Week 17 - Food and Thanksgiving

 This time of year, we try really hard to not get caught up in the gimmie-gimmie-gimmie that usually accompanies the holiday season.  One thing we do is stress the importance of giving back to the community and helping others.  This week the kids helped me make dinner for a friend who recently had a baby.  We made one of our favorite dishes - meatball sub casserole!  The kids helped cut up all the ingredients and assemble the dish and then we went and delivered the meal to my most grateful friend.  And of course, Little E had to grab her chef hat out of her play kitchen to wear. 

Since it was a short week, we spent the few days we had reviewing some of the topics we have covered this year so far.  Big K went through his old spelling words and we picked a few tricky ones to go back and practice again.  We also reviewed some math topics from our Life of Fred books.

 One thing that normally makes an appearance during our school week is board games.  We LOVE to play games in our house.  Lately, Big K has been requesting to play a game called "Knowledge" a lot.  It is very similar to Trivial Pursuit, so we learn lots of random facts about lots of different categories!   And Little E gets to practice counting dots on a dice while Big K gets practice reading lots and lots of trivia cards.  Even baby W likes to get in on the action. Win, Win! 

For Thanksgiving Day, Big K decided he wanted to make a desert to bring for dinner.  He chose a S'more Cake, made a list of ingredients, came with me shopping, and then put the cake together almost all by himself, including making homemade whipped cream!  (He just needed a little help melting the chocolate chips on the stove).  It got rave reviews from our friends and family on turkey day!   You can find the recipe here:  http://kaotichectickitchen.blogspot.com/2012/07/so-nice-i-am-posting-twice-no-bake.html

This week we also went over to grandma's house for our traditional set-up-the-tree lunch date with her! The kids look forward to it, and it always sets off our holiday spirit to see her tree all dolled up.  Between our cats and the kids, our tree isn't nearly as nice as Grandma's tree!  We normally spend Christmas morning at Grandma's house too, so setting up her tree really gets them excited for Christmas. 

Happy Learning,
Momma C