Stand Up! Praising God With Music

Recently, when I was given the opportunity to review a collection of Big Band Praise songs, I have to admit, I was intrigued. I am an old-fashioned girl at heart. This is reflected in the aprons I wear when cooking, by the milk glass and old needlework I collect, and the style of furniture in my "parlor" (as well as by the fact that I even call our front room a parlor!)

Big Band music is another one of my particular nostalgic favorite things, along with old movie classics and "real" dancing (like good old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers used to do). I have very fond memories of dancing with friends to Glenn Miller songs during college, and have several collections of Big Band music I listen to from time to time when my heart needs a lift, and my feet need some encouragement to get on the move.

If you are a fan of Big Band era music, too, and also love listening to hymns and praise music, then this is one cd you are going to want to go out and buy right away. It is awesome! The first day I received it, I stuck it in the player in my kitchen, and almost immediately, every one of my kids was in there asking me what the good  music was. Within moments, the Amigos were dancing and laughing, smiling at each other as they hummed along with the new take on the timeless hymns we all love so much. I think we played it three times that first day. Twice while we did our chores and school work, then once again at dinner time.

I do enjoy traditional hymns very much. Their messages are so full of Biblical truths and you probably know how much more easily most of us remember things when they are set to music. It can be both a blessing (like when your child memorizes scripture in the guise of a song) and a curse (like when that annoying commercial tune gets stuck in your head). Anyway, one of my favorite Christian radio programs was an all hymn show on Sunday mornings which featured classic hymns played by more contemporary bands, usually true to the tune of the song, but with a slightly updated take. I love the classic sound of many of the old hymns, but sometimes the energy level of the newer versions helps me to get out of a slump in a way a more traditional tune does not.

If you are ever in need of something that will help you scrub your floors with a more cheerful heart, or are simply seeking an innovative way to get your kids to want to learn the life-changing lyrics of some of the best classic Christian songs, then you are going to love this collection of instrumental hymns and some newer praise favorites played with Big Band flair and verve.

From the very beginning (Just a Closer Walk With Thee), you will find your toes tapping, your lips curving in a smile, and your heart more merry. Other tunes include: Fairest Lord Jesus,  Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Hosanna, God Will Take Care of You, Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, Indescribable, and four others. Not a single one of them is a song I would skip. In fact, I am going to be checking to see if the Swing Low Praise Band offers any other titles, and if they do, I will be adding them to my Christmas wish list. Every one of my kids, from ages 20-2 LOVES this cd and regularly asks me to pop it in when we are making dinner or doing kitchen chores. I love the fact that as we are doing our work "as if for the Lord," we are praising Him in our hearts through our enjoyment of this music and our renewed positive attitudes.


Another of my favorite things about this cd it is that it gives me the pep I sometimes need to get moving, along with the message (of the Good News) my heart always craves, yet because the songs are instrumental, it is not so distracting that it cannot be on while the kids are doing schoolwork or I am doing something like typing up a post or visiting with a friend. Another BIG benefit is that these songs DO get stuck in your head, in a very good way! I noticed the other day that I do not mind when my mind plays the strains of one of these wonderful tunes over and over again the way I do when it is a song of nonsense, or offense (as you sometimes run across on television or in movies). All it is doing is focusing me back on the Lord, as my brain fills in the words I know go along with the catchy, toe-tapping tunes.

This one is a keeper, folks!! Plan to buy it for your loved ones this Christmas. I know my grandmothers will love it, so I guess if they read my blog they know what they can expect to be in the boxes from us under their Christmas trees this December (I hope you like it!!). I would highly recommend this cd to anyone. The only folks I think should pass on this excellent collection of tunes are those folks who do not approve of dancing. If that is you, don't order this one because it will tempt you too much. For my part, I am glad that I don't mind dancing when it is meant to be an expression of praise to God and a reflection of a joyful heart, because watching my little ones' faces light up when the first song begins to play, and seeing them turn happily in circles in the kitchen with their hands raised high, is a real heart-warmer for me.

You can pick up a copy of this cd from the publisher, Discovery House and if you click on the song titles, you will hear a portion of the music(though I think you are safe taking my word for it on this one!),.

Blessings,

I received a copy of this cd from Discovery House Publishers for the purposes of offering my honest review here on my blog. The opinions you read here are a reflection of our true experiences with this product. If you have any questions about what I have said here, please feel free to contact me.

Organizing Our School

First, I will share with you our read-alouds for the week. We are studying ancient history this year, and though we have not started at precisely the beginning (we have covered the Creation story more than once, and the kids got interested in Egypt before we did a few of the early Bible stories, so we will fill those in later...they do know them already), we are ready to jump on into Egypt in earnest this week, after dipping our toes in last week using the Flat Stanley Worldwide Adventures book The Great Egyptian Pyramid Robbery. For Fun Friday, the kids built Lego pyramids, and Tex read them the book Pyramid by David McCaulay, so they are raring to learn more about them.

This week we will begin reading Boy of the Pyramids: A Mystery of Ancient Egypt by Ruth Fosdick Jones in the evenings. We will also read the picture books The Great Wonder: The Building of the Great Pyramid by Annabelle Howard and Zekmet the Stone Carver by Mary Stolz during school time. I have no idea where these stories fit in on a timeline as we have not broken ours out yet.

We have Mystery of History to use as our spine, but at this point, I am still trying to figure out how our schedule will work, so I am capitalizing on the children's interest in pyramids and choosing to ease in to our studies with these books, then we will go back and fill in the chronological gaps later.

I am going to be honest here. I planned to "start" our formal homeschool year at the beginning of this month (I like to be able to take time off in December whenever I want). When I finished up those graduate courses for re-certification at the very end of May, August looked like a long way away. I breathed a sigh of relief (and absolute exhaustion), and out of desperation for my sanity, I basically took a month off. We didn't sit at home in the month of June and do nothing all day. Our state homeschooling convention, my birthday, Bubba's birthday, and several outings with family and friends all happened in June. It was a busy time, but a blessed relief from academics and (gasp!) blogging.

I went shopping in July (at the Dollar Tree---a good place for bargain school supplies!) and snapped up some excellent school supplies (some cool calendar items, bulletin board stuff, etc.), and was all on fire for setting up a workable schedule and (a somewhat modified) workbox system. You can read an overview of the workbox system at Heart of Wisdom, if you don't know what I am referring to. You can find some workbox printables at Homeschool Share as well as some great printable labels at Homeschool Creations. I zoomed right through the initial planning, roughed out a workable Monday through Friday plan, and was eager to get things cracking by laminating my activity labels and posting the BIG PLAN on the wall. Hmmmmmph. Let me tell you, that schedule has sat on the top of my paper cabinet for a month now and it still looks scary to me. I just can't do it. I am having a hard time getting past the idea that I'd have to stick to it, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month...you get the idea. Really, that thought just scares the daylights out of me.

I am a very organized person at heart. Don't look inside my closet or my garage and you might actually believe that statement (though my disorganized looking spaces are organized in their own fashion...you just won't see it). I have lists for my lists, and labels for my lists, and I keep pretty well on task each day by reveling in that satisfying line-crossing-out thing you get to do when you complete a task on your list.

I keep a calendar on the wall above my desk for family events, a three-month calendar next to it for review dates and appointments, dry erase board lists on the fridge for me and family members to refer to, and books with lists in my purse, not to mention the family journal I fill out nightly as a record of what we did and the sweet things the kids said that I don't want to forget.

 

Oh, and before I forget, I want to metion a new site I found out about called Workflowy...it is a FREE site where you can make...you guessed it...LISTS! Then you can access them from any computer and keep up with your stuff to do no matter where you are!! (I assume it is accessible from fancy phones like the ones I don't have). Sorry if that was random, but it is pretty nifty...if you like lists.

However, in spite of my love of list-making, the idea of having to say, "It's nine a.m. and that means that we are all dressed, teeth brushed, beds made, breakfast eaten, devotions read, and now it is time to do math for a half-hour, then history for an hour, then reading time for..." Well, eek! You get the idea. I just CAN'T seem to make myself do that. Can you? Do you? If you do, you impress me. Really. I mean it. I can make it to a doctor's appointment once in a while by nine thirty (I did so just last week), but EVERY DAY? Ugh.

Still, I felt that this was something I needed to do. Something that would bring us structure, guidance, accountability, a PLAN. Well, having thought about it in great depth, I am finally admitting that I am not there yet. Not this year, anyway. I want more structure, we need more structure, but an hour by hour accounting of our time day to day is not going to do anything but stress me out. Whew. I feel so much better having admitted that. You aren't mad at me for giving that schedule up before I even tried it, are you? You can do it if you like, but it is just not for me.

Things are too unpredictable around here still (with a tornado-boy, octopus-armed, mini-mayhem, sweetie-pie toddler running around causing rampant destruction minute by minute...) and I have too much to do to get where I need to be to be able to sit still at a table (or at least in one area of the house) for a few hours every morning (I need to tame that garage and turn it into a play room, as well as take care of that closet I mentioned, redo my front porch and my laundry room, not to mention help with fences and stalls in the barn still...and get rid of more stuff!!!!).

Still, I am not unaware that structure is a good thing for children, so I am coming up with a new plan. This plan has a modicum more structure than what we did last year (since the main focus of learning for Ladybug and Cowboy last year was learning to read, add, and subtract, there wasn't much to do but read, add, and subtract a lot...plus we did art and nature studies), and the added structure will help the younger ones (and, I think the older one...Tex) be held more accountable for achieving a group of pre-set (by teacher) goals. Yet, it will offer me flexibility to change from day to day. For example, if I have a migraine, I can add more computer work to the day. If it is a nice day out, we can do several learning activities outside (like an art project, nature study, and reading), all in the morning, then work on the garage for the afternoon.

So here's the new plan. I have been toying with the idea of workboxes for months now, and I like the idea. But we do have a small house (just under 1500 square feet for eight of us, and some of that is an unheated/cooled semi-enclosed front porch), and space is at a premium. Plus, I can't see Boo ignoring the possiblities of opening all those drawers at this point, and I can't figure out where to put them so he can't get them.

So two weeks ago, when shopping at WalMart, I bought these "lap desk" containers and gave one to each child. I put a handwriting book in each of the Three Amigos' boxes, as well as their nature notebooks, spelling notebooks for the older Amigos, a box of crayons, some regular pencils, and a few worksheets or activity/coloring pages. Then in another box I put a blank book we are using to make an alphabet book for Firefly (just a file folder with about thirty pages stapled in it), added some crayons and colored pencils, scissors, and a few glue sticks. I also printed up some "A is for Ant" printables from Homeschool Share and Lapbooking Lessons, and added a book or two on ants from our Insect Books box. I didn't work on organizing Tex at this point. We don't have his laptop yet, so I set him to reading a few books for our first study on Egypt (his choices are pretty heavy and may take him a while), organizing his planner, and working his way up to Algebra (which he is studying this year) on his Khan Academy account.

Our trial week was a success. We had a blast. The kids enjoyed their lap desks. I liked the convenience of having all of the things I needed for the Alphabet book at hand before we even started, and as long as I walked between the computers and the tables different kids were working at, things went very smoothly.

Okay, so that shows you the flaw in the system. I had to be there, monitoring and adding to the mix constantly. That was okay for the first two weeks, since it was rainy, I had bad headaches all the second week, and I didn't want to do much else anyway, but for the third week, I was feeling okay, and wanted to get out to that monster garage and get to work! So what did I do for school that third week? Well, I wound up having the kids do the majority of their work on the computer (we use some Time4Learning for Ladybug and Cowboy, as well as Reading Eggs and Mathletics, plus Starfall/More Starfall for Firefly, Mark Kistler and Meet the Masters for art, with some Bibletown for fun, not to mention the link-ups and memes we occasionally participate in--see my left sidebar) for a few hours in the morning, reading a few books each day as they took turns using the computers, and then working outside every afternoon.

I feel pretty lousy about that week, schoolwise. Sure, we went to the library and read out loud a lot, and we accomplished a lot of cleaning, but I feel overused the computer and underused the kids' creativity. I am supposed to use those online classes as a supplement, not as the basis of what I am doing. Ugh.

This is the board used by House of the Rising Sons.

I love, love, love this idea.

Please check out the rest of her post.

Obviously, I need to find some middle ground, so I don't default to the computer when I can't be "fully engaged." That's where a schedule (that the kids can follow independently) comes in. Well, today I was persuing a few link ups (Link and Learn at No Time for Flashcards, in particular), and I found this interesting blog, House of the Rising Sons. I LOVE her idea to use similar box labels to the ones the original Sue Patrick Workbox System uses, but to put them on marker boards, instead of on the boxes. In this way, all their work is displayed on the one board and you can write any specifics to the side of each label. Then, instead of using mulitple boxes to store the assignments (ie. one box per label/subject), you keep each child's work in one box (such as our lap desks). Thus, their assignments are listed on a small board that they can easily handle, they can still see each assignment in order, then they have the satisfaction of marking it off as it is done.

It is an ideal system for list lovers like me (and Ladybug, who is a listmaker in training), and since you prepare it each evening, instead of once weekly, it is not prepared so far in advance that it can't easily be adjusted for issues that come up, or based on how I am feeling (or what I am doing) each day. I can choose to write out what we will do OVERALL on my own list, to help me organize our way through the Ancient History we hope to cover this year, but I can go day to day, exploring more or less as the kids show evidence of their own delights in the material. Yay! A solution I think I can live with. I am excited!!

So I have written out my first boards for Ladybug and Cowboy for tomorrow. I don't have labels printed yet, so I just drew pictures with the dry erase markers. I think it will go well. I pray it will go well. I remember how frustrated Bubba became early on in our homeschooling journey when he wouldn't know exactly what was going on every day (we did not have any sort of precisely written daily schedule at that point...just a knowledge that there was a LOT we needed to cover and catch up on, not to mention the co-ops, Boy Scouts, sports, church, etc.), so if he'd finish quickly, I'd give him something else to do, and so on and so on...and you can imagine how that made him feel. This way, the kids will see what is to be done, do it, and we will all have that relief of being done when it is done. Hooray!!

I will update later and let you know how it goes. Say a prayer for us! Thanks.

Blessings,

Fun Friday

I saw the link up for "Friday Fun School" at Ben & Me recently and figured that it is right up our alley for this year's school plan. So far, I have our weeks planned so that we can accomplish all of our lessons in four days, and have the fifth day of the week available for a "fun day," "field trip day," or a "Mommy needs to catch up and/or have a break" day. I think most weeks, this will fit in on a Friday, but if something comes up on some other day, I am flexible and will rearrange things.

Some ideas the kids have had so far for our "Fun Fridays" include:

1. Experiments (preferably messy or explosive ones, they say)

2. Long nature walk or bike ride to the beach

3. Visit Nanny and Poppy

4. Play dates with friends

5. Trips to the library

6. Field trip to a park with a picnic

7. Field Trip to a museum

8. Geocaching

9. Exploring our local area using our guidebook

10. Build a tree house

11. Dress up day

12. 4-H day (this will be every other Friday starting in September)

13. Movie day with homemade pizza

14. Read books all day

15. Go to Chick-fil-a (really, Cowboy came up with that one)

16. Play educational games all day (I added the "educational" part)

17. Craft/Art day

18. Educational video game day (again, I added the "educational" bit)

19. Lego day

20. Cooking day (with lots of chocolate and cookies!!)

I thought they did a pretty good job of brainstorming ideas, and this Friday, we gave it a trial run by mixing it up a bit.

Here is what we did (they did finish a few things up over the weekend, though):

To go with our study of Egypt, Tex read the kids the book Pyramid by David McCaulay. Then he and the Amigos built a pyramid of their own using Duplo Legos. We worked on it over the weekend, too, and here is the final result:

You can see that they built three pyramids, as well as the Sphynx (though Firefly says, "Spinks." It is so cute.)

 Their explorer guys are filming their finds, and the monkey they picked up at a bazaar in Cairo is climbing the Great Pyramid (they got the idea of a buying things at a bazaar out of the Flat Stanley book we read about Egypt this week).

 You can see something of their personalities according to how they decided to play with it once it was finished. Cowboy, the Explorer, has his guy checking out what is inside the pyramid (ancient tablets...ooooh, aaaaah). You see how amazed he is by the astounding assortment of heiroglyphics he has discovered (he's standing on top of the tablets, looking down at them in awe).

Firefly, the carefree one, has her monkey hopping all over the Sphynx, looking for artifacts and treasures...and bananas...the Golden Bananas of the Lost King of Egypt.

Ladybug, the organized and artistic one, has her explorer documenting everything they find on film. She is narrating about their travels in Giza and their explorations of the tombs of ancient Egypt.

I think they had fun. Don't you?

Of course, it has been a beautiful week here, so staying inside all day was not an option. I have been cleaning the garage all week, and have been trying to find things for the kids to occupy themselves with while I am working. One thing they always LOVE to do is to find bugs. Dead ones or live ones, they don't care. Ladybug has amassed a collection of the best dead ones. Cowboy, the Bug Hunter, likes to gather the live ones and keep them for a few hours in the bug house he got for his Buggy Birthday last year.

The kids found a fuzzy caterpillar right off, sitting on a red oak leaf (I think it's a young tent worm, but I can't tell for sure and I didn't want to tell them how awful those things are when they are so excited), and they each drew it in their nature journals. Since they all love to draw, drawing still counts as fun! I read the book, The Fascinating World of Butterflies and Moths by Angels Julivert to them later.

This one is by Ladybug. I love her attention to detail. The bug is in the plastic bug house, hence the green light shining at the top. They love using that thing.

This one is Firefly's. She added the same elements (fake tree, grass, light, caterpillar), and executed them with skill for a three-year-old.

Cowboy also attended to the points on the red oak leaf, and added himself to the picture, very excited! The scale is a bit off, but I love how he even got the color of his shirt right (it was red day today, Ladybug's choice...I have all their shirts sorted by color and stored together and each child gets a day of the week to pick the color. It makes folding, sorting, and putting away the laundry a lot easier...also packing for trips is a breeze with this system. I keep all of the Rubbermaid drawers with their clothes in a special closet space in our bathroom, so they stay tidier than if they were in their room.)

I had a doctor's appointment that took several hours in the afternoon, so while I was gone, Tex let them watch The Magic School Bus Butterflies and the Bog Beast video (here's a fun activity page we might do next week when we do "B" is for Butterfly in Firefly's alphabet bug book.)

They also played Amazon Trail 3rd Edition on our older computer. It was interesting that Ladybug liked to take charge, whereas Cowboy preferred to explore. She would catch the food and decide where to go when on the water, then hand over the controls to him and he'd look for new species and catalog them when they were in the jungle. The game was a good learning experience, since it challenged their reading skills. Tex had to help them with some of the odder scientific names, but usually, between them, they could guess well enough to get along. Teamwork works!

During dinner, I finished reading them Flat Stanley Worldwide Adventures: The Great Egyptian Grave Robbery (as planned earlier this week), and they are excited to pick up with the Egypt theme more formally again next week.

It was a FUN Friday!!

Blessings,

We also linked up to Read, Explore, Learn at JDaniel4sMom. Give it a try!

Flat Stanley Visits the Library

Stanley discovers one of his books at our local library. Hooray!!

He was even more excited to discover that while this was the only one

on the shelf, our library does carry others, and if they are not on the shelf then

that means that kids are reading them. Awesome!

The other day we took a trip to our local library. The kids had worked hard helping me clean our (horrendously messy and over-stuffed) garage for a large portion of the day, and I promised them a reward of a trip to the llibrary for their efforts. I love it when the lure of books and libraries are ample rewards for hard work...

Firefly is getting to be good buddies with Flat Stanley.

She asked if he could be an honorary Amigo the other day, 

and we all agreed he could.

Of course, I headed straight back to the children's section with the younger kids and Stanley, while Tex headed to the conference room to give the Chess Club a try (which he wound up loving, even if he lost quite a bit. After all, you have to start somewhere...). Fortunately for us, the Children's area was nearly deserted, so the kids had free rein over what activities they chose to do. 

The Three Amigos chose to try some of the educational computer games (Ladybug loved the DK History Explorer game...she visited the Incans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Romans. She was completely disgusted to learn that the Romans ate songbirds...eeyeuw!), while Boo ran around trying a bit of everything, from some nifty I Spy blocks to the large magnetic letter board, from the wooden castle to the huge foam building blocks. Each of the other Amigos stopped their computer explorations from time to time to play with Boo and do whatever he was doing. They built several large forts and Ladybug made a play for him using the wooden Royal Family who lives in the castle.

Boo had to pose with Stanley, too. Too bad it's a bit blurry.

Stanley and Boo helped me pick out a stack of Easy Readers for the Amigos to read this week for their Reading Challenge. All summer they have been earning prizes by reading ten books at a time independently, which they record using these bookmarks we found on Enchanted Learning. Ladybug has favored using the pencil or the ice cream cone bookmark (each one has about ten lines to write on), while Cowboy has used the rocket. Firefly has the pencil, but she gets prizes according to which books I, or one of the other kids, reads aloud to her.

For each ten books, I've offered a prize. The first ten earned a full-sized candy bar for each successful participant (this is not something they usually get). The second ten eared their choice of a new book each (again, new books are not the norm around here...we usually buy used). The third ten earned a trip to get an ice cream cone. Maybe the fourth ten will earn them an I Spy game for their computer. I actually already have one I am hiding (don't tell them!) that I got on sale, and that would be a nifty way to give it to them.

My Royal Readers...gallant Prince Cowboy, lovely Princess Ladybug, 

and sweet Princess Firefly.

Our library offered an interesting summer program this year, revolving around "One World, Many Stories." This actually tied in well with our goal of studying World History this year, especially since they offered the Flat Stanley Worldwide Adventure kit bags all summer (each bag was stocked with a Flat Stanley book, several books along the same theme, an activity or two, and perhaps some sort of manipulative, such as puppets, an instrument, a cd of music, or a thematic Viewmaster set). 

This shows the contents for the kit that went with The Amazing Mayan Secret book from Flat Stanley. Not only did the kids love the story (and it had a good lesson in it, which they still talk about..."It's not what you have, it is how you use it,"), but Tex and I enjoyed watching a few movies on the Mayans and their language and customs on Netflix that week. I've always thought they were kind of gory (they are), and so never studied them, but now I find at least the language kind of interesting. Even old dogs can learn new tricks!

The kids loved reading the Flat Stanley books, then when he actually showed up in our mailbox (courtesy of homeschooling friends), they really got motivated! Unfortunately, the usual prizes of free books for reading were not offered this year. Tickets toward a bike drawing were the prize instead, and my kids did not need a bike, and frankly, even if a new bike might have been nice, I didn't feel right having them compete against kids who might actually need one and didn't already have one. That is why we started our own set of motivational rewards.

They have no problem getting through most books now.

What one doesn't quite get, the other fills in. Cooperation is great!

 In any case, the goal of interesting the kids in reading on their own daily (instead of relying on me to read out loud to them, or merely looking at the pictures), has been accomplished, and for that I am very grateful and excited! It is wonderful to see them sitting on the couch ( or my cedar chest) with piles of books in their laps, knowing that they are really reading them word for word now. Many doors to new worlds are opened to them now. What an adventure awaits!!

The kids enjoyed this visit to the library. We will have to do it again soon. We wound up toting home over forty books and one movie. Stanley insisted we see if any of his books were available before we left, and we found a copy of Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: The Mount Rushmore Calamity. Of course, he insisted on posing with it (see top pictures).

"Stanley! What are you doing? Stop jumping on the furniture!"

 Overall, Stanley has been very well-behaved, as I would expect, but once I did catch him jumping on the furniture (see above). He had to have a brief time-out for that infraction, but he didn't mind too much since I made him sit in such an interesting and unusual chair...he said the chair reminds him of Dr. Seuss books, and he told me he loves Dr. Seuss. 

It's hard to be upset by having a time out when the chair 

is like something out of The Cat in the Hat...

Stanley will be with us for a few more weeks, so keep checking back here for more of his adventures!

Blessings,

Heather

We linked to The Reading Aloud Challenge at Footprints in the Butter. Check it out!!

We love to read!!

Menu Plan and a Read Aloud

My nemesis...our garage (over on the left of the picture)

Our Plan: 


The big plan of our week is to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather and get cracking on cleaning out our garage. The kids have dreams of eventually turning it into a game room/play room, and I think that is great, if it will motivate us all to get going. I wouldn't mind having a reason to get the TV out of the house, actually, so if we can dig in this week and put a dent in all the trash and junk that got dragged along with us when we moved last time, and donate what we no longer need, I will be thrilled. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time...

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See more menu plans at Organizing Junkie

Our Menu:

Monday--Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake (recipe below) served with salad and fresh warm pear sauce from our trees (I plan to take a break from the garage around five and start cooking some of our ripe pears).
Tuesday--We go to the library around five and take Tex to Chess Club (lasts until eight pm), so we will pick up chicken sandwiches off of the dollar menu on the way home (we will be working on that garage until it is time to leave for the library).
Wednesday--Pizza night early...we've earned it by working on cleaning out the garage every day so far this week! I checked out the movie Shorts from the library. My son tells me it is funny. We shall see...
Thursday--Chicken nuggets, curly fries, and macaroni and cheese
Friday--Burrito Supremes (made with refried beans, lots of cheese, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, and sour cream) with Spanish rice on the side.
Saturday--Cheeseburgers on the grill served with potato salad and carrot and celery sticks.
Sunday--Chicken alfredo and salad. Perhaps some pear cobbler and vanilla ice cream for dessert...yum!

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Cheesy Chicken and Rice Bake from Campbell's Kitchen

(everyone loved this one...the chicken came out very moist)

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup 

1 1/3 cups water

3/4 cup uncooked regular long-grain white rice

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

1 1/4 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (about 2 ounces)

• Heat the oven to 375°F. Stir the soup, water, rice, onion powder, black pepper and vegetables in an 11 x 7 x 2-inch baking dish.
• Top the rice mixture with the chicken. Cover the baking dish.
• Bake for 50 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the rice is tender. Top with the cheese. Let the casserole stand for 10 minutes. Stir the rice before serving.

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Our Read Aloud:

Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: 

The Great Egyptian Grave Robbers

Our read aloud of the week is another Flat Stanley book, since we are still hosting a friend's Stanley. We are studying Ancient World History this year using Mystery of History, so this particular adventure fits right in with our theme, and will hopefully gear up the kids to learn more about the Egyptians, the pyramids, heiroglyphics, and history in general. The Adventure Pack the book came in includes several books on pyramids and mummies, as well as a camel and an alligator puppet, a hieroglyphics stamping set from The Metropolitan Museum of art, and a bead bracelet craft. I will post some of  the kids' projects later. Stay tuned!

If you do not have access to an adventure pack like we found at our library, you can get some great ideas to go with this book on their website. There are even more ideas in this Flat Stanley Event Kit, which offers activities that can accompany all the books in the Worldwide Adventures series. General information on each of the books and links to teacher activities is available here.

Blessings,