Oceans of Fun!

From the nine different countries the girls read about (each read about four different countries and both of them did Russia), we decided to do two meals incorporating types of foods they would eat in some of those countries. (Some of these recipes came from the Internet, some from the actual books we read, so I’m just going by those sources for authenticity. If you’re from one of these countries and think there’s a better option, feel free to leave me a recipe to try!: )

 

Last night we combined Individual Pizzas [Italy], Pasta with Feta, Tomato Salsa and Green Beans [Greece] and Creme au Chocolat [France]. (Any meal that lets you combine pizza and chocolate can’t be all bad!!) The individual pizzas included my first attempt at homemade pizza dough and I was quite pleasantly surprised at the result! I used Money Saving Mom’s recipe; my eight-year-old helped with the kneading, both girls topped their own pizzas and they were quite tasty. [One tip: I rolled out the dough into four circles for the individual pizzas, then put them on the baking sheets and baked at 450 degrees for five minutes. I think it gives the dough a bit more texture – just a personal taste thing.]

 

Things didn’t fare quite as well with our chocolate, however. I’m thinking it was supposed to be like chocolate pudding; ours would qualify as chocolate soup. It was totally my fault since I substituted half and half for heavy cream. After we all slurped a little bit, I poured the rest into popsicle molds and have them in the freezer, hoping to create homemade fudgsicles.

 

We’re preparing our other meal on Thursday night. It will consist of Israeli Spice Chicken [Israel], Potatoes with Chorizo [Cuba] and Russian Tea Cakes [Russia]. An update on that one next time!

 

At our weekly library trip yesterday, we got books about the Ocean and Ocean Animals (more details to follow in my book basket post on Thursday). I also checked out a forty-five minute National Geographic Kids Video entitled Really Wild Animals Deep Sea Dive. We’ll use that as an afternoon diversion today! It has been so hot and humid this last week, I haven’t been making the girls spend much time outside. We did enjoy our morning bike rides last week, however, and I hope to continue those. As planned, our outing will be a trip to the beach one afternoon toward the end of the week.

 

So far we have done well with following our daily schedule. A few days we’ve had things going on in the morning and have just moved our “school” time to the afternoon. I thought the Bible memory verse for last week was a bit difficult, but both of the girls had it memorized by Friday afternoon.

 

They are really enjoying using their notebooks. Besides their daily writing, we also do a page for each fun event they do, which last week included swimming with friends. I love the idea that at the end of the summer they can look back and see all they did.

 

The girls only seem to be tolerating the Spanish CD’s so I was surprised when, at lunch on Sunday, I asked them if they remembered any of the words they’d learned in the past week and they could tell me quite a few of them. I would still like to find a good early-learning Spanish curriculum, so please let me know if you have a recommendation.