Garden Fresh

We have been busy making goodies from the garden fresh produce given to us by family and friends, or from what we find at the farmers' markets. Today we made salsa and blueberry jam.

We used Vidalia onions, a peach, and some chili peppers in the salsa. Something is missing...I think I'm going to try adding some more of the peppers tomorrow. But it's not bad.

The girls loved making the jam, and the taste test was great, too!

The extra will go in the freezer...but they may not stay there long!

Other things this month...

Uploading pictures off my camera for the month and have some more I'll share...

Earlier this month the girls took out the shells they collected from the creek in May, as well as shells they collected from Virginia Beach, VA and York Beach and Wells Beach in Maine. They were grouping them, touching them, drawing them, smelling them, listening to them, learning about them.

Georgia, feeling inspired by the movie Imagine That, wanted to know what scones were. We looked up some recipes and realized we had ingredients to make cranberry scones.

Olivia wanted to know who the Queen of England was...also inspired by Imagine That. (same scene as scones...the girls love that scene!)

Georgia went to the Creative Kids Club at the library where they made a tambourine out of paper, paper clips, and bottle caps.

Olivia had her first visit with the dentist.

And added some pictures to her alphabet book. She loves cutting out pictures, words, and letters from magazines and uses them in her alphabet book, or in collages.

Pan starts with a P.

The girls are also participating in the summer reading program at the library, have played soccer, captured bugs, fed the daring jumping spider they captured, watched it make a nest and later found lots of itty bitty spider babies.

Woodland Survival Camp (updated)

This week Georgia is attending the Woodland Survival camp at our local nature center. She is loving it! They have built shelters, fires, collected water, cooked with a fire, demonstrated first aid, practiced using compasses, and had a blast! On Friday they will have a special demonstation for the parents and we will be able to tour their woodland survival camp. I'll be sure to bring the camera and take some photos to share.

UPDATE: Georgia ate a roasted mealworm! And then they ground the rest up to bake in cookies!! She said the mealworm tasted like peanutbutter. Hmmm, mealworm and jelly sandwich anyone?

Georgia also practiced using a bow and arrow, shooting it at targets.

The camp staff made a disk of pictures they took througout the week to give to the parents, but we were near the end of the line and they ended up running out of disks. Some folks at the front were taking more than one. So we will recieve pictures taken throughout camp in a couple weeks, when we go back to pick up some tincture she made. They used jewelweed to make an herbal tincture for topical application which can be used to relieve mosquito bites, bee and wasp stings, warts, bruises, fungal skin infections, nettle stings, minor burns, cuts, eczema, acne, sores, and poison ivy rash.

So, if you are ever to be stranded in a remote and deserted area...take Georgia with you!!

Here are some pictures of Georgia showing us the shelters on Friday...

Georgia's Team's Shelter

The other team's shelter

The girls with the Long Hunter at his camp

Let's Get Cookin'

Some of the creations we have made the past couple weeks...

Hot Dog Spaghetti

We got the idea for this from here, which we heard about from some fellow unschoolers. The girls quartered some hot dogs and inserted dried spaghetti into them. They got pretty creative with this and we ended up with some alien-octopus-human results.

After the spaghetti and hot dogs were boiled, this is what they looked like.

Next time, we'll break the spaghetti in half as it will probably be easier to cook and eat!

Marshmallow Connectors

Olivia used mini colored marshmallows and toothpicks to build some 3-D shapes, buildings, and creatures. (she ate them afterwards, too!)

Juice Popsicles

The girls can't get enough popsicles! And with them running around outside, and with the temperatures rising, I encourage it since it helps keep them hydrated. But we got to thinking about how many popsicles they go through, and all the packaging that is thrown away with each individually wrapped popsicle, as well as the box they come in, not to mention the costs of transportation involved in delivering the pops to the store. We decided we could make them ourselves. This would reduce energy costs, as well as give us more control in what we put into the popsicles as far as nutrition is concerned. So we have been experimenting. We have made popsicles from juice and pudding (fudgcicles). We want to try layering different flavors creating our own type of "bomb pop" some time.

What we found works good for us are the small bathroom cups, and our own collection of popsicle sticks that we saved. We put the cups on an old baking sheet and fill them 3/4 full. After about an hour in the freezer we insert the popsicle sticks. After another hour or so we put all the frozen cups in a gallon freezer bag. Everything can be washed and used again.

KitchenAid Visit

We visited Gramma at KichenAid and checked out the posters with the girls' pictures on them. They were used as a part of a Mother's Day promotion at the store.

Georgia in front of her poster, it is a picture of her making her famous pancakes...

Olivia in front of hers, and a close-up of her poster. Olivia is making zucchini bread in the picture.

And Dad tries to steal the pie that is on another poster...

Rainy Day Cupcakes

On one of the rainy days we've had recently, the girls wanted to make some cupcakes. They both measured and mixed to create the batter. Olivia likes to crack the eggs, and Georgia likes to read the directions and mix it all together.

They frosted and decorated....and then taste-tested!

Dyeing Eggs, Latvian-Style

We attended a workshop on how to dye eggs using the Latvian method of using onion skins and other natural objects to decorate and dye the eggs.

Click here to read our post from two years ago when we attended this same event.

The first thing we did was to take a square piece of fabric and put a small pile of dried onion skins on top. We used yellow onion skins. The next step was to decorate the eggs using flowers, leaves, herbs, anything we wanted. We wet the egg to make the items stay in place.

Next we put some more onion skins on top of the egg and gathered the material to enclose the egg. We then tied string around it several times to keep everything closed up and in place.

Mark used a fine netting fabric for his. He did not surround it with onion skins, but instead, the egg would pick up the color from other eggs while they boiled.

After the eggs boiled in their cloth and onion blankets, they were cooled in ice water, unwrapped, rinsed, dried...and voila!

The girls also made and decorated some paper baskets.