Author: Wendy

Around the World: Moroccan Rice Pilaf (Recipe)

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Good morning, everyone! I have a super simple recipe for you today – even easier than the Bulgogi from Monday, if that’s even possible.

I don’t know for absolutely certain that this is an authentic Moroccan dish, but I recall years and years ago reading a recipe somewhere that was something very similar to this that claimed to be Moroccan, so it’s close enough! And good golly, this is amazingly delicious! Even Munchkin, who is my pickiest eater BY FAR, had seconds of this dish, so you know it’s good!

Morroccan rice pilafIngredients:

1 box Rice-a-Roni Rice Pilaf flavor (or your favorite from-scratch rice pilaf) – for our family, I need one of the double size boxes or two regular size ones

1 pound ground beef

2 cans garbanzo beans (also known as chickpeas)

a sprinkle of cumin

Directions:

Brown the ground beef and drain the fat off (use a colander). Leave the beef in the colander while you cook the rice according to the package directions in the same skillet. When it’s time to add the seasoning packet and water, add the beef back in, as well as the beans and cumin. Cover and cook on low for 15-20 minutes. The exact amount of time you need will depend on how much rice you’ve cooked.

I love this meal because it practically cooks itself once the beef and rice are browned. 7-10 minutes of hands on time, 20 minutes of hands off. Perfect for busy moms!

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. As always, make sure to visit these other great blog series this week!

Ellen @ Grace Tells Another Story ~ Making Homeschooling Fun!
Marcy @ Ben and Me ~ Helping Children in Uganda
Melanie @ FinchNWren ~ Finchnwren’s Fabulous Family Movies
Sarah  @ Delivering Grace ~  learning about England
Victoria @ Homemaking with Heart ~  Connecting with the Creator through Nature Study
Joanie @ Simple Living Mama ~ 5 Days of Charlotte Mason Preschool
Gwen @ Tolivers to Texas ~ A Happy, Peaceful Home
Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses ~ Homeschooling 4 FREE resources

April Blog Hop

Around the World: Jamaican Jerk Chicken (Recipe)

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Hello again! I hope you enjoyed the recipe for Bulgogi yesterday. Before I dive into today’s recipe, allow me to explain what’s going on this week here on the blog. I should’ve done that yesterday, but I forgot.

This is a five-day series, called a “blog hop,” and the full title of my series is Around the World in Five Evenings: A Week of International Meals. That’s just too long to include in the title of every post. I’ll be exploring cuisines from Asia, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. I only wish there were more than five days! Maybe I’ll have to make this a recurring feature; I do love international meals. Because cooking is its own kind of simplicity, I won’t be doing an official Simplicity post this week.

Now that that’s out of the way, I bring you Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Enjoy.

I have another one of my very favorite dishes for you today: Jamaican Jerk chicken with Caribbean Rice and Peas.

This recipe was shared with me by a dear friend, and a friend of hers actually invented this particular version. He was kind enough to grant me permission to share it here with you today.

jamaicaJerk Chicken:

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or however many you need to feed your family – just adjust the amount of sauce you make accordingly)

2 teaspoons, up to 2 tablespoons, Jamaican Jerk seasoning, depending on how hot you like it. 2 teaspoons is a nice flavor without scorching your mouth, and it just gets hotter from there.

1 tablespoon each soy sauce, honey, and vegetable oil

3 tablespoons tomato ketchup

Mix everything except the chicken in a small bowl. Start with a small amount of Jerk seasoning and add more until you get a flavor you like. If you accidentally add too much, you can cut the spice with extra honey and/or ketchup.

Cut slits in the chicken breasts. Spoon half of the sauce over the chicken, making sure to get it into the slits you cut.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes. Spoon the rest of the sauce over the chicken and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.

Don’t try to cut corners by putting all the sauce on in the beginning. I did that once, and the flavor was definitely not as good as if you double sauce on your meat all at once.

Caribbean Rice and Peas:

1 cup rice (just regular old, long grain white rice will do, but brown is yummy in this as well – adjust the cooking time if you use brown rice)

1 (14-15 oz) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/4 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 2 teaspoons fresh)

1 cup each chicken broth and coconut milk

In a bit of oil, saute the onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Add in the rice, thyme, and chili powder and stir to combine and coat in oil. Add coconut milk and chicken broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cover. Let simmer, covered, for 15 minutes (do NOT remove the lid during this time). After 15 minutes, remove the lid, stir in the kidney beans, and re-cover. Cook for five more minutes until the beans are heated through, the liquid is absorbed, and the rice is thoroughly cooked.

There are lots of ways you can vary this dish. First off, you can use a fresh pepper instead of chili powder. If you do that, you want to chop it finely and cook it with the onion and garlic. Use whatever spiciness of a pepper you like.

Second, you can use whatever beans you have on hand. Any of them will work beautifully in this dish.

Third, you can add in half a cup of UNsweetened grated coconut or creamed coconut. If you do this, use two full cups of chicken broth and no coconut milk.

Enjoy!

Wendy

P.S. Don’t forget to check out all these other great blogs this week!

Ellen @ Grace Tells Another Story ~ Making Homeschooling Fun!
Marcy @ Ben and Me ~ Helping Children in Uganda
Melanie @ FinchNWren ~ Finchnwren’s Fabulous Family Movies
Sarah  @ Delivering Grace ~  learning about England
Victoria @ Homemaking with Heart ~  Connecting with the Creator through Nature Study
Joanie @ Simple Living Mama ~ 5 Days of Charlotte Mason Preschool
Gwen @ Tolivers to Texas ~ A Happy, Peaceful Home
Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses ~ Homeschooling 4 FREE resources

 

April Blog Hop

Around the World: Korean Bulgogi Beef (Recipe)

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Good morning everyone! I have a super yummy recipe to share with you today. It comes from Korea and is called Bulgogi Beef.

First I want to share a little bit about the origin of the meal with you. Literally translated, it means “fire meat,” and this dish was named #23 on CNN’s “World’s Most Delicious Dishes” list in 2011. It was first described to Will and me as “Korean BBQ” by a local restaurant owner in our hometown who happens to be … wait for it … Korean! We’ve been eating this meal in his restaurant for years, and I only recently learned how to make it at home. I’m excited to share my version of this delicious meal with you today.

bulgogi finalLoosely based on the recipe found on One Good Thing by Jillee.

What you’ll need: 

Beef. Whatever you normally use for stir fry is perfect.

Vegetables. Again, your favorite stir fry veggies.

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar

Optional: Corn starch mixed with water

Cooked rice – enough for your family

What to do:

Cook your beef using your favorite stir fry method. Add your vegetables and cook until tender. Stir in the brown sugar and soy sauce until it all melts together and starts to coat your foods. If you find the sauce is too runny (mine almost always is), mix in some cornstarch that you’ve dissolved in water. Heat to boiling, stir until the sauce is thickened – PAY ATTENTION TO IT! – and promptly remove from the heat.

Serve over rice.

Alternately, serve in toasted hoagie rolls with a side of fries. That’s one of the lunch options at the Korean restaurant, and it’s equally delicious.

That’s it. It really couldn’t get any easier … Perfect for a Monday night, wouldn’t you say? 😉

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. This series is part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew’s Spring Blog Hop. Lots of other bloggers are sharing a five-day series on topics near and dear to their hearts. Here are just a few that I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check out:

Ellen @ Grace Tells Another Story ~ Making Homeschooling Fun!
Marcy @ Ben and Me ~ Helping Children in Uganda
Melanie @ FinchNWren ~ Finchnwren’s Fabulous Family Movies
Sarah  @ Delivering Grace ~  learning about England
Victoria @ Homemaking with Heart ~  Connecting with the Creator through Nature Study
Joanie @ Simple Living Mama ~ 5 Days of Charlotte Mason Preschool
Gwen @ Tolivers to Texas ~ A Happy, Peaceful Home
Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses ~ Homeschooling 4 FREE resources

In addition to these eight, there are nearly a hundred others doing various series. If you’re interested in those, the following banner will take you to the master list 🙂

April Blog Hop

Simplicity: Meal Planning

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simplicity

 

Wanna know a secret? I suck at meal planning. I’ve never been awesome at it, but I used to be better than I am now. About two years ago, we (Will and I) devised a system in which I would grocery shop each day for that day’s food – kind of like the European model. (What I know of the European model, anyway. I’ve never been to Europe, so my knowledge is limited to what I learned in high school French class.) We decided to take this “route” because at the time, we lived in a small town. Really small. As in no street lights and the only “grocery store” (and I use that term very loosely) carried almost nothing fresh (a few bananas and moldy peaches/strawberries/bell peppers was the extent of the produce department) and charged double what a regular store would for the packaged stuff. The other option in town was a mini-mart whose owners bought their stock from Wal-Mart and marked them up from the already-retail price. So we decided, that as a way for me to make sure to get out of the apartment each day, I should take the car to the bigger town seven miles away and get groceries from a real store.

Since we moved to a bigger town half an hour away in December 2012 (the one I grew up in, actually), we’ve kept up with the daily shopping, just because it was we’d grown accustomed to. But now, I’m starting to feel like it’s becoming cumbersome. I want to spend my time hanging out with my boys, teaching them, playing with them. Not grocery shopping.

Which is going to require a fundamental change in the way I think about our food.

But change is good, right? 🙂

So here’s my plan. I’m going to make a weekly meal plan (inspired by this one from Confessions of a Homeschooler) and buy everything we need for the whole week (possibly excluding highly perishable produce – some things really are better to buy more frequently… although I might just buy that stuff too, and chop it all up and freeze it until it’s needed… we’ll see). The meal plan will include Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, and Dinner. For every single day. (My kids will be happy about the “snack” part – we never have snacks on hand.) I will then turn that meal plan into a grocery list, and on Tuesdays, I will go to the grocery store, just me (and probably Small Fry most weeks). Why Tuesdays? I thought about this a lot, and that’s the day that’s going to work best. Will typically works out of the house on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week (it can vary week to week, but that’s the schedule I can count on). Sundays are a Sabbath, so no shopping then. Mondays … well, I could shop on Mondays, but this week, Wednesday worked best (he’s working from home all this week), and I didn’t want my shopping trips to be only five days apart this time.

So there you go.

How do you keep mealtime/grocery shopping simple? Help a girl out and share your tips!

Blessings,

Wendy

Wednesday Chat #3

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chatsonthefarmhouseporch

 

My dear friends! Hello! It’s Wednesday, and that means time for another Wednesday Chat. As always, this is inspired by Everyday Ruralty, who provides wonderful questions to answer. Welcome to my porch.

What’s your favorite method to travel?

In a past life, I would have said “airplane,” hands down. But I haven’t been on a plane since I was 16 (!). The last time was on a trip to Florida with a school group when I was in 11th grade.

The only way I really travel at all anymore is by foot, bike, or car. I don’t particularly love any of those ways, but if I had to pick one … well, I can’t. So there you go.

If you wear jewelry, are you more likely to wear silver or gold?

Silver. No question. I have a few gold items of jewelry, but not many, and the one item I wear every day (my wedding ring) is silver. Well, white gold. But silver in color.

How often do you wear sunglasses?

Nearly every time I’m in the car, regardless of season – the sky is bright, not just the sun! But I have huge “old lady” sunglasses because they have to fit over my regular glasses. They were a gift from my step-mother-in-law.

Which would be easier for you to leave undone (for a short period of time) – dishes or laundry?

I can’t leave either undone for very long seeing as how we don’t have many of either. But if we had loads of dishes and loads of clothes, so that running out was never an issue, probably laundry. I really hate putting it away. Plus dishes will get stinky if you leave them undone. So yeah, laundry.

On a scale of 1-10 (1=hardly any, 10=house if full), how much clutter have you collected?

By most people’s standards, probably 1. But if you’re asking my opinion, 2 or 3. Our house isn’t so bad, but there are some things in the garage to donate away. Very little of what’s in the house is “clutter” per se. We use pretty much all of it pretty regularly, and there’s not much that doesn’t have a home. Our biggest vice is paper and books, thanks to the homeschooling. But those are pretty easy to take care of :).

As always, thank you for joining me on this beautiful April morning (or afternoon, or evening … whenever you’re reading this!). I’d love to hear your answer to one or more of these questions!

Blessings,

Wendy

Where in the World…?

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Poppins Book Nook Image

Clip art by Melon Headz

 

Welcome to my very first Poppins Book Nook post! I’m really excited to be a part of this virtual book club for kids. My boys, especially Munchkin, really love participating in book club at the public library, so when I heard about the Poppins Book Nook, I knew it was something I wanted to participate in this year.

The theme for this month is, as my post title suggests, Where in the World…? When I heard the theme, the only book I wanted to explore for it was Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. I’d never read it, I know my kids had never read/heard it, and it fit the theme to a T.

The story, in case you’re not familiar, is that of Mr. Phileas Fogg, and his crazy wager that he can travel around the world in only 80 days. Keep in mind, this is before the days of cars and airplanes. He has virtually no control over whether he can make the journey or not, and he almost ends up with fatal delays on numerous occasions. The supporting cast of characters include Mr. Fogg’s servant, Jean Passepartout, a Frenchman who enters Mr. Fogg’s employ the very day that Fogg makes the wager. This is funny because Passepartout “applied” to Mr. Fogg because of his reputation as a very regimented, anti-risk-taking man. So imagine Passepartout’s surprise when his master arrives home after his very first day on the job and announces that they’ll be leaving in less than an hour for a trip literally around the world!

Then you have Detective Fix, who is convinced Fogg is a bank robber, and spends the entire book chasing him from country to country, continent to continent, just waiting for his arrest warrant to arrive from London. The supporting cast is rounded out by Princess Aouda, the Indian Princess that Fogg and company save from becoming a human sacrifice in a religious ceremony.

We haven’t technically finished the book yet (I’m reading it aloud to the boys), but it’s on my agenda for this week. Once we do, I’m planning to rent the movie from Amazon instant video for us to watch (the old one with David Nivens, not the new Jackie Chan version – I showed the previews of both to the kids, and they want to see the old one), and then after that we’ll get on Google Earth and look at the different places our heroes traveled. We’re also going to look at a map and route their journey. Should be great fun!

The Poppins Book Nook can be found on Enchanted Homeschooling Mom’s blog, and it has its own Facebook and Pinterest pages. Check them out!

Also, lots of other Homeschooling Mamas are doing the Poppins Book Nook this year. Check out what everyone else did with this theme!

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God’s Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Faith and Good Works ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy’s Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy’s Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ The Kennedy Adventures ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Simplicity Breeds Happiness ~ Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom’s Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A “Peace” of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids ~ Simple Living Mama

And in case you’re interested, here’s the schedule for the rest of the year:

Poppins Book Nook Themes 2014 - 2015

Any ideas for books with April’s theme of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” would be happily received! I’m looking for books that would probably be considered “classics” by most people’s standards, but it’s not a requirement. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Blessings,

Wendy

P.S. The Simplicity post will be on Thursday this week. Thanks for understanding!

Homeschool Curriculum Review: Spelling You See

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I have one child who is a naturally good speller (like my husband and me), and one who definitely is not. When I heard that Demme Learning, the company that gave Math-U-See to the homeschool world, was introducing a spelling curriculum, Spelling You See, I knew I needed to try to get on this review for Seahawk’s sake. Writing and creating are very important to our family, and his poor spelling skills were really hindering him in some major ways. It was to the point of being difficult to read some of his original writings because he spelled 100% phonetically. That’s okay for some words, but as a general rule in English, you can’t rely on phonetics to get you by.

There are 5 levels of Spelling You See curriculum (each assigned a letter), and we got the fourth level up, Spelling You See: Americana (Level D). The levels are assigned mostly based on your child’s age, but reading level is taken into account a little bit, too. You can start Level A with really little kids; as soon as they start to learn that “letters make sounds and sounds make words,” they’re ready for Spelling You See. The higher levels of the program are designed specifically for elementary-age kids, but can also be used as reinforcement for students who need remedial work. That said, the program is not based primarily on your child’s grade level; rather, you work with them, and as they master the concepts from one level, you can then move them up as you, the parent and educator, see fit. There are guidelines given by the company to help you establish on which level to start your student, and then you can move them on from there.

In Americana, your child is given a paragraph to work with. They work through the same paragraph – which are little snippets of American history – every day for five days. There are different “chunks” your child is assigned to find within the paragraph, and each kind of chunk is given its own color. Vowel chunks (any two vowels in a row, as well as a vowel followed by a Y or a W) are colored in yellow. Consonant chunks (any two consonants that work together to make one sound – th or ch for example) are blue. “Bossy R” chunks (a vowel followed by an R, because that R changes the sound the vowel makes) are purple. You get the idea. The idea is to teach the child that certain letter combinations make certain sounds, and that when they hear those sounds – in their heads as they’re writing or verbally during a spelling activity – they can assign the correct letter combination to the sound.

Spelling You See chunks

A properly “chunked” passage

After the child has found all the chunks for the day (which chunks they’re supposed to find vary based on the lesson; during the first two weeks of a specific kind of chunk, it’s just it on its own, and then after that, they start combining them into the same lesson), they move onto copywork. The first three lessons, the child is expected to copy down the passage, limiting the time spent to 10 minutes. No more. The idea is to help your child be a better speller without making them hate the experience of learning how. The last two days of the week, you read the paragraph to the child, a little bit at a time, and have them write down the words. This is dictation in lieu of the copywork; they’ve had three days to get familiar with the words, so then they’re going to see how many they can spell correctly. On day 4, they’re allowed to ask for help, but day 5 is kind of the equivalent of the “end of the week spelling test” (but don’t ever really call it that!) and they’re supposed to just try to write the words on their own as you read them. I think the best part of the dictation on Day 5 (Lesson “E” each week) is that the workbook has a place to record how many words your student spelled right. Not wrong, not a percentage, not “this many out of this many.” How many they got right. We found that to be a huge encouragement for Seahawk. He was thrilled when after the very first week he was spelling so many words correctly.

Spelling You See dictation

Dictation work for Lesson 5E. The arrow at the bottom emphasizes the idea of correct words.

Spelling You See: Level D: Americana is in the form of a Teacher’s Manual for you ($14) and a pair of workbooks for your child ($30 for both). (Pricing varies from level to level.) Each student workbook has 18 five-day lessons, so one set of the books will get you all the way through the 36-week school year. All the books are softcover, and the student workbooks have perforated pages in case you want to tear them out for whatever reason (I didn’t). The student books are perfect bound, while the teacher manual is saddle-stitched (stapled).

Spelling You See products

Spelling You See: Americana (Level D) Products: 2 student workbooks, one teacher manual, and a pack of erasable colored pencils for chunking.

The program is designed to be used five days a week, and that’s exactly what we did with Seahawk. He needed this program so badly, that even on the days we didn’t do a full day of school, I still was really strict with him on getting his Spelling You See done.

And you know what?

It works.

This program really, truly works. I could tell after the very first week that it was working, and now that we’ve been using it for seven weeks, the difference in his spelling is drastic. Spelling was one of the hardest things to get him to care about; he’d pretty much just accepted the fact that he was a “bad speller.” But not anymore. He’s got the confidence to write more. He doesn’t ask for help with spelling as much anymore – and not because he’s given up. Because he’s spelling the words correctly! His spelling in the other subjects is slowly starting to improve as well. It’s not quite as strong as his spelling with the Americana paragraphs, but to a certain extent, that’s to be expected. He is, after all, writing the same paragraph five times a week.

He’s still got a long way to go, but with this program, he’s well on his way. And I definitely hope to buy Level E: American Spirit for him when he finishes up Americana. What better praise is that?

Blessings,

Wendy

You can connect with Spelling You See on Facebook and Twitter if you’re so inclined 🙂

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Wednesday Chat #2

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chatsonthefarmhouseporch

 

Hello, Friends!

Here I am with another round of chat questions from Everyday Ruralty. Enjoy.

What is your favorite room of your house or apartment?

I’ve got to say the master bedroom. Until we painted it, it was probably my least favorite room. It used to be “apartment cream” whereas the rest of the rooms were beautifully colored. Now it’s a gorgeous shade similar to red wine. I just love going in to bed each night.

Second place would have to be my craft room. That’s where I do all my sewing and most of the homeschool prep.

What’s your favorite topping for pancakes or waffles?

Butter and REAL maple syrup. Not Mrs. Butterworth’s or Eggo. The real stuff. Which I’d never had until six months ago. But now I’ll never go back.

Second place would be fresh strawberries, sliced and mixed with just a little sugar to draw out their juices.

Do you like dried fruit?

I like craisins (sweetened dried cranberries). Stupid name, delicious fruit.

As soon as we have spring weather, I’m going to . . .

. . . make a point to go for a walk every day. Hopefully I can actually lose some weight this summer. I’ve failed miserably every time I’ve tried, but here’s hoping.

Tell me a memory from your childhood.

I’m trying to think of one that doesn’t humiliate my brother . . . Ha!

Okay, here’s one. When I was in third grade, my teacher had a “reading loft.” It was like one of those things you get for your cat to climb on, but big enough for people – well, kids. Each week, a set of five kids got to go in the underside of the loft, and another set got to go in the top of the loft, for SSR (sustained silent reading – do they still do that in public school?). Whichever group was in the bottom this week was in the top next week, and if it was your turn in the top this week, you’d be at your desk for a few weeks after that. The loft was loaded up with pillows and such, and was the BEST place to read!

childcare_reading_loft

The reading loft looked very similar to this one, except it was carpeted in white on the upper level.

Now it’s your turn. Do me a favor and answer one (or more) of these questions in the comments.

Blessings,

Wendy

 

Simplicity: One Base Baseball

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simplicity

 

Spring is here! It’s been so sunny and warm here on the west coast the past week or so. (Although I hear it’s supposed to rain starting tomorrow, so don’t be too jealous.) In our family, warmer weather means playing outside. The kids have been doing this all winter long, of course – we have pretty mild winters here – but now it’s not too cold for Mom and Dad to join in! Since our family isn’t huge, we’ve had to make up games to play together; we can’t just start up a game of basketball, for instance. The game I’m going to share with you today is one of those modifications. Will made it up about three years ago, and we’ve played it every year since then.

The game is very simple. All you need is a ball (we use a tee-ball, not a true baseball – it’s a little softer) and two markers to use as “bases.” If you have baseball mitts, they’re a nice addition, but not required.

How to Play

The parents are essentially playing “Catch.” The kids’ goal is to make it from the place where the first parent is to the outer base and back before the ball moves from Parent A to Parent B and back. I realize this sounds a little confusing, so allow me to try to make it clearer using specific examples from our family.

I start with the ball. Munchkin stands next to me, ready to run.

I say, “Ready?”

He replies, “Yes!”

“Go!!”

After the kids have taken 3 or 4 steps, I throw the ball to Will, who is across the field, somewhere near the base. He catches the ball (usually) and throws it back to me. I catch the ball (slightly less often than Will) and touch the base with my foot. If Munchkin has reached the base before I do with the ball, he gets a “run.” If I get there first, he gets an “out.” The children are allowed 3 runs or 3 outs, whichever comes first. Then it’s their brother’s turn.

It’s so simple, and yet so fun. The kids absolutely love this game. It’s become a staple in our summer activity list (along with our Bocce ball set and our Frisbee). I hope you give it try with your little ones!

What’s your favorite spring/summer activity?

Blessings,

Wendy

 

 

Picture of the Week: Walking the Dog

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walking the dog

There’s a lady in our church who brings her dog on Sundays. We were in the Fellowship Hall with Small Fry after church, and Romeo (the dog) was just minding his business, sitting underneath a table.

Well …

A certain little boy couldn’t have that! He found the dog’s leash and promptly started leading him all around the room. And it’s a big room!

Fortunately, the dog’s owner didn’t mind – she insisted I take pictures!

Blessings,

Wendy