the oil in baking, and in oatmeal – one of my newfound favorites.  I’m curious to try adding other fruits for flavored applesauce, but still want to keep it raw.  I bet blueberries and strawberries would blend well, and peaches if they’re fresh enough.  How do you do applesauce?

        

 

Preschool: U is for Unicorn

Unicorns and mermaids and fairy tales – oh my!  I knew we would have fun with this theme, but almost decided to switch it with the following week - V is for Valentine - since I figured it might be more fun during the actual week of Valentine’s Day.  But I had already printed out some worksheets and made my library run for the week.  And who says you can’t have hearts two weeks in a row? 

Bible
We read about Zaccheus, sang the song about the wee man in the tree, and Gwen got a kick out of trying to find him in the lift-the-flap coloring page. 

Our Bible verse went along nicely with Valentine’s Day (and our shape for the week) - Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Theme
It was somewhat of a challenge, attempting to narrow down a fairy tale theme.  In the end, I approached it by discussing what makes a fairy tale using this cute “what is a fairy tale?” printable.  Then we listed some of our favorites; Gwen says hers is “Beauty and the Beast” because she likes the magic flower and glittery dress.  *chuckle*  Usually “The Little Mermaid” is at the top of her list because she and Ariel both have red hair; or “Cinderella,” because it’s her aunt’s favorite.    

We both had fun with the Fill-Them-In Fairy Tale to create our own story, though it was interesting trying to ask Gwen to give me a verb or an adjective.  Talk about learning your parts of speech!  I wanted to fill all the words in before we read the story so I just gave her hints to direct her towards an appropriate word.  I now present our fairy tale in its entirety (Gwen’s words are in purple):

Once upon a time, there weas a lovely princess named lollipop.  She lived in a castle with her pet tiger, Scooter.  One day while she was walking Scooter, a pink dragon appeared!  The princess and Scooter were so scared – when the dragon opened his mouth, they though they would be consumed in flames!  However, no flames came out, only a gush of breath that smelled like carrots!  The foul-smelling breath madethem play dress up, but the dragon, who was named Cinderella, was so sweet, he and the princess and Scooter soon became fast friends.

While playing fairies in the woods one day, the happy trio came upon a prince, who was under a spell.  He had been frozen in a bowl of fruit for many years.  The fearsome threesome tried everything to break the spell.  First, they created a potion out of the eye of a bumblebee, some salsa, and cheerios – which they held under the prince’s bum, while chanting.  Nothing happened.  So, the three of them drove to the castle, grabbed “The Book of Reverse Singing Spells,” and together started playing the song, “Free the Frozen Prince.”  Still nothing.  All of a sudden, the dragon sneezed, and his windy breath, which smelled like squash went all over the prince!  Poof!  The prince was magically released from the spell and started to dance.  The happy princess, Scooter, the dragon, and the nice prince became a fabulous foursome and lived happily ever after!

I hastily threw together a hodge podge of shiny fairy tale-y stuff since the kids like exploring the sensory bins I put together.  In the mix was a bunch of irridescent Easter grass, a small purple playsilk, wooden blocks (to build a castle, of course), and a variety of mythical creatures (including  a mermaid and unicorn).  Some other unicorns and ponies came to visit.

 

I almost always leave the sensory bins out for the entire week and it’s fun to watch the kiddos go back to them again and again when the mood strikes.

For breakfast one morning the kiddos were delighted to be served fairy bread.  I lightly toasted some whole grain bread, spread it with whipped butter, sprinkled on some cinnamon, and lastly some rainbow sprinkles and edible glitter.  I figured it was glorified cinnamon sugar toast!       

Some fairies visited one evening and surprised them with fairy wands to take to their Meme’s for a play day; good thing, because Mommy was tired from staying up to visit with the fairies. *sigh*  Gwen said the wands are really pretzels.  I… er, the fairies… dipped multigrain pretzel sticks in melted dark chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles.  Let them harden on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper in the fridge and you’re good to go.

Besides reading all sorts of fairy tales from our book basket and watching a few movies, Gwen dressed up and enacted her own imaginary stories and played with her magnetic dress-up princess.  She already has a mermaid paper doll, and I printed out a Belle paper doll on cardstock - which she discovered right away and immediately began to play with.  We also played a round of Tinker Bell’s Pardon My Pixie Dust Game, which is actually kinda fun!  It’s especially fun watching Gwen get excited when she wins a game piece. 

 

I didn’t find very many educational printables with a fairy tale theme, but I did break out some of the princess-themed printables from our K is for King week on royalty.  And tracing is always more fun if it’s a picture of a castle.

 

Letter
We did all sorts of unicorn-themed activities – like a coloring page and maze.

 

We also did a few umbrella-themed things.  One of Gwen’s Kumon tracing pages was in the shape of an umbrella and her letter hunt was about an umbrella.

 

A couple times during the week we read stories under an umbrella just for fun – it’s amazing what simple things will delight the kiddos – and they decorated umbrella cutouts with paper raindrops.

  

The cutouts were a last-minute idea and if I had planned it more carefully I would have done something more rigid since the kiddos were disappointed they couldn’t hold them up like real umbrellas.  This hanging umbrella craft seems cute, or you could use paper plates.  

Number
As the numbers have gotten higher – we’re in the twenties now – I’ve given up focusing on a specific number unless I can find a story or resource directly related.  Instead, we do number-related activities, like dot-to-dot pages or counting things throughout the day.  I’m a big believer in learning through practical, every day things – like counting the produce we pick at the store or turning an episode of playing with blocks into how many we can find of each color. 

We used some valentine activities courtesy of Homeschool Creation’s Valentine’s Day Printable Pack and Over the Big Moon’s Valentine’s Day Pre-K Pack, including clip cards and a color-by-number.

 

I also broke out the Cupcake Count file folder game – one of the first ones I made!  Gwen’s a pro at it now. *sniff sniff* 

Shape
The heart shape was well reinforced throughout the week!  Our Valentine’s Day morning began with the kiddos walking paper heart trails and ended with heart handprints.  I reserved all the valentine printables for the 14th, including a tracer page, word tracing page (you can see we’re working on compound words!), word matching, letter clip cards and a cutting practice page.

 

 

I got out a shape-matching puzzle and Gwen matched all the pieces; I was shocked when she got “hexagon” right away!  She won’t remember rectangle but she’ll remember hexagon. *shakes head* 

Along with the Cupcake Count game Gwen did the Patterns of Love Matching Game that I made around the same time.

Rhyme
I found a cute little rhyme for the week called Queen of Hearts.  It’s been fun sprinkling in some unfamiliar rhymes with the more traditional ones.

Bulletin Board
So… I know I took a picture but I think Josiah may have erased it from my camera.  He’s taken to turning my camera on and snapping away; who knows what other buttons he pushes.  Makes me wonder what other pictures he erased.

Book Basket
*Gwen’s favorites

Theme/Vocab
The Usborne Book of Fairy Tales*
Rumpelstiltskin
Jan Brett’s Beauty and the Beast
Flutterby
Glitterby Baby*
Whisper the Winged Unicorn*
Claire and the Unicorn happy ever after
Unicorn Dreams
The Midnight Unicorn*
The Ugly Duckling
Thumbelina
The Princess and the Three Knights*
The Secret Life of Princesses*
Princess Hyacinth  – the Surprising Tale of a Girl who Floated*
The Classic Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales

Letter
Miss Hunnicut’s Hat*
My “u” book
Duck in the Truck
The Wonderful Thing About Hiccups
A Porcupine Named Fluffy
Lunch Bunnies*
The Fairies’ Alphabet Book

Holiday
Valentine’s Day

DVDs
Up
My Little Pony: Twinkle Wish Adventure
Nico the Unicorn

Linking Up…

Preschool: T is for Transportation

With our ever-expanding collection of fire trucks, matchbox cars, four- wheelers, cars and trains, our transportation theme was a no-brainer.  Josiah was very happy to see pictures of trucks on the bulletin board and kept pointing them out every chance he got. 

He finally got to color the truck coloring page.

Bible
The Bible story of the week was about the Prodigal Son.  When I was little, my siblings and I used to create plays and perform for family and friends, and one of our re-enactments was about this very story.  We had albino rabbits at the time, and they played the part of the pigs.  I tried getting the kids to act out the scene with me, for old time’s sake, but they were less than enthusiastic – though they did get a kick out of their stuffed animals eating at a trough.

Gwen colored a hidden picture coloring page about the prodigal son’s triumphant return, and I explained how – even when she’s bad – her mommy and daddy still love her, just like her heavenly Father.

I found this neat idea for making a piggy bank and thought it would make a great object lesson for the story.  I used a small plastic bottle, some scrapbook paper, ribbon and ribbon slide, beads for feet, pipe cleaner for a tail and googly eyes.  Good thing I didn’t cut a hole in the top for a money slot because the cap opening was too small for even a dime to fit through.  Instead, I pretended that marbles were money, and I filled the pig with the son’s inheritance.  As he spent the money, the marbles were fewer and fewer… until he ran out of money and was forced to eat with the pigs.  She turned out really cute; it might be nice to make one a little bigger, perhaps with a soft-drink bottle.  

To go along with the theme for the week we used the Luke 3:5 printable from 2 Teaching Mommies – The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.

Theme   
Play with trains for school?  Yes, please!  I had to keep referring to the diagram to best put some of the pieces together, but the kids are actually pretty good at assembling a train track.  Phil can do it without directions, using up every piece in the bin.  Showoff.  It’s so cute to see how each child plays differently, from which trains and pieces they choose to how they drive them on the tracks.  And then they start climbing across tracks to reach the bridge or the tunnel and suddenly someone else is derailed.  I kept telling them”This is the last time I fix it!” 

Gwen did some pre-writer tracing from her Kumon book…

… then started in on an assortment of transportation-themed printables from Homeschool Creation’s Transportation Preschool Pack.  She (and Josiah) did a airplane pre-writer tracing page… 

   

cut-and-paste according to which direction the vehicles are driving, word tracing pages (we’ve been working on compound words; I circle the two parts of the word so Gwen can get a visual)… 

   

fill-in-the-first-letter pages and word matching.

  

There were also these nifty spelling words making five or six words and the letters of each word had a corresponding image.  For instance, all the letters in the word “plane”  had a little plane next to them.  I had Gwen separate all the letter cards according to the images and then figure out how to spell each word based on the sounds (always starting with the first sound, since it’s usually easiest).

I appreciate fresh concepts like this since using the same method over and over gets really boring. 

Thrown in among the mix was a circle-which-one-is-different activity from PreKinders; too easy for Gwen really, but she and Josiah had fun with it anyway.  It’s supposed to be cut apart into cards but I kept it on a sheet of paper and put it into a page protector so it could be used with dry erase markers. 

They each did a cut-and-paste stoplight from Printable Share.

Surprisingly, Josiah wasn’t too excited about making clothespin airplanes – unlike Gwen, who wanted to paint hers pink - but once they were dry the kiddos had fun soaring them through the living room.

 

 
 
Letter
In addition to the themed printables Gwen did her letter hunt, alphabet dot-to-dot pages, some activity sheets from our usual workbooks and a letter maze. 

 
 

I dug out some of my old Suzy’s Zoo rubber stamps and let Gwen stamp her letter poster with the tiger lily stamp.

While out gathering twigs for our Valentine’s Day arrows I decided to let the kiddos use some to make T trees.  They glued the twigs into a T-shape and scrunched up green tissue paper for leaves.  

 

Josiah always goes heavy on the glue; I hung them up before they were fully dry and came back to a puddle of glue on the floor underneath the artwork. *sigh*

Number
Gwen did a color-by-number page from KidSparkz’ transportation unit, stamped her number nineteen poster and did the counting clip cards that came with the transportation preschool pack. 

 

Rhyme
In honor of our rhyme for the week – The Wheels on the Bus – I made graham cracker buses for breakfast one morning.  Instead of frosting and oreo cookies I used yellow-tinted yogurt and shaped some no-bake dried fruit cookies I just so happened to have in the fridge.

Bulletin Board

Book Basket
Theme/Vocab
Little Locomotive
Alphabeep
The Noisy Airplane Ride
I Love Trucks!
Amazing Airplanes
Trucks
Bunnies on the Go
Who is Driving?
Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel
Machines At Work – Airplanes
Sheep in a Jeep
Trains – Steaming! Pulling! Huffing!

Letter
Our Twitchy
Toot & Puddle – Top of the World
Toby & Tess – a first story about things in groups
The Fairies’ Alphabet Book
Traction Man Meets TurboDog
Thumbelina
The Teddy Bears’ Picnic
What Do You Do With a Tail like This?
The Magic Sceptre – Teena the Tiny Tooth Fairy
         
Color
Mouse Paint
Shape
Shapes in Transportation

Holiday/Misc
Valentine’s Day
Going to the Dentist
ABC Dentist 

DVDs
Cars 2
Tangled
Toy Story
Leapfrog Letter Factory

See my T is for Transportation Pinterest board for more inspiration.

Linking Up…