Tips for Carving a Watermelon to Look Like a Clam: Step-by-Step

I saw a couple of shots of watermelon carved to look like clams, when I was researching ideas for our ocean themed VBS lunch, and thought they'd be perfect.  Unfortunately, when I followed the links from the pictures back to their sites, there weren't any instructions for the carving.  Still, I thought, how hard can it be?

Let's just say, I'm fortunate another family in our church offered to carve two of our four watermelon, and did theirs first - in time to share their tips with me, and stop me from going about the process all wrong.

Since, they don't blog, and you might someday want to carve your own watermelon clams (never say never), I'll pass along their tips, and a few from my own carving experience.  Just keep in mind, that watermelon carving is not big on my list of talents.

So, first off, you want to slice a thin piece off of the bottom of what will be your clam, so the watermelon doesn't roll around while you're carving - or on the serving table.

I cut a little deep (as you can see below), which was not ideal, as it let juice leak out later, but not so much that it was a big problem.

Next, figure out where you want the opening of the "mouth" to be, and cut out a wedge of watermelon.  In the picture below, it looks like I cut the wedge low - but for some reason the watermelon was rocked forward when I took the picture.  The opening should be a little above center.

Mark off a scallopy short of shape, to carve out - matching the ups to downs on the the bottom half, and vice-versa, to give the appearance it could close back together.

If you use washable marker, keep in mind, the watermelon juice will wash it away, pretty quickly.

I tried to carve the design before removing the watermelon, but found it was much easier after the shell was emptied out...

...which was done with a melon baller, followed by a scraping with a large spoon.

When you do carve, tilt the knife inward, to allow an outline of white to show around the opening (a straight cut ends up looking much less clam-like).

Finally, place the melon balls back into the watermelon shell, and serve (or cover with plastic wrap, and store in the refrigerator until your ready to serve - though then you might want to store the melon balls in a separate container, to keep the juice to a minimum inside the shell).

Oh, and one final tip:  We transported our watermelon to church on plates (as pictured), our friends had theirs in shallow baking dishes.  We arrived covered in watermelon juice.  They did not.  So, there you go.

VBS Snacks - Submerged

Our week, last week, was consumed with Vacation Bible School.  Our church hosted, using LifeWay's "Submerged - Diving Deep Into the Word of God" curriculum.  And, instead of teaching this year, I decided to mix things up a little, and signed on as the snack lady, instead.

Which meant my kitchen spent the week looking like this...

...or this...

...and I spent the week dressed in a gaudy swimsuit cover up and snorkel mask (as pictured at the top of this post), with fun foam flippers on my feet (find instructions for the pattern at Dazzle Design). 

Because, it's just not VBS if someone isn't over the top.

Anyway, the triple batch of squidamon rolls (thankfully made with the use of two bread-makers) were a mid-week treat for my fellow laborers...

...while the children received a daily Bible story themed snack as follows:

Rice Krispie and Kit-Kat trees with Sour Patch Kids for the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19 (snack idea from 52 Ways to Cook).  For a dairy and gluten free option, I used Smart Balance dairy free butter, and made a color free batch off Rice Krispie bars to cut up as "trunks" in place of the Kit-Kat bars.

Cups tied with brown yarn, and labeled with a verse of the story from John 4...

...filled part way with blue raspberry Jolly Rancher Jell-O for the story of the Woman at the Well. 

We built a "well" out of large cardboard bricks (from the nursery) on the table, and lifted our cups of "special water" out of it, to serve to the children.

For the story of Nicodemus from John 3, I went back to our old, chocolate and vanilla sugar cookie recipe (found here)...

...to make use of the Southern Baptist's ABCs of Salvation (Admit, Believe, Confess - click here for a free printable explanation, with go-along verses).

For our non-gluten and dairy free option, I made homemade gummy candies (using the recipe from Not So Idle Hands, and Jolly Rancher Jell-O in various flavors), cut into ABS with a cookie cutter, after they were set.

For the story of Jesus restoring sight to a blind man from John 9, I went very simple with "mud" pudding cups, topped with crushed chocolate sandwich cookies, and gummy worms. For a non-gluten option, I left the cookies (though you can purchase gluten free sandwich cookies) and gummy worms off.  We also made a special batch of Hershey's chocolate pudding, using chocolate almond milk, for a lactose free alternative.

With the exception of milk (chocolate, plain, and chocolate almond) served with the cookies, we served water with the snacks for most of the week, since the snacks were already sugary, and we had very hot weather.

But, to keep it fun, I made dolphin ice cubes to add to the cups (using silicone trays, found in a dollar bin at our local K-mart).  Each child got one plain dolphin ice cube, or a Kool-Aid dolphin (if they drank the water quickly, they could eat the dolphin like a little popsicle piece - or they could drink slowly and let it melt into their water as they drank it) in their cup.

On our last day, we had a short program for the parents, followed by a mini-dinner.  We made a few hundred dolphin ice cubes to go with Blue Hawaiian Punch, cut four watermelon into clam shapes (I cut two, and ask another family to cut two (ours were not as pretty as the other family's but I did come out of it with some tips, I hope to share in another post).

We made crescent roll sandwich crabs (which I totally missed taking a picture of, but you can find examples of on Pinterest, or here, in Google images) with green olive eyes on pretzel sticks.

And, a platter of hot dog wiener octopi (instructions here).

We cut bell pepper octopi to top store bought dips on vegetable trays...

...and used up left over rice Krispie treats, by cutting them into ABCs or squares decorated with blue frosting, fish crackers and sprinkles (following instructions from The First Year blog), which we placed out on a tray labeled with our Nicodemus story card, and a explanation of the ABCs of salvation)

We also filled a couple of large bowls with Cheetos (for corral), and fish crackers mixed with blue and green M&Ms, using the rest of the colors from the bag in several batches of cookies (which we labeled as "diving for pearl" cookies, to go along with a theme of one of the games the children had played during the week where they sought out colored marbles - which they called pearls).

Add to that a couple of bowls of chocolate pudding (regular and lactose free) with a separate bowl of crushed cookie topping, labeled with our Jesus and the blind man story card, and a bowl with our left over Sour Patch Kids, labeled "Wee Little Men" along with our Zacchaeus story card, and it wasn't too bad a spread.

Set atop blue plastic table cloths on a couple of long tables, it looked in keeping with the Submerged theme, and provided enough memory prompts to encourage children to share stories of the week with their parents - which I was very happy to over-hear a number of children doing enthusiastically.

Speak Russian Like a Minion

With the exception of Japanese, all of the languages the children have been studying, in our house, have alphabets very similar to our own.  This summer, we've been playing around with some of the other alphabets out there - not to seriously, and really just for fun.

I'm not sure how it works for iPads or iPhones, but Amazon offers a number of free apps for Kindles.  Many of them have advertisements, or offers to buy products within them, but most are just straight forward, extended samples of the games.  They are great for when you just want to play around, or check something, like the Cyrillic alphabet, out.

So, besides alphabets, we've also been working through a number of different apps,  this summer. Which, is how we happened onto ABC. Russian Letters, from ABCgamesoft.

It's a very simple, flashcard style app for the Cyrillic alphabet.  I don't speak Russian, so I can't tell you if the pronunciations are any good or not - but I can tell you, the voice (of the ladybug?) sounds just like a Minion. 

It's had everybody in the room laughing, and repeating the words, and letter sounds aloud (a very important, but difficult to encourage step in language learning).

If you're looking to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, or just looking for a fun way to pass some time, and have a laugh, I can highly recommend this app.  I mean really, who doesn't want to speak Russian like a Minion?

Logic Puzzle - Fun With Isosceles Triangles and some Good Books to Boot

Summer has completely gotten away from me, between the younger girls' continual cycle of church camps and Vacation Bible Schools (this week has been a church-based basketball camp, that they've really enjoyed), and my search for the perfect "text" books for the fall - a fun but completely distracting pursuit for any bibliophile/homeschool mom, and one of the hazards of homeschooling high school students, when the texts become absorbing to teacher as well as (or hopefully for) the students.

This week I've found myself lost in geometry (Head First),

physics (...of Superheroes),

and Die Tribute Von Panem 1. Tödliche Spiele (The Hunger Games in German - for me...not so much for the children, but what a kick).

Anyway, while I haven't had a great amount of time left over to post about our summer fun, this year, I have tried to keep up with fun for the children - mainly by proving an endless supply of cookies, scattering games around the house, and keeping fresh puzzles on our board.

I'm especially happy with this week's puzzle - found (with the solution included in the comments - pictured at top of page) at smart-kit.com.  It's a perfect follow up to Dragon Box Elements - more puzzle than math, needing some basic algebra and geometry skills (I provided some hints for my own children - worded with them, rather than proper math rules, in mind), but more thought than anything else.

I worked through the problem first - just to be sure it wasn't too hard.  And, to be honest (truth in blogging, you know) had to offer up a milkshake to anyone willing to take on the puzzle...

...before I had takers.

But, since it is summer, and I like milkshakes too - I figured it wasn't a bad trade off for getting to see my teens wrestle through this one. 

Dragon Box Elements, Geometry Game - And My Second Favorite Homeschooling Tip

My second favorite homeschooling tip of all time (you can see my number one, favorite tip -  here) is to spend some time each summer sorting through all your books and supplies BEFORE you buy any new books or curriculum for the fall.

It's amazing how much you forget you have.  And, often times what didn't work before, might work later on.

Don't forget too, that "supplies" include apps, games, and videos you might have downloaded, or stored somewhere in cyberspace.

Sorting through our Kindle apps is how I happened to remember that we had a perfectly good geometry game sitting practically unplayed in our library.  And, wouldn't you know it, three of the teens are going to be working through geometry in the fall.

The last time (about two years ago) we checked out Dragon Box Elements, one of the children had just finished working through a geometry unit, and I had all those postulates and theorems fresh in my head, and found the use of them without any explanation of them in the game, to be frustrating - so I didn't worry too much when the children found it frustrating, and we set it aside.

When I set up a new player, to check it back out, this time though, it had been quite a while since anyone in the house had picked up a geometry text, and the theorems and postulates were fuzzier in my memory.  This time, instead of thinking of geometry, I thought of logic problems - logic problems filled with cute little characters...

...and more information than I needed to solve each problem...

...and trying to work from what I given, to what I knew, to what I needed to know - and it dawned on me, that's exactly the leap that most students struggle to make when they first encounter geometry. And here it was being presented in an entertaining format, that even my 10 year old (playing on easy mode) could grasp.

Naturally, I made everyone play it.  Okay, not made, it's summer after all, and we are almost unschoolers, but encouraged...meaning anyone who wanted to go to see Finding Dory with me while it was still playing at our local theater, needed to hustle their way through to the end of the seventh level (you can't really blame me for not telling them I was already planning on taking them all as a family outing, anyway) - why spoil the fun? And, I think they all did have fun, too.  C and E (ages 10 and 11) played on the easy setting, D and A (ages 13 and 15) on normal, and G (age 17) on hard - I tried all three, and found them all quite enjoyable, and even a little more than challenging, in a few spots.

T (age 18) got a free ticket to the movie, because well, I was just so happy he was still willing to be a good sport, and tag along with the rest of us, when I'm sure he would have much rather been seeing some crazy, sci-fi/action flick or other...and, of course, he finished high school geometry, old-school style, some time ago.

Summer Spelling - Icy Alphabet or Spell It Before It Melts

How did I forget the V?

Looking for a way to cool down, and enjoy some summer spelling?  Yes, you read that right.  I typed "enjoy" and "spelling" in the same sentence. 

But, this game really is fun - really.

First, you need a set of frozen letters (or two).  If you have an alphabet ice-cube tray, your all set.  If not, letter cookie cutters in a metal cake pan full of water, will do in a pinch, with just a little more prep work.

Once you have your ice letters ready, give them to your children, outside (along with an extra sheet of wax paper, or whatever, to set them on), with instructions to make words, using each letter only once, with the goal of using up as many (or all) of the letters as possible - before they melt.

It's an impossible task...

...but it gets the brain humming, while testing spelling, and providing some fast pace, chilly, silly, slippery, summer fun.

Summer Spelling - Unexpected Word Finds (Perfect for the 4th)

Sometimes things are so simple, they can be easy to overlook.  So, here's a quick reminder - don't forget to take advantage of the 4th of July for simple spelling practice, with a patriotic word search or two.

Googling "Independence Day word search" will bring up any number of printable worksheets, and they're great, not only for spelling practice, but also for setting a patriotic mood for the holiday.  Worksheets in the summertime though...well, there's nothing fun about that.

I suggest placing your wordsearch somewhere unexpected:

•  a chalkboard, or with sidewalk chalk on the patio
•  written in window markers on glass doors or windows
•  set out in fun foam letters on the floor (you can use your finger to "draw" circles around the words on the carpet)
•  or in frosting on cookies (think white sugar cookies squares, with red letters, and blue frosting ready to be piped, on the side, for circling letters).

Like I said, it's simple, but effective - and too much fun to overlook.