Pinwheel Sandwiches

These are fun and easy, and customizable like any sandwich. If you have a picky eater, this is a great solution because you can put almost anything they want on it (and sneak in what they need). We also found that they make great picnic foods because they stay together pretty well, unlike other sandwiches, and you can make them in advance and wrap them in foil. I’ll share the version we made.

Pinwheel Sandwiches
Serves 2 adults and 3 kids as far as I can tell
Total time 20-25 minutes
Prep time 20-25 minutes

Ingredients:

2 large tortillas
4 leaves romaine lettuce
10 slices American cheese
1 box cream cheese
Turkey
Cajun seasoning (to taste)
Garlic (to taste)

Instructions:

Combine cream cheese, Cajun seasoning and garlic in medium mixing bowl. This will require mashing with a fork for several minutes, but will soften the cream cheese and warm it up for the next step.
spread cream cheese evenly on one entire surface of each tortilla.
Layer cheese, lettuce, and turkey evenly on each tortilla. This will probably require creative cheese shaping. IMPORTANT: Leave cream cheese exposed on the edge of the tortilla that will be on the outside when you roll it up.
Roll the tortilla. If the end edge has no exposed cream cheese, cut away some of the other ingredients until it does. The cream cheese will seal the wrap.
Now cut slices of the wrap to expose the spiraled colors.
Serve.

Remember, this one can be manipulated to your liking. Season your cream cheese however you prefer; use ham or chicken or beef if you so choose. I’ve seen some with diced tomatoes, peppers and onions or hummus. This is less a recipe and more an idea.

If You Want Something Done Right...

If you want something done right, do it yourself; and by all means, don’t let your ex get his hands on it. As you may have read, our first week of lessons went swimmingly, and our second week happened to be the week their dad was planning to be in town. Now, after a week away from home, we’re starting over on things I thought we had figured out.

We’ve had to put lessons on hold so I can put my full attention and (limited) energy toward reteaching the household rules as well as personal responsibility and hygiene. The attitudes around here have become resistant and defiant enough that it has been difficult even to convince myself to TRY structured lessons. Not to mention, I certainly don’t want to further distract them from their potty responsibilities, since their attention to their bodily needs has become... lax.

It has only been one week since they returned from their visit, at this point. We have already made huge improvements. It was just very upsetting to me and to our routine to be put in this situation.

Additionally, the home school planner came back to me reflecting only two, half-hour lessons for each of my daughters for the entire week that they were away. While I recognize that their dad would probably like for his visits to be like vacations, I did inform him in advance that it wouldn’t be possible, considering the hours we need to squeeze in. It’s also not terribly difficult to teach them because they think it’s fun.

On the upside, I got divorce paperwork filled out, reviewed by a lawyer, printed, signed and notarized last week. Now I’m just waiting for a copy of our marriage license to be returned to me in the mail so I can file. Unfortunately, divorce only solves some of our problems. I’m also going to need to learn to make demands and get him to give our kids what they need (and I’m not even talking about college funds or cars).

Fossils

This was our first lesson-related project. We talked about dinosaurs, watched informative videos, went to the museum, and made fossils. It was a lot of fun, and really easy. I imagine we’ll make this dough and use it for something else in the future.

Ideas for future use of this recipe: Christmas ornaments, hand print wall-hangings, first pottery attempts, leaf prints maybe.

Things you need:

1 box baking soda (about 2 cups)
1 cup cornstarch
11/2 cups water
Sauce pan
Bowl
Spoon
Plastic wrap (optional)
Waxed Paper (optional)
Dinosaurs

How we did it:

Make your dough - Mix the baking soda, cornstarch and water in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it is too thick to stir with a spoon. Seriously, constantly. This only takes 10 minutes or so. When it starts to thicken, it will get to the right consistency very quickly.

Let it cool - Cool in a bowl until the dough is cool enough to touch. Knead it for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. Keep any dough you’re not using wrapped in plastic.

Paper your table - I recommend taping down some waxed paper before you give the dough to little hands. It is pretty easy to clean up, so you don’t absolutely have to, but it does make clean-up faster, and give you an easy way to move your finished projects.






Get prehistoric - We delved out approximately equal portions of dough and put a basket of plastic dinosaurs in the middle of the table. This clay is good for lots of things, but we were just finishing up a week of dinosaur lessons.
The kids stamped skin patterns, faces and feet. Then, they rolled their dough up and made snowmen and dinosaur armor. Finally, they made fossils again and we let them dry on the kitchen counter. They take 1-2 days to dry, depending on how thick it is, and it can be painted with Tempera or acrylic paints.

Tips - You probably shouldn’t let these dry entirely on the waxed paper. The paper will hold the moisture in on the bottom. Also, you’ve got probably about a half hour between the dough reaching a tolerable “warm” temperature and when it will start to dry enough to be chunky and difficult to reform. And you should know before you start: this stuff is super easy to wash off. It will feel weird and grainy on your hands, but it comes right off without any trouble.

This Book Doesn’t Work

Last November, I did my first black Friday, doorbusters shopping spree. I managed to avoid it, despite having children, for years and I was curious what all of those other people were raving (or ranting) about. I only went to Target. They had a great deal on a huge, flat-screen TV that I successfully bought for my partner.

I also bought Leapfrog toys. Specifically, I picked up two Tag pens and a Tag Junior pen and a few books to go with them. My mom also bought some books to go along with the bundle when she found out.

I loved the idea of my kids being able to explore stories with a pen to help them sound out the words. I imagined them learning to love the colorful and interesting stories written on pages, and I thought it might be a helpful back up for ultimately teaching them to read. But that’s not what happened.

Now, when people started complaining that Baby Einstein was failing to turn out smarter kids, I was one of the first to raise my hand and say, “maybe you’re doing it wrong.” After all, it seems ridiculous and counterproductive to me to sit your kid down with a DVD and expect great things to happen. Maybe it would work, mixed in with active parenting. I don’t know, though. I’ve never tried Baby Einstein with my kids and I certainly don’t know what all of the Baby Einstein parents were doing.

But I did buy this Leapfrog stuff, and now I’m thinking about taking it all away.

I’ve been turning the idea over in my head for a couple of months. Then, this week, my five-year-old came to me with a board book that was not compatible with the Tag system, “brown bear brown bear what do you see” and said, “this book doesn’t work.” That really made me think about what’s happening.

We read them a story almost every night (unless it’s especially late and they need to get to sleep asap), and sometimes in the middle of the day. We have classroom learning books called “Bob Books” that we help them read on their own. And, many times, when they want to know what something says, we help them sound it out instead of just telling them. But, recently, I’ve noticed that my strongest reader gives up when I say, “let’s find out”. She doesn’t want to know what that word says if it’s not going to be handed to her. And they certainly aren’t going to try to read a boring book if they can have one read to them.

I don’t like this attitude at all. My kids shouldn’t think that a book is broken because it doesn’t read itself. I know that parents want to get the new, popular toys for their kids, especially if it seems educational, but this one is unconvincing for me. Maybe I’m not doing it right.

When it comes to educational programming, we have DVDs of Signing Time and Sid the Science Kid. We watch Wild Kratts, and Nova. But it’s easy for me to watch with them (or watch over the bar while I’m cooking) at least enough to be able to talk about it and make sure they’re learning something. Maybe that’s the key for these reading pens, too. Maybe they need assistance and supervision and I shouldn’t have just given them the books and the pens to play with at their own leisure. But I did, and now I’m thinking I need to pack them up and remind my kids that books that don’t read themselves to you are wonderful.

Dinosaurs - Week 1

Our first week of homeschooling was a success. The girls are very interested in their lessons, and always asking to do a worksheet from their folders. As a pleasant addition, I’m finding that spending constructive time with them on lessons is making all of us more agreeable, and keeping track of their work and time spent learning has made me feel much more productive at home.

C is very focused and can work on the same task for half an hour at a time with no trouble (much more if it’s coloring or painting). She shocked me with her vocabulary of sight words on Tuesday, when we read Bob Books before bed.

S is a little more chaotic, though not at all abnormal for her age. She can focus for 10 to 15 minutes at a time on things that frustrate her, like math worksheets. She’s hit or miss as far as whether or not she wants to color for more than 15 minutes at a time, but if I’m verbally explaining something she’s interested in, she’ll listen for almost an hour. She even remembers what I say, in pieces. Her sight words vocabulary is only just beginning, but she can sound out everything with impressive accuracy.

This week, we covered some reading and writing and quite a bit of math. We did some form of art every day, and covered science topics such as how a compass works, how babies are born, and dinosaurs. If you read my previous post, you know we also watched some of President Clinton’s DNC speech and discussed government.

On Saturday, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and checked out the dinosaurs as a field trip. Sunday, we made “fossils” with clay.

All in all, though, we only averaged a little less than 3 hours of recordable education per day. Colorado requires that we average 4, once we start reporting our progress next year. Does this get easier?

It’s not that educating my kids is hard. I’m really enjoying that, actually. I’m just not sure where I’m going to pull more hours from. Maybe when they say “instructional contact hours”, they mean something less restrictive than I’m assuming. After all, public schools get to include lunch and recess. 

Government Overload

Day 3 of our first year of lessons just happened to be day 2 of the Democratic National Convention. Just to get this out of the way, I wouldn’t say I’m an Obama supporter, but I would say I’m not a Romney supporter. So I was watching a video of President Clinton’s DNC speech on my laptop at the dining room table.

Watching Youtube in my house, by the way, is like emptying a jar of honey a few inches from an ant hill. Even if they have no idea what the video is about; even if the subject is way beyond their understanding, they come running. Only recently did they figure out how to tell the difference, from audio alone, between things I’m watching deliberately, and ads.

This video of President Clinton’s speech was about 50 minutes long. It took us a whole hour to watch the half of the thing (about 26 minutes of video). This is not taking into account breaks for lunch and nap time. I think I spent about as much time pausing and explaining what he was saying as we spent actually watching the video.

There’s only so much I can explain to a five-year-old whose deepest knowledge of the government up to this point was that we have a president. But President Clinton is a good, plain speaker who makes it possible for my kids to understand what he is saying well enough that they can form questions about the material. So, that was a good start.

We talked about elections and reelections, vice presidents and succession if the president dies, and why we don’t just keep one president forever. They asked about taxes and domestic policies and what the health care problem is. There was, finally, a discussion about party politics, in the sense that we have several, but have historically always elected from one of two. I didn’t try to hard to explain the difference between Democrats and Republicans in the grand scheme, only that Obama is a Democrat and his policies are... and Romney is a Republican and his policies are...

They asked, much to my distaste, what the “big mess” was that Obama was trying to fix. We talked about the debt and unemployment, even though it made me uncomfortable because it was hard to sound neutral.

This is not a good election year for me to pretend neutrality, I must say.

There were other, less political questions: Have any girls been president? Could you (referring to me) be president? What would happen to us (referring to themselves) if you were president?

Free Field Trip

My kids like to go grocery shopping because the store down the street has penny pony rides. Conveniently, they happen to have three mechanical horses by the checkout. The kids love to remind us to bring pennies if we’re going to the pony store. Last weekend (labor day weekend), though, the pony store was particularly interesting.

Some representative fire rescue men were setting up their trucks at the entrance, about to collect donations for muscular dystrophy in their boots.

My girls are not huge fire truck enthusiasts like some kids I know, but they are curious and interested, so we stopped to have a look. They see these things on the road fairly often, and I’ve talked to them about what they do. I know they must have wondered what they’re like on the inside. One of the back doors of the fire rescue vehicle (basically a red ambulance) was open, so I encouraged them to have a look, “but don’t touch”. Then, the man who was trying to put up the banner for their cause came around the corner and asked if they wanted to see inside.

All in all, they got to wander around inside the rescue vehicle, check out the inside of the fire truck, and even hold a fire hose. And all of the gentlemen were very friendly. One of them even told me if we ever wanted to stop by the station, someone would probably be able to give the kids a look around.

I had thought about taking them to the station some time as a field trip. A few people have suggested that, if they’re not busy, rescue teams will usually show a kid around and answer questions without a second thought. That seems to be the truth.

And once the kids were done taking turns with the fire hose, they got a call and had to load up and leave, lights, sirens and all. It was quite exciting.

Of course, we donated. Because we care, and because these men were admirable to a t.

What a nice day that was.

(Not) Back to School

 

It's the beginning of the week, and we're just getting started. I have no idea how this will go or what we'll accomplish this week. I don't even know what to expect or plan.

Labor Day was fun. We had two picnics (one for lunch and one for dinner) at two different parks the girls had never been to. Denver has an incredible number of parks, really. Sunday, they made brownies, with my guidance, and we had those for dessert on Monday. We brought flashlights and stayed out late at the second park. Inexplicably, there were huge fireworks we could see from the park, also. This morning, everyone was still asleep when I opened their door to announce breakfast at 8.

Today, we start lessons, but they’ve been learning every day of their lives. Yesterday, we gave them their first lesson on the cardinal directions and how to use a compass, which I didn’t learn until fifth grade (is that even normal?)

I’ve been telling them, “On Tuesday, we start lessons” or, “next week, we’ll start lessons” because I didn’t want to confuse them with the word “school”. Last night, my partner used the ‘S’ word and got just the response I figured I would get, “AT school?!”

My five-year-olds were excited to go to school. Six months ago I wasn’t planning on homeschooling them, so they’ve always assumed they would go to school with other kids when they were old enough. They only recently learned otherwise, and what homeschooling would mean. Of course, we’re looking into sports teams, community center art classes, and other group activities so they can still get the parent-free, mingle-with-other-kids time they were so thrilled about. Besides, they’re very excited about learning at home.

Today, I think we’ll try to get in some math, reading, and writing. Of course, we’ll see what they’re capable of, right out of the gate and I’ll teach them whatever they want to know about. Between me and the oracle of the internet, we know everything.
 

Fall Leaf Sun Catcher Project

 

Each season I like to do a project with my kids that I can hang up all season long. For Spring, I cut pieces of construction paper to look like parts of flowers (stem, leaf, petal, and to keep it simple, just a circle piece for the center) and let them make flowers, or not. The results were interesting.

C made flowers... basically as many as she could fit on her paper. S made an interesting abstract array of pieces that still looked fairly well thought out. M mostly got practice using a paintbrush to apply diluted glue to pieces of paper, so hers was a bit of a mess. They’ve hung on the freezer door ever since, because I find them so interesting.

In the summer, we painted bird houses. But now it’s fall and it’s time for something different. We made fall leaf sun catchers, and it was fun for my five-year-olds and easy enough that my two-year-old could make one of her own.

Things you need:

crayon shavings (sharpen some crayons to get nice, thin shavings)
waxed paper
black construction paper
leaf shape template (we used this one)
glue
scissors
iron (additionally, ironing board and towel)

How we did it:

1. Pick out colors - We let the kids help us choose colors for the leaves, after we talked about what happens to leaves in the fall. We tried to guide them toward picking colors that leaves might actually be by showing them pictures, since autumn colors haven’t really begun to show here. They chose brown, purple, red, orange, and yellow.

I got out five pinch bowls and let them help me choose three crayons from each color group to gather shavings from. These color-picking steps were fun and educational for my two-year-old as I don’t think she thinks much about how many different shades of purple there are.

2. Sharpen crayons - For this, we sent the kids to play. After letting them pick three of each color, we stuck ourselves with 15 crayons to sharpen, dropping the shavings into color-separate bowls. But we had time, and this is easily accomplished with two sets of grown-up hands and some conversation.

3. Print and cut a leaf template - This can be your first step if you want. I’m glad I did it after the crayon sharpening because cutting the leaf shape out with my x-acto knife made the pad of my thumb hurt a bit.

I used scissors to cut a square around the leaf template, with a bit of space between each point of the leaf and the edge of the paper. Then, using that square as a guide, I cut similar squares from black construction paper and waxed paper.

You will need two squares of construction paper, and two sheets of waxed paper, for every leaf.

Next, I used my X-acto knife to cut the leaf shape out of the center of the construction paper. Only cut the leaf shape out of the construction paper, not the waxed paper. You can use scissors, but I suggest using a simpler leaf shape than the one I provided if that is your plan. I started out thinking I was going to use scissors on my maple leaf with all of it’s wiggly lines. That... did not happen.

Tips - I recommend making your waxed paper squares bigger than your construction paper squares so the melted crayon doesn’t seep out of the edges. You can always trim it later. Also, use a clip of some kind to hold the waxed paper to the template while you cut it. Waxed paper is unruly and annoying in certain ways.

4. Scatter the colors - We brought the kids back for this, and did it on the ironing board, so we wouldn’t have to move it after they had arranged their colors. They sat on dining chair and scattered the colors they chose onto one piece of flat waxed paper, and spread them out how they wanted.

Tips - Don’t let one area get too thick with crayon shavings or it will take a long time to melt. Use the construction paper leaf cut-out as a guide to show your kids where the crayons shaving should be on the waxed paper, so they don’t end up disappointed that you can’t see all the yellow they put in the far corners.

Remember - Two waxed papers

5. Sandwich and iron - This is grown-ups only. We let the kids watch, but at the other end of the ironing board. We placed the second square of waxed paper on top of the crayon shavings (now we have crayon shavings between two squares of waxed paper. If you don’t... redo step 4). Then, we carefully draped a hand towel that we didn’t particularly care about (incase it got wax on it) over the top, and ironed it.

We had our iron on a very low setting at first, but getting to warm the wax all the way through the towel was a bit of a chore. Turning it up to about a medium setting seemed to be just right. Test what works for you. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to melt all of the wax nicely.

6. Apply construction paper - Once the wax had dried back to a solid state (within a few minutes), we lined up the construction paper leaf cut-outs on either side of the wax paper by holding it up to the light to be sure we got them straight. Then I used clothespins to hold all of the pieces together in that position while I glued them.

You might be able to let your kids do this, but I wasn’t confident in my kids’ ability to be conservative with the glue. I dried them between books for the first few hours to make sure the paper didn’t ripple too much, so avoiding glue spills was important.

7. Trim - Once they were dry (or at least mostly dry), we trimmed the edges to make nice squares with no waxed paper showing. This is also something kids could do, with appropriate scissors of course, but mine are a bit crazy with the scissors and go overboard with excitement. So, grown-ups did this.



This project really didn’t take very long, and clean up was so easy. All of the mess (what little there was) was dry. Crayon shavings and paper trimmings were an easy fix. Then I just had to put the iron and ironing board away and toss the towel in the laundry. No messy kids, no glitter, no weird substances of questionable origin.