Picture Books: Wonderful story-telling!

We use picture books alot around here -- for helping the kids learn about all manner of things from math to science/nature, history to geography, religion to sociology. Picture books, well-written and/or well-illustrated are much more beneficial than hours of lecturing or dry reading from a text book.

Two such books require special attention today. We read these yesterday and have re-read them three times since. Yes, they're that good! The books, Molly's Pilgrim and Make a Wish, Molly are about the same family -- a mom, dad and daughter who immigrate to New England from Russia to avoid the Jewish pogroms at the beginning of the 20th century. Molly's Pilgrim shows that the celebration of Thanksgiving is just applicable for the modern-day pilgrim, coming to the United States for freedom, as it was for the very first Thanksgiving. Make a Wish, Molly shows that religious beliefs are important to keep and not a secret to hide; that religious differences or cultural differences can be shared and cherished while melding into American society.

Either or both of these books would be fabulous for a study on immigration, different cultures, Russian history, Jewish customs (great descriptions of Tabernacles and Passover), Thanksgiving, birthday celebrations, home-made gifts vs store-bought, etc. Further, these stories are just very well written -- with sad parts and happy parts and the writing evokes emotions from readers of all ages (yes, we were all boo-hooing in parts!).

Family: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving -- a day not only to give thanks to God for all our wonderful blessings and gifts, but also to give thanks for our physical and spiritual blessings.

We went down to SC this year, primarily to see our lovely middle daughter and volleyball pro who is away at Georgia Southern most of the year. We left on Wednesday late-morning and got back Saturday evening.

Here's a photoessay of the motley crew assembled down in the Carolinas for Turkey Day:

Dh and his lovely bride of 10+ years. Dh and his girls
Our 3 littles and their favorite boy-cousin Oldest sweet daughter and her family (yep, ALL boys!)
StringBean and her favorite PC cousin
Middle daughter (and amazing vball player) and her favorite cousin (they're only 2 weeks apart in age and have been best buddies forever) Sisters in spirit and attitude -- scares me just a little ....
The boys enjoying Nintendo DSes before eating Turkey
Neice and dh (only married 1yr+) Sweet southern sister-in-law and family
BIL and family

kids, nieces, nephews and grandkids with spouses but missing Brikhead and NO Boy.

Unfortunately, Nanna and Poppy (who started this motely crew) were always unavailable for pictures and so we don't see the reason for this gathering of kindreds - N&P truly are the garden soil on which this particular family continues to grow!

Thanks be to God for bringing Nanna and Poppy together over 50 years ago.

Thanksgiving is the time to remember all the people and things we're thankful for -- these are just some of the many people who help us remember how very good God is to us! We love you all (whether you're pictured here or not) and we thank God daily for our family, friends, and benefactors!

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all and know that you were remembered in our prayers on Thanksgiving Day and every day (even if LSU and Daniel High School lost games they should have won)....

Math: an eclectic blend

I'll let you in on a secret ... our math program around here includes such heretical items as workbooks and math fact sheets! Yep, occasionally I fall back on the old standbys of drill-and-kill for learning math.

BUT, and this is a big but ....

we also do lots of other odd things to learn math. I try to help my children love while learning the math. I don't want them to think (as I did) that math is just a bunch of numbers that get bigger or smaller, depending on what we're doing to them. Math becomes removed from reality. But this is far from reality.

Math CAN be exciting ... and fun ... and well, USEFUL!

For instance, we do lots of cooking math around here: when cooking/baking some item, we practice fractions (adding, subtracting, multiplying, substituting), relational sizes, volume, etc, etc. Yesterday is a great example of our eclectic math style -- for Thanksgiving, we made two different kinds of bread: pumpkin-pecan and cranberry. Here are the recipes we used for these delightful concoctions:

Cranberry Thanksgiving Cranberry Bread
(makes one loaf)
Preheat oven to 350
2 c flour
1 c sugar
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 c butter or margarine
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp grated orange peel
3/4 c orange juice
3 c fresh cranberries, chopped

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda into a large bowl. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Add egg, orange peel, orange juice all at once. Stir just until mixture is evenly moist. Add cranberries.Spoon into a greased 9x5 loaf pan (or 6 small loaves). Bake for 1hr and 10 minutes (less for small loaves) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from pan; cool on a wire rack.

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread
· 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
· 4 eggs
· 1/2 cup vegetable oil
· 1/2 cup melted butter
· 2/3 cup water
· 1 cup white sugar
· 1 cup brown sugar
· 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
· 1 cup wheat flour
· 2 teaspoons baking soda
· 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
· 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
· 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
· 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
· 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
· 1/2 to 1 cup raisins
· 1/2 to 1 cup walnuts
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Dredge the raisins and walnuts with about ½ cup of the flour. Stir the flour and spices into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Add the nuts/raisins. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Best served the next day!

While the breads were baking we pulled out another old favorite - catalog math. But this time, I gave them each $100 in monopoly money and they had to figure out how to spend it without going over. For BamBam, I let him just make sure it came close to $100 ... with String Bean and Lego Maniac, they had to get right on the money. We then worked on figuring shipping, tax, etc and had a real-living math morning!

Real-life learning, in the heart of the home is so much more fun, don't you think?