Jack and the Giant

Jack, the Giant and the Beanstalk

 

Grinding bones (peanuts) for our bread (the birds). I got that mortar and pestle years ago at a Asian market. It was CHEAP. Way cheaper than anything you get at a specialty shop.

It worked! Balloon, yarn, 1 cup liquid starch and 1/2 c flour.  I hung it to dry overnight and this was the result the next morning. How cool! I can think of a million uses for this! That's Tamarin's giant on top of the beanstalk and her Jack sort of sticking out of it. I found the person template at this site. I printed one at full size and another at 50% of original size, instant giant and human.

Our hand print giraffes. I showed them how to use the eraser end of a pencil to paint the dots on them. Tamarin, Howler, Lemur. Lemur wouldn't use a marker to write giraffe. She wanted to paint it. I guess Howler's shook all his spots off :)

Our list of Good G's and Tricky G's.... yes, I know my handwriting is awful. I could never be a public school teacher.

Anyway, I wrote the page this way to show her most G's make the hard G sound and only a few make the soft G. We'll eventually get to the why later. I figure this is a good place to start.

Tamarin said she was going to put dirt in the box, next thing I know she is showing me her garden :)

While sisters napped yesterday Tamarin and I made fudGe. See how I tied that in there? :) Any excuse to make sweets. Tamarin poured all the ingredients in and she stirred until it got to a good rolling boil. We watched the jawbreaker episode of Mythbusters the other day. When I warned her to be very careful because it could burn she immediately asked, "like Mythbusters?" She promptly asked if she could get off the chair and watch from the table. I told her that was probably a very good choice.

According to Alton Brown any fudge that is not boiled is not fudge at a molecular level. I've made "fake" fudge before. This was the first time I had a REAL fudge recipe turn out. I usually burn it or don't cook long enough so it doesn't set right. I did a combo of thermometer and watching for ball stage, turns out my thermometer is not exactly accurate. It hit firm ball stage before we hit the right temperature for soft ball. Here's the recipe. I added the salt on top simply because I wanted to. I love sea salt topped sweets.

We will be doing grateful and glow today or tomorrow. Today is going to be so nice outside we may blow off school and play outside all day. Pictures of my plans for glow probably won't come out on my camera. That's why I don't usually post my pictures, my camera is a piece of junk.

I know some of you out there are reading. Which do you prefer? Posts where I lay out my plans with other people's pretty pictures or after the fact with my pictures and links to where the ideas came from? I hope these posts are being found useful by someone.... I started this blog because some friends suggest I post homeschool stuff, but I'm discovering most people are interested in the farming and opinion posts more.