Update on the Six O'Clock Scramble

You may remember me raving about a website I recently discovered called The Six O'Clock Scramble.

Well, I wanted to let you know that I'm still enjoying it quite a bit.

Today we had a meal that all five of us enjoyed (which is very, very rare): Spaghetti Carbonara, which is spaghetti cooked with bacon and eggs, believe it or not.

One possibly downside of sorts is that going grocery shopping is a little more challenging for me these days. Every week I have to ask the Publix workers something: What is Quinoa? Where are the pomegranates? Where do I find bags of sun-dried tomoatoes? What is ginger root, and how do I buy an inch of it?

But we are eating so well!

We had Ginger Shrimp Stir-Fry with rice and oranges yesterday. Tacos del Mar (seafood tacos) with homemade guacamole earlier this week.
Hot Dog Creole with Red Peppers, and Green Bean Almondine on the side.
Cheesy Spinach Strata, served with pineapple and homemade hash browns.

Maybe this is just proof that I have a really dull life, but every day I get kind of excited about what's going to be for dinner next.

A friend recently said to me, "The hardest thing about homeschooling is having to feed everybody all the time!" No kidding. These days I just slide some leftovers into the oven at lunchtime.

Check it out.

Simple Machine Experiments

I'm trying to make a point to include at least one hands-on activity with every Five in a Row unit we do.

For example, when we did How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, we baked ... well, actually we baked apple crisp. Mostly because Robert loves apple crisp, but does not like apple pie.

And then when we did Madeline, the girls made an Eiffel Tower out of Legos.

Well, a couple weeks ago we did a book called Who Owns the Sun?



What was really cool about this book is that it was written and illustrated by a fourteen year old girl -- m0re specifically, it was written by a fourteen year girl who was attending my high school at the time. [My first one, in Pittsburgh.]

I looked her up and dropped her an e-mail. She is about 3-4 years younger then me. She also attended my middle school, and from what she described, it sounds like she lived about a 20-minute walk from my house.

And interestingly, she has an older brother -- who is a year younger than me -- who is on Wiki as "an American novelist."

And I thought I was cool because I won a couple writing contests when I was a teenager. Um, no.

Anyway, back to the hands-on activities before I get too depressed.

One of the FIAR topics for this book is simple machines, so the girls and I did some of the interactive games on this site.

We also did some Simple Machines experiments.


They dropped at egg into a pan to see if it would crack ...
(this probably would have been more effective with raw eggs, but everyone wanted to eat them afterwards)


... and then dropped it from the same height using a inclined plane.


They arranged blocks on a lever and saw how the balancing changed if they moved the fulcrum.


And they saw how lifting something with a lever ...



... was easier than lifting something without it.

Kids who "look like they're homeschooled"

Rachael, age 8, joined a community children's choir this fall, and her first concert is this weekend.

When we came home from rehearsal tonight, I was asking her a little bit about it, and if she gets a chance to talk with the other kids, etc.

I said (among other things), "Do you know if any of the other kids are homeschooled?"

She said, "Yes, I think so." Pause. "There are a couple who look like they are homeschooled."

My ears perked up. [Since homeschooling "didn't exist" when I was a kid, I was really curious what a homeschool kid looks like to other kids.] I said, "Really? What does that mean? What does a homeschool kid look like?"

She said, "Well, the kids in Bible Study [homeschool CBS] are different from the kids in dance class who go to school."

"Really?" I pulled up a chair. The journalist in me was practically set to whip out a notepad and pencil. "Can you explain what it is?"

To myself, I'm thinking, Are the homeschooled kids nicer? More mature? Dress less trendy? Talk less about pop culture? What? What???

Finally, after mulling it over best she could, she said, "Well ... for example, there's one boy there. I saw him write something, and it was with these really blocky letters, and it was really messy, and I thought -- 'He must be homeschooled!'"

Oh well.

The usual Thanksgiving tradition

We went to North Carolina for Thanksgiving.

We came home today, and then we did this.

Kids in the Leaves

Robert spend several hours yesterday cleaning up the leaves, and of course the kids had to get in on it.






I guess I didn't have my camera on the best setting, but they're cute pictures nonetheless.



When Benjamin saw what was going on, he ran toward the pile, going, "Me too! Me too!"

Five in a Row - Madeline

We recently finished a Five in a Row unit study and lapbook on Madeline.

If you know me at all, you know that I always get my ideas from other sources and never come up with anything original on my own. If you wanted to be kind, you could call me resourceful. If not, you could call me unoriginal and uncreative.

Thus, here's a couple interesting things we did with Madeline:

The FIAR board archives had a link for a virtual tour of France, so we did that one day.

The archives also had a link to make the Eiffel Tower with Legos.


I got a few shots of the girls with their Lego tower -- oh look, Rebecca's still in her pajamas! :)


Here's one of Rachael by herself. My, she is looking so old these days, isn't she?



Here's a better picture of the tower itself.

What's for dinner? So glad you asked!

I've always thought -- even before I had kids -- that the hardest thing about cooking was not the cooking itself, but the planning of it.

What should I make this week? (Or tonight.) What haven't we had in a while? Let me dig around the pantry and see what we have in the house ... let me write down everything I need to buy to make a lasagna, and a chicken and rice casserole, and a chicken pot pie ... no, that's too much chicken in one week. Can get away with having eggs for dinner again one night?

Oh wait, don't we need to actually need to eat vegetables with all these things? Do we have any in the house? Oh ... there's all in the crisper drawer, rotting away.

My husband has no idea how much time and energy it takes to feed everybody all the time.

And I actually like to cook.

So I am very excited about this website I just discovered, Six O'Clock Scramble.

Every Wednesday they come out with five days of meals -- and the side dishes to go with them -- along with a weekly shopping list.

You make one shopping trip for the week, then each day make what's listed for dinner.

Done.

I'm doing it this week, and so far I love it. When I went shopping on Sunday, I bought more produce that I normally do in a whole month -- corn, green beans, baby spinach, red potatoes, apples -- and hey, it won't end up rotting this time!

Monday we had Penne Pasta with mushrooms and peas. The side dish was salad with beets, pecans, and goat cheese.

Tuesday we had tilapia "fish sticks" (although mine came out more like chunks.) The side dish was apple and carrot salad.

Tonight I am making apricot baked chicken. Side dishes are kasha, plus green beans with lemon and garlic.

I was telling somebody at the park about this today, and they asked how the kids liked it. Well ... Rachael loved the fish. Rebecca didn't mind the carrot/apple salad once we forced her to try it. Benjamin ate the pasta, but not the mushrooms.

But honestly, they don't like most "cooked meals," especially Rebecca. (If you're wondering what that means, I mean that they like things like certain types of fruit, baked beans, yogurt, cheese, etc.)

So this is no worse than normal. It may even help, as it's giving them a bigger variety of foods to try.

This is kind of funny, but it almost feels as if someone's making me dinner. I just look at the list, see what's for dinner, then spend about 30 minutes putting it together. Yum!