Tulip Festival Fun

Last week we went on a wonderful field trip with our homeschool friends to the local tulip festival. We had a large group with about 20 kids and a half dozen moms and we invited the grandma's to join us so my mom came along too. The girls loved running through the fields, riding the cow train and playing on the hay bale slide with their friends. We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends and a chance to spend the afternoon delighting in the beauty of God's world.

Imaginative Play

I love watching children play alone. Their imaginations are amazing and it's fun to watch them imitate their parents in how they parent their dolls or do make believe chores like Annah washing dishes in the video above. Since we try to avoid TV except for one or two good videos a month, I like to set up lots of rotating "imagination stations" like the one in the video above. I try to set up play things that imitate what adults do since I think kids really enjoy feeling like they are doing adult work and doing something meaningful. Playing dress up, gardening, washing clothes by hand, playing house, etc. give children a chance to practice what they are learning from you and the world around them.

This week I created a simple play kitchen from an old cardboard box with a hole cut out for a plastic tub (sink). I added a few wooden and ceramic kitchen accessories bought inexpensively at Ikea and some play foods and empty food cans and boxes I had in my recycling bin. The girls spent hours playing with this kitchen this week. Next week I think I'll set up our dolly day care which the girls love (see below).

Below are a few of my favorite ways to spark imaginative play in children. For more great ideas I highly recommend the book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections

Wash Day: On warm days we like to get out all our doll clothes, set up a clothes line at child's height with wooden clothes pins and fill two big buckets with water (one with bubbles). If you have an old wash board even better. The girls LOVE washing all their doll's clothes and wash them over and over again.

Paper dolls from Paper Doll Review We probably have two dozen paper doll sets which we store in clear gallon size zip lock bags. Their favorite is the Little House paper dolls.

Dress up: big trunk with lots of random clothes, scarves, hats and jewelry some makeup and a full length mirror.

Dolly Day Care: For this we pull out all the dolls in our house and all the doll clothes, all our doll beds (or empty boxes to make into beds), high chairs, etc. We set up a corner of the family room as the day care and the girls spend hours playing day care with their dolls. They also think it's pretty neat that we get to turn our living room into a day care since I don't usually let them drag all this stuff downstairs.

Sticker Mania: We get out all the stickers in the house (we have boxes of them), spread them all over the entire family room floor and get a big stack of paper and crayons and the girls have fun stickering away and making up stories with their stickers.

Guys in the water: Often times to keep the girls busy while I'm trying to make dinner or get some work done, I'll give each of them a big bowl of water, place it on a towel and pull out their bin of plastic figurines (at our house we call them "guys"). They'll spend hours playing with them in the water and the mess in minimal - the towel soaks up the water mess.

Fairy Houses: Fairy houses are fun and easy to build outside. Nut shells, moss, leaves and rocks can easily be turned into entire fairy villages. We must have a lot of fairies living in our backyard based on the number of villages we've built!

Outdoor Doll House: On warm days we like spreading a big blanket outside on the grass and pulling out the dollhouse and all the furniture. Mixing it up by taking it outside adds a new element of fun.

These are just a few ideas of some of the things we do to keep children busy and nurture their creativity. I'm always on the lookout for new ideas so please feel free to add more ideas!

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Whole Wheat Sourdough English Muffins

Sourdough breads have amazing health benefits and taste so good they are worth the trouble to make from scratch. About once a month I make a big batch of whole wheat English Muffins and then I slice them and freeze them for a quick breakfast. My girls usually eat them once or twice a week for breakfast with a fried egg and cheddar cheese inside - our own version of an egg McMuffin. Sometimes we'll add some turkey sausage or bacon (which I also precook and freeze ready to use for a fast breakfast). It's a very quick, easy and healthy breakfast. Although the sourdough starter takes three days to ferment and be ready, once you have a starter you can keep it going and won't have to make it again.

The health benefits of eating breads made with sourdough are great. Sourdough is essentially two organisms, wild yeast and bacteria, in symbiosis. Together they transform the grain to make it more healthful, more digestible, and also resistant to getting moldy or stale. Oftentimes people with wheat allergies or "yeast" allergies have no problem eating real sourdough.

Sourdough English Muffins

This recipe makes about 25-30 English muffins.

** When you make these muffins, be sure to plan on the milk-flour-starter mixture setting overnight before continuing with the recipe. And if you're also making the sourdough starter you'll need to plan on making that about three days in advance.

3 cups milk, scalded
1 cup sourdough starter (see recipe for this below)
8 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup cornmeal

Pour milk into a large bowl. When it has cooled to lukewarm, add sourdough starter, and gradually stir in 4 cups flour until thoroughly mixed. Cover loosely and leave in a warm place overnight (a heated up to warm and turned off oven is where I keep mine).

The next morning , in a large bowl dissolve yeast in warm water. Add honey, 1/4 cup oil and remaining flour. Set aside to poof.

Stir down sourdough mixture and add to yeast mixture.

Turn out dough onto floured surface and knead for 10-13 minutes. Sprinkle floured surface with cornmeal and roll out dough to thickness of English muffins - about 3/8 inch. Cut with a wide mouth glass or biscuit cutter and place on baking sheet. Let rise in warm place until double in bulk.

Heat a large iron skillet over medium-low heat, add remaining oil and cook muffins for about 5 minutes on each side. Be very careful not to burn them.

Sourdough Starter
*Count on at least three days for the starter to be ready.

2 cups low-fat milk
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon honey.

Put milk into a small container, cover with cheese cloth or dry towel and leave at room temperature for 24 hours. The next day add flour and honey and stir and blend mixture. Cover container with a dry towel and put in a warm place (ie. by a heater vent, in a warmed up over or by the fire). After 24 more hours the natural yeast should begin to activate. This may take 2-3 days. When the starter becomes bubble and begins to expand in size it is ready to use.

Tending the Chickens

This video is for my sister Lissa who has been living in Edinburgh, Scotland the last year. The girls miss her terribly and I know she misses them too. This video is just to give her (and anyone else interested) a glimpse into our afternoon and our little Annah. We had beautiful weather today with high temps in the 80s so we spent the day outside gardening, playing in the pool and walking a few blocks into our little town to get ice cream cones and eat them at the park overlooking the river.

Pioneer School

Today our homeschool group had an all day field trip at the Newell House Museum in Champoeg State Park not far from our home. The kids went to pioneer school, learned about Oregon history and were able to do some pioneer crafts including candle making, carding wool, making journals, etc. We ate lunch in the park and had a great day with friends! Mira's favorite part was going to school in the real pioneer schoolhouse and Annah's favorite part was washing clothes on the washboard and hanging them to dry.

Making Butter with Kids

Today the girls and I made butter using half a quart of creme. Making butter is very easy and fun, especially if you have a KitchenAid or some sort of mixer. Annah, above, is holding our jar of fresh creme that we skimmed from the top of a gallon of farm fresh milk that we picked up yesterday from a local farm family.

Whip the creme in a KitchenAid or other mixer on the highest setting for 10-15 minutes. It will first turn to whip creme and then slowly settle down and separate into buttermilk and butter clumps. This takes a good 10 minutes.

Once the butter is separated from the buttermilk, let the kids grab the clumps of butter and squish them into balls of butter. Have a bowl of clean, cold water handy and dip the butter balls in the water several times to rise away any buttermilk. Add some sea salt and continue to roll into a ball or press into a butter mold.

Here's our final product. We got about 1/2 cup of butter. It was soft but after sitting in the fridge it will harden up. We used some of ours for our lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches.

If you're using raw, unhomogenized milk, you can skim the creme from the top of the milk. In the photo above you can see a layer of about one inch of creme on the top of my milk. The rest we used to make the butter.

My Sweet Family