Auntee Edna's Tea Cakes

T was bored last night, so I suggested he try another recipe from the back of one of our library books. He baulked a bit when I handed him Auntee Edna by Ethel Footman Smothers. After all, it's the story of a young girl, and her sister, on a visit to the house of their "old fashioned" aunt.

To make matters worse, the recipe at the back of the book is for tea cakes - girlie to say the least! But, I reminded T, that it was Mother's Day weekend, and so girlie food was okay.

The recipe was pretty simple. I let him try it by himself. It apparently is a kid friendly recipe, because he (aged 12) managed it alone. I only helped him with rolling out the dough, and showed him what it meant when it said to use a wide mouth jar to cut circles.

The cakes did smell "vanilla sweet" while they were baking, just like it says in the story. Though, I think they ended up tasting, and having a texture more like sugar cookies, than how I imagined tea cakes might be. You can look inside the book, and see the recipe for yourself, here, on Amazon's preview. If you do, be sure to check out some of the little details included in Wil Clay's beautiful illustrations, and see if they don't take you back to visiting an elderly friend, or relative's house, in your own childhood.

Helping T roll out, and cut the dough, prompted me to share some stories of "how things used to be", just like Auntee Edna did as she helped her niece. One of the things I shared with T, was how I learned to roll out dough in Home Ec. class in high school. That reminded me, that in school, our baking projects weren't done until the dishes were clean, counters wiped, and floor swept.

It was one "old fashioned" idea, he thought we could leave in the past.

He did a great job cleaning though, and sugar cookies, or not, the "tea cakes" made for a pretty tasty pre-Mother's Day treat. And, even better, just as the story promised, an evening of baking, telling stories, and spending time together, drove the boredom completely away.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Homemade Perfume for Mother's Day - Science Sunday

I thought for a Mother's Day themed Sunday Science, the girls, and I would try our hand at making perfume. If you doubt that perfume making is a science, then check out this video, on the science of scent. Or, for something at a more kid friendly level, click here, to watch The Magic School Bus Makes a Stink.

First, I sent the girls out to pick some of our hyacinth. Up until now, all of the flowers have been off limits for picking. The poor things came up so late, and we've had such a bout of cold weather, that our window for enjoying them has been extremely short. But, when I noticed they were starting to wilt, and even worse, that some passersby had helped themselves to a few, I decided it was time to pick them ourselves.

Once they picked the flowers, G cut them into tiny pieces (according to instructions from PreschoolRock.com).

Then, they transferred the pieces into a plastic bag, and smashed them as completely, as possible.

They put them into a covered container, with enough water to submerge them.

They shook the container every five minutes, for about an hour. Setting the timer, was their favorite part of the activity. After a while, they lost interest in shaking the container, and they just left them to sit, for a couple of additional hours.

Finally, they tried straining the flowers bits out of the "perfume" with a coffee filter. We found a sieve worked better.

We tried out the new fragrance. The water did have a strong floral scent, but it was lost once we dabbed it on our wrists.

Per Preschool Rock, we also tried the experiment with rubbing alcohol instead of water, which ended up smelling a lot like rubbing alcohol. They also suggested trying Vodka, but we don't keep any of that on hand. So, we settled for mixing our hyacinth water, with some of the "scented" rubbing alcohol. I wouldn't say it's the best scent in the world, basically alcohol with a very slight floral scent, but the children seemed to agree it was a perfume.

I thought of all kinds of additional experiments, using different temperatures of water, and different amounts of flowers, or even different types of flowers, for different lengths of soaking time, but the girls thought we needed to save some of the flowers for a Mother's Day bouquet.

I couldn't really argue with that.

For more science fun, check out the Science Sunday link ups hosted by Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom. I don't know if there will be one this week, Ticia has had a very exciting, and busy week, but if there is, we'll be linking.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

What My Child is Reading - May 8, 2010

We're still working our way, slowly, through our books with recipes at the back, but this week we also read a few "math" books.

Rabbit and Hare Divide an Apple by Harriet Ziefert, is a level 1 Easy-To-Read story, about the importance of dividing evenly to make fractions (though the word fraction is never mentioned in the book). The math concepts, the story, and the illustrations by Emily Bolam, are all simply done, but still quite clever, and cute.


Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwander is part of the Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book series. The younger children liked this book well enough, but I was kind of disappointed. It talks a lot about multiplication being a fast way to count, without ever really explaining how. There are some math activities at the back to help with the concept a little, but the children weren't interested in those at all.


The big hit of our week was Superhero School, by Aaron Reynolds. Reynolds does an excellent job of explaining how multiplication, division, and fractions can be used in real life, or real life if you were a superhero, anyway.

What did your children read this week? Any favorites, or flops? Share them with the rest of us at the weekly What My Child Is Reading blog hop hosted by Natalie at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, or mention your favorites in the comments below, if you don't have a blog. We're always looking for good books to read.

It great to be a homeschooler.

Will The Real Bread Clay Recipe Please Stand Up?

The little ones wanted to play with play dough this morning, and I've been thinking about trying bread clay, since I saw this month's Unplugged Project theme at Unplug Your Kids was bread. It seemed like a good time to give it a try.

I had a recipe from Helen Roney Sattler's Recipes for Art and Craft Materials, but I decided to check online, for other recipes too, just to make sure I had a good one. Almost all the recipes were the same (or so I thought) - 1 tablespoon of glue, 1 piece of bread with the crusts removed, and a drop of either dish soap, lemon juice, or glycerin (Sattler also added vinegar).

Martha Stewart's site called for lemon juice, so I went with that. Everyone listens to Martha, right?

We removed the crust from 4 slices of bread, and tore them into little pieces in a bowl.

Then, we added in 4 tablespoons of glue, and 4 drops of lemon juice.

As, we started mixing the dough, we discovered it was incredibly, and I mean INCREDIBLY, sticky. I had read somewhere to use lotion while working with the clay, to keep it from sticking to your hands. It took a lot of lotion.

I didn't think the dough had much promise, and it certainly was not kid friendly - which I found odd, because the recipes were most often listed under fun-for-kid type headings.

I pressed on, just in case it got better with working, and added a few drops of food coloring to the clay.

I (the children refused to touch it) managed to flatten it out, on top of lotion covered wax paper, and cut a few heart shapes out - but it was not at all a pleasant process, and I have very little hope, that I'll be able to remove the hearts from the wax paper once they are dry.


Puzzled, I went back to check the recipes, in case I had made some mistake. That, was when I noticed not all the recipes called for tablespoons of glue. Some called for teaspoons (Martha's called for tablespoons). I decided to give the teaspoon method a try, and this time I switched to dish soap, instead of lemon juice.

It made all the difference. Our new batch of bread clay, was not sticky at all, and was quite easy for little hands to work.


We did like Martha's (or one of her clever staff member's) idea to make beads by using a straw.

Even my oldest enjoyed the pleasing popping sound the clay made, as it was blown from the straw - though he has no interest in the actual beads.

Our beads will need overnight to dry, and then can be sealed with clear fingernail polish (all the sites seem to agree on that point).

But, just for the record, the correct recipe for bread clay is...

• 1 piece of bread
  
• 1 teaspoon of white glue
  
• 1 drop of dish soap
  
• 1 or 2 drops of food coloring, or paint (optional)

It's great to be a homeschooler.

If You Give a Kid a Cupcake

We read Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, today. I have to say, we were all quite taken with Felicia Bond's adorable kitten, even if it is one of the naughtiest animals of this series. Up until now, the Pig with the pancake, has been our favorite of Numeroff's characters (or maybe it was the Moose with the muffin), but the Cat has won our hearts.

T was instantly inspired to bake a batch of cupcakes...

...while E and C (my youngest two) got to work on a construction paper cupcake craft, with paper confetti sprinkles.

They made six of them, to use as place mats, and scattered the extra confetti down the center of the table...

...while G and E (the older girls) blew up balloons.

Because chances are, if you give your children a batch cupcakes,

they'll want a party to go with it.

Be sure to click over to A Mommy's Adventures for more story stretching arts and crafts.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Homemade "Silly Putty"

I was thumbing through Helen Roney Sattler's Newly Revised Recipes for Art and Craft Materials, at the library (an excellent reference book, by the way), when her recipe for Nutty Putty caught my eye. Actually, what really caught my attention, was the promise that this putty, like the store bought variety, would not only stretch, and break, but bounce, and pick up newsprint, too.

We've tried glue, borax, and corn starch combinations before, with recipes for flubber, and homemade bouncy balls, but we've never really been satisfied with their bouncing abilities, and none of our previous putties, have been able to lift pictures off the funny pages.

Sattler's recipe, which I also found all over online, under various names, calls for 2 tablespoons of white school glue, and 1 tablespoon of liquid starch. She also suggests adding a pinch of sodium benzoate as a preservative against mold, but not if the putty is being used by younger children.

We left the sodium benzoate out, and used spray starch, because that's what we had on hand.

We also did our initial mixing inside of a plastic baggie, until the putty started taking a somewhat solid form.

Then, we removed the putty from the bag, and kneaded it by hand. At first it was very sticky - but still quite fun to play with.

Gradually, as we worked with it, and added several additional squirts of starch, it became less sticky, and more like the Silly Putty we know from the store.

After about 10 additional squirts of starch, it was just about perfect - bouncy, pliable, moldable putty, able to lift the black ink from the funny page. Pull it slowly, and it stretches. Pull it quickly, and it breaks. Mold it into a cube, and it will hold it's form for a minute, and then melt down into a flat disk. Roll it into a ball, and bounce it over your head. Press it into the carpeting, and hear your mother scream.

Stored in an air tight container, it will keep for a couple of days. And, according to Sattler, if it becomes too dry, or tough during that time, it can be dipped in warm water, and kneaded back to it's bouncy, rubber-like form. We have a winner!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Nachos for Breakfast - Happy Cinco de Mayo

I found this yummy idea, along with a number of educational activities, for celebrating Cinco de Mayo from Max and Ellie, via Crafty Crow.

Start with a couple of flour tortillas. Just as for tortilla snowflakes, spread on a thin layer of butter, and sprinkle them with sugar, and cinnamon. Cut them into strips, or wedges, with a pizza cutter. Place them in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, for 10-15 minutes, or until they are crisp, and starting to brown.

Serve with vanilla yogurt, mixed with a honey and cinnamon, and cut up fruit, such as strawberries, bananas, grapes, pear, kiwi, and mango.

Eat while watching Disney's The Three Caballeros (you can view part 1 of 8, here, on YouTube), and it's a fiesta!

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

It's great to be a homeschooler.