Letter of the Week

A few months ago I started our oldest daughter in Year 1 of Ambleside. It proved too much for her. She just wasn't ready yet. Last week we switched to Letter of the Week. Big improvement! One thing I like about the switch is that our 3-year-old can sit in on the lessons as well. It has been easy to adapt the lessons to each girls' ability. Math for the week was addition. We used animal crackers as manipulatives. Our 3-year-old did some simple problems orally while my older daughter wrote out problems using mathematical notation. When we are done with Letter of the Week, we will move on to Sound of the Week.

I have chosen books with a little more depth than picture books. For the letter A we read a short chapter book that was a biography of Johnny Appleseed. We read two chapters a day. I am also able to use some of the material from Year 1 Ambleside where I can. For the letter B we will be learning about bluebirds from the Burgess Bird Book. We will also read "The Bundle of Sticks", an Aesop Fable.

State of Pennsylvania Dinner

Philadelphia cheese steak sandwiches
Dutch spiced cucumbers
Dutch red cabbage
Milk (official state beverage) with Hershey's chocolate syrup
Shoofly pie

Menu Plan Monday

Monday
Breakfast: cold cereal
Lunch: baked salmon, rice, leftovers
Dinner: sloppy joes, french fries, salad

Tuesday
Breakfast: waffles
Lunch: potluck with our homeschool group (we are taking gingerbread, clementines, cookies, apple slices with caramel dip)
Dinner: sweet and sour chicken, steamed rice

Wednesday
Breakfast: eggs, hashbrowns, clementines
Lunch: refried beans, quesadillas, mexican rice, bananas
Dinner: bacon potato soup, salad

Thursday
Breakfast: French toast, strawberries
Lunch: chicken fingers, fruit, buttered noodles
Dinner: roasted chicken with carrots, roasted cauliflower, rice

Christmas Day
Breakfast: apple cinnamon rolls, strawberry smoothies
Mid-day Dinner: grilled prime rib and fruit salad (provided by neighbors joining us), mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, apple pie, red velvet cake
Leftovers later if we are hungry

Saturday
Breakfast: cold cereal
Lunch: chicken vegetable soup, crackers and/or garlic bread
Dinner: leftovers

Sunday
Breakfast: pancakes, eggs
Lunch: tacos
Dinner: crockpot chuck roast with vegetables, baked potatoes

State of Delaware Dinner

Peach and Bourbon Glazed Roast Chicken
Pumpkin bread
Succotash
Milk (official state beverage)
Peach pie (official state dessert)

The blue hen chicken is the official state bird of Delaware and the peach blossom is the official state flower. Delaware is also a leading producer of broiler chickens. Pumpkins, corn and lima beans were new foods discovered in the New World.

The kids absolutely loved the pumpkin bread. I'm glad the recipe made two loaves.

State of New Jersey Dinner

Submarine sandwiches
Marinated tomatoes and red onion
Cranberry Splash Sierra Mist
Saltwater taffy

Hoagies, or submarines, are a popular food in all the mid-Atlantic states. The fresh tomatoes and onions (plus the veggies on the sandwich) are representative of the nickname The Garden State. I would have added cucumbers but forgot to pick some up at the store. I simply tossed the vegetables with Italian dressing. Saltwater taffy originated in a candy shop on the Jersey Shore. I chose Cranberry Splash Sierra Mist because it seemed like a summertime, seaside treat. Cranberries are grown in the northeast.

5552 miles!

Road trips are so fun! We recently returned after a 5552-mile journey across 13 states. When my sister told us of her wedding on September 12, I started checking prices for airline tickets. It's expensive to fly six people halfway across the country! We decided to take our Nissan van with over 200,000 miles. We have a motorhome but gas alone would set us back about $3000. We decided to tent camp our way to Minnesota, over to California and back to Arizona. The night before we left we saw an ad for a tent trailer on Craigslist. Early the next morning we took a look at it and bought it. I'm so glad we did! It gave us extra room for storage as well as a comfortable place to sleep. It was an adventure!

Arizona

New Mexico

Santa Fe Trail Museum in Springer

Kansas


Front Street in Dodge City


Iowa



Minnesota







South Dakota



Wyoming











Utah







Nevada








California

Back to Arizona

New York State Dinner

Buffalo chicken wings
Brooklyn bialys
Delmonico potatoes
Waldorf salad
New York egg cream
New York cheesecake

This has been a fun way to get the kids to try new foods. Our oldest likes new food but the younger three can be rather resistant to change! Tonight's dinner was hit and miss. I let the younger ones try the buffalo wings but they preferred the wings with no hot sauce. My older son thought they were hot but ate a bunch anyway because he said they were so good. The kids all loved the bialys. Only my husband liked the potatoes. That surprised me. Who wouldn't like potatoes in a creamy sauce topped with cheese? I guess since my kids have never liked scalloped potatoes, I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone liked the Waldorf salad. I went the traditional route and made it with only apples and celery with mayo. The egg cream drink was a miss with everyone. It is a little strange--club soda with a little whole milk and chocolate sauce. Cheesecake is always well liked! I had to use a regular pie pan since my springform pan is back in Oregon.

The Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, serves over 70,000 pounds of chicken wings per month. Bialys orginiated in Bialystok, Poland. In the early 1900s, many east European Jews settled in New York City. Manhattan's Lower East Side is famous for its bialy bakeries. Delmonico potatoes originated at Delmonico's Restaurant in NYC around 1830. The Waldorf salad was created at the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC in 1896. According to Elliot Willensky, author of When Brooklyn Was the World: 1920-1957, "a candy store minus and egg cream, in Brooklyn at least, was as difficult to conceive of as the Earth without gravity." Historians believe cheesecake was served as long ago as the first Olympic games, 776 B.C. A dairyman in upstate New York made cream cheese on accident while trying to recreated the French cheese Neufchatel. A true New York-style cheesecake is made with pure cream cheese, cream, sugar and eggs.