Canada Day - Strawberry Maple Muffins

Strawberry Maple Muffins

2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, slightly beaten

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons strawberry jam, or 1 cup fresh strawberries, chopped

6 or 7 small, sliced strawberries for the tops

Preheat oven to 350°F
Combine the dry ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl.
Make a small bowl in the top of the dry ingredients for the egg, milk, maple syrup, and oil.
Mix until the dry ingredients are moistened.
Stir in jam, or strawberries.
Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full with the batter.
Top with sliced strawberries arranged to suggest a maple leaf.

Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes, or until the tops are just beginning to brown.
Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan.
Recipe modified from The Best Ever Muffins at Allrecipes.com makes one dozen muffins.

Enjoy while listening to the strains of O Canada,
watching episodes of Dudley Do-Right,
or review facts about Canada and Canada Day at Kidzworld.com,  Par-T-Perfect, or OurKids.net.

Happy Canada Day!

A Red, White and Blue Crayon Candle for Flag Day

I have a confession.  The candle at the top of this page is not the red, white and blue crayon candle I was going to tell you about today. I had planned on writing up a quick post about this candle:

Pretty isn't it?  The older girls made it using the traditional melt, and pour method over a wick in a Dixie cup.

They accidentally got some water in with the white crayon pieces, as they were melting, creating holes in that layer.

We liked the look though, so there wasn't really a problem.  That is to say...

...there wasn't a problem with the holes.  The candle itself was another story.

It wouldn't burn.  It sat there looking great for about 5 seconds after we lit it.  Then, as the flame moved down the wick, toward the crayon, it started to sputter, and spark, and went out.

We tried lighting it again.  We tried digging out a trench around the wick.  We tried Googling for answers - we maybe should have done that first.  Apparently, crayon candles don't actually burn - not unless they have a good bit of paraffin wax melted in with the crayons. 

But, as strange as it might sound - a plane old unmelted crayon, still in the wrapper - will burn (a little lesson the teens picked up on some survivor/life hack type site, a while back).  It doesn't make sense to me why the one would work, while the other doesn't.  I'm guessing it has something to do with materials in the wrapper.

But, there you have it.  Our crayon candle turned out to be...

...a pretty good crayon, while our crayons...

...turned out to be excellent...

...candles.

I'm not sure burning crayons is exactly safe, you should probably check out all the warnings and cautions before you try it.  But I have to say, we thought it was fabulous.

Happy Flag Day!

Groundhogs Day - Spring Science is Coming Soon

Our little groundhog stepped out on the back deck, at noon today, to take a quick look around.  There were plenty of clouds, but not a shadow to be seen. So, he predicted an early spring.

Then, just to prove his point, he came inside, and jumped up into the windowsill to point out the flower beginning to blossom on the strange viney plant, that has been growing there since C brought home the seed, planted in a decorated paper cup, from VBS back in August.

C had told us at the time it was supposed to produce a purple flower, but up until today it had only been a vine.  Now, as if on cue, we have our first spring (or at least spring-ish) science project to work on...

...as we try to identify what sort of flower we have.  Our first guess is a Montana Cornflower, a type of Bachelor Button.  We'll have to give it a few days to open completely, before we can be sure.

 After all, the groundhog predicted spring was coming soon - not that it was here already.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Science Craft for Children - Spiral Angel Spinners

Add a Christmas touch to the old convection spinner experiment (where a paper spiral is hung above a lit candle to allow children to "see" the air current created by the rising hot air) by giving the plain spiral an angelic make-over.

Simply cut a salad plate sized paper circle into a wide spiral...

...lift up the center of the spiral, and glue two quarters of a paper doily to it (or something equally pretty) points together - to form wings.

Then, glue two small circles (we used a medicine cup for a pattern) on either side of the center of the wings, sandwiching the center of the spiral, and the two loose ends of a loop of string - for hanging, between them.

Decorate the circle faces, or leave them blank, if you prefer.  They are pretty either way.

Make one, or an entire chorus of spiral messengers.

They make a lovely decoration, spinning slowly in the candlelight.  Just take care with the open flame...

...nobody wants a house fire for Christmas, I'm sure.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Making Perler Bead Keepsake Christmas Ornaments

Every year, since our oldest was a baby, we've given each child a special ornament to hang on the Christmas tree.  We started out with store bought, keepsake ornaments, trying to match them to the children's interests each year.  Then, as the family grew, we switched over to mom-made ornaments some of which you can see here.

I was a little surprised to find out how much more I liked the homemade ornaments than the store bought variety.  They just mean more.  Then, a few years ago, we switched from mom-made to child-made ornaments, working from kits to create a family activity, as well as new sets of ornaments.

This year, I picked up a big bucket of Perler, fusible beads, thinking we'd create ornaments following a Nativity scene pattern from the Perler website.  The children had other ideas.  As soon as they saw the beads, they were abuzz with project ideas.

It just so happens that the beads, once fused, give a wonderful, pixelly impression, perfect for creating old video game characters, or bringing Minecraft creations to "life".  It might not have been quite what I had in mind, but when your sixteen year old son asks if he can be the first to work on a Christmas craft project...

...or when older sisters are more than happy to give their younger sisters a hand...

...well, you don't complain.  Besides, it was interesting to see what each child chose to create for their ornament.  They created a few of their patterns themselves, and found a few they liked online.

When they were satisfied with their designs, I ironed them following the normal instructions to melt the beads together.  Then, while they were still hot...

...I used a darning needle to poke a small hole through the plastic, near the top, so they'd be...

...ready for hooks...

...and ready for the tree.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Thanksgiving Readers Theater

The children were good enough to perform a readers theater version of "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" for us, after our own Thanksgiving dinner, today.

Actually, I refused to serve the pie until they agreed to perform - but once they got started they all had a good time with it.  The script, which you can find by clicking here, is aimed at 3rd to 4th graders, though I think it might be better for students in the 5th-6th grades, as some of the parts require longer stretches of reading, with a few large vocabulary words thrown in.  With children on the both sides of that age range, it worked pretty well for our family.

There's a blogged sized snippet of the performance below, you know - for the grandparents. I think we might have hit on a new Thanksgiving Day tradition for our family.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Mystery Holiday Tea Tasting Game

We played this game this week, to put a little "mystery" into a mystery/masquerade tea, birthday party. It turned out to be enough fun (for adults as well as children), that it might make a nice addition to any holiday party.

First of all, I picked up an assortment of holiday teas - ones with crazy, and fanciful names, like "Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride" or "Nutcracker Sweet".

Then, I prepared paper cups - enough for each player to have one cup for each type of tea, labeling them with letters on the sides, and the names of each tea on the bottom.  I mixed it up for each player, so what was in cup "A" or "B" or "C" for one player wouldn't be the same for the player next to them.

I brewed a mug of each type of tea (easily enough for 8 players), being careful to keep track of which tea was which...

...so I could ladle a little of each tea into the cups with the matching names on the bottoms.

I served the samples up to the players with a playing card - a piece of paper marked with the letters of the cups, and the names of the teas.

Then, while I read the description of the teas from the sides of the boxes, the players sampled the tea from the cups, and tried to match each of the cups' letters to the correct names.

Some of the teas were pretty obvious, while others were a real surprise.  It proved to be a great way to have some fun together, get a little sample of a number of different teas, and pick a holiday favorite (Celestial's Sweet Pumpkin Harvest for us) at the same time.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Egg Carton, Mix and Match, Thanksgiving Playset Craft

Need a craft to keep little hands busy while your cleaning and cooking for Thanksgiving?

Grab an egg carton (12 egg, not the 18 carton pictured) a few sheets of construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, crayons and markers...

...cut apart the egg carton, and pre-cut a few hat brims and feathers...

...and let children go to work coloring (for younger children you might also want to pencil in general details first)...

...and gluing together turkeys, Pilgrims and Indians...

...for acting out their own version of the Thanksgiving story...

...or just some mix-and-match, keeping-busy-and-out-of-the-way, Thanksgiving fun.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Turkey Tree - Thanksgivng Countdown

It seems to me like fall has just begun.  But, somehow there are already more fall-to-do-leaves under our paper bag tree, than left on it. And, the first two of our thankful turkeys have already taken their places in the branches.

The turkey tree (another Peanuts nod) is our way of counting up our blessings as we count down the days of November until Thanksgiving.  Each day, one of the children prints something they are thankful for on a hand print turkey, and tapes it to the tree.  That way, by the time Thanksgiving comes around we've got a tree full of thankful turkeys to remind of us of exactly what we are celebrating.

We started the tradition when the children were a good deal smaller. Over the last couple of years I've had to seriously expand the branch space of our tree to ensure enough room for the increasing size of our hand print turkeys.

It's probably a little odd to ask teenagers to join in such a craft, but I have to say, looking at the crayon colored, construction paper birds lined up on our piano top ready to be placed on the tree...

...I'm thankful for teenagers who are good enough sports to do a silly hand print craft for the sake of carrying on a family tradition long enough for their younger siblings to enjoy, too.

It's great to be a homeschooler.