Japanese Food & Fun

We focused on the food and paper crafts of Japan this week.  It was a lot of fun and our tummies have thanked us.

Our first Japanese meal was tempura.  This is younger Toad
helping with our dipping sauce.  We used 1/4c. mirin, 1/4c. soy sauce, 1 c. of homemade broth (leftover from soup last week), 2 tsp sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt.  It complemented the food perfectly.

I neglected to get a picture of our feast before it was devoured.  The boys are not the best veggie eaters but this was inhaled.  Fried food is popular in every nation!

We watched this video about making tofu.  We took some of these virtual tours of Japanese castles.

We did some kirigami for the first time, Christmas themed given the time of year.  This is a picture of some of my creations.  Everything the boys made was put onto a Christmas card and given away before I could get a picture.

Our next adventure was dinner out at the Japanese steakhouse.  The boys loved watching their dinner light on fire right before their very eyes.

 
After dinner we went to the local botanical garden for their Christmas light display.

 
We wrapped up our week with origami and sushi.  The boys have done origami before, especially paper airplanes, but this was the first time they had done cranes.  Even younger Toad made one with a lot of help.  The larger sized paper really helped.  We ended up with quite a pile of them and I had origami crane mobiles on the mind because of this post from Creative Jewish Mom.

 
Before we started making our sushi, we watched this YouTube video.  I liked it because it's a Japanese chef, speaking in Japanese.

Prepping Rice

Peeling Shrimp

Stuffing Inari

Tuna, carrot, green onion roll

Proud of their work!

Hungry yet?

This will be my last post for this year.  I'm hoping over the holiday break I can complete some exciting changes to the blog.   Look for those in the coming year!  All the Toads wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a festive and safe holiday season!

 Our reading list:

 

I've shared this post: 
All Our Days
Cherrios & Lattes
Glittering Muffins 
Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons
Homegrown Learners 
iHomeshool Network
SunScholars 
Taming the Goblin 
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers 

India Week

We finally are moving on to our next continent, Asia.  Rather behind where I'd like to be, but oh well, we had fun lingering in Oceania.  We did a gentle introduction to Asia last week with the bulk of the work specific to India this week.

We got our passports stamped for our trip (passport how to post here). Asia Passport Stamps

Older Toad did the Montessori pin flag activity for Asia.  You can get the flags as a free download at Montessori Materials here.  They are not the fold over style so you'll have to tape them to the pins which is not very official Montessori but free is great.

We got a new audiobook for the car, Jungle Book.  The boy's like Kipling, we did Rikki Tikki Tavi and the Just So Stories last year so I knew it'd be popular.  I like to make vocabulary builder projects for our audiobooks so I went to the Discovery Education website to use their free custom word search builder.  It's a great tool.  I like theirs because you can copy the word search you made into another program and bump up the font size.


We did the Tiger lapbook that was a really nice freebie from Homeschool Share.  We did not use it, but there's some free printable curriculum to go with the Magic Treehouse, Tigers at Twilight here.





It was Grandma's birthday last week so we used the Locchricio cookbook to make her an Indian feast.  I love Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks and own several of them.  The Locchricio one is a kids cookbook because the directions are more extensive than regular cookbooks but the quality of the recipes is just as good.  The banana, date chutney was really different and yummy.

 

We looked at the materials from the Indian embassy which I did a post about here.

We took a virtual tour and watched some videos about the Taj Mahal here.

We did the regular stuff like math, handwriting and spelling too.

Originally, I'd hoped to study Diwali when it was actually going on but we got behind.  Instead, reading about it provided some good opportunities to compare it to Christmas.  I asked Toad for some similarities and differences and he came up with some good ones.  He also read one of the Cricket publications about Hinduism. I bought a world religions theme pack on sale awhile back.

We've been getting ready for Christmas around here.  We decorated the tree (which is a bamboo palm this year), made some upcycled gift wrap (post here) and wreaths.  The eggnog has been yummy!

Hope you're enjoying the holiday spirit too!


Update 12/15/12

I should have included that the end of the month is the anniversary of Rudyard Kipling's birthday.  He was born December 30th, 1865.  A resource online.

*This post contains affiliate links

I've shared this post:
Educator's Spin on it
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom 
Glittering Muffins
Gricefully Homeschooling
Hammock Tracks 
Happy Whimsical Hearts
Homegrown Learners
iHomeschoolNetwork 
Living Life Intentionally
Living Montessori Now
Look What We Did
Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas 
No Ordinary Blog Hop 
SunScholars 
Teach Beside Me 

Our Latest Audiobook Comes Without Turkish Delight

I signed up for an Audible account in August. 

This was breaking down for me a bit as it felt like it was an out of budget item and I felt like the library really should fulfill our audiobook needs.  I'm a frequent flyer at the library but it wasn't meeting our needs on this one subject.  

At least half of the audiobooks we were getting were damaged and wouldn't play in some way.  That was annoying for all of us to only get half the story.  Also, some of the titles had multiple editions available.  It was really hard to get information about the individual edition such as the performer who did it or overall quality of the performance.  We  got several books that had actors with voices that to me were like nails on a chalkboard.  The boys were fine with it and enjoyed them, but I'm riding in the car too and I figured out I'm pickier than they are.  Which leads in to the last point that I learned.  I need the better 'quality' audiobooks.  Meaning ones that are performed by acknowledged actors and have reviews to see if other people liked that particular edition.

The one that did me in was a lousy Wizard of Oz.  After that I was desperate for one I would like as well as the kids so I got Jim Dale's version of James Herriot's Treasury for Children.  As a kid I loved watching All Creatures Great and Small and it still reminds me of all my years around horses.  It seemed like something I'd enjoy sharing with the kids but the library didn't even have it.  So I signed up for Audible as a trial and got that for my free purchase.  It's a great audiobook.  Jim Dale's the actor.  He did the Harry Potter series and we'd previously enjoyed his version of Around the World in 80 days.  I like to support the audiobooks we listen to with an out of car activity so for this one I shared the beloved (to me)  TV series from the library with them.

We've since downloaded two more offerings.  Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (we just started this).  Both were well done.  I did a post here about our Journey to the Center of the Earth activity that includes a free vocabulary printable.

So far Audible has worked out great.  One downside, which I wish had been disclosed on the website before I signed up, was the need to have Itunes in addition to the Audible software.  Itunes is the only way to burn the books to CD to listen to in our car.  The Audible software will sync with a player fine but that's not how we use the books.  Itunes is free but you have to transfer the files through the programs and it's extra time.

Another downside is even they don't have everything either.  They didn't have Seven Little Australians.  Our library doesn't have it either but it's a fairly well known book in the greater Commonwealth so I was a little surprised it wasn't available online.  I ended up buying an edition used.  They have different versions of Audible for different countries (like Amazon since it's an Amazon owned company).  If you're an international reader of this blog and going to want books closer to home go with your local Audible service.


In honor of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe we made Turkish Delight.   I first looked in the cookbook below, Once Upon a Time in the Kitchen, which is our go to cookbook for literature based cooking but was really surprised to see they didn't have it.  

I've made Turkish Delight once from a Martha Stewart recipe and it was a failure so I didn't choose that one.  Joy of Cooking of course had it, but we FAILED (cue whiny reading voice)!   So now I'm 0 for 2 on Turkish Delight.  Too runny both times.  If anyone has any suggestions of fail safe recipes please comment on them because I'd really like to finally get this right.

Toads unsuccessfully tackle Turkish Delight

 

I've shared this post:
Sun Scholars

* I did not receive any compensation for writing this review.  All opinions expressed are my own.  If you use the Audible link on the left sidebar of my blog to do business with Audible, I will receive a small commission.  Any monies generated by this blog go into more homeschool supplies.

Making Butter

Last week at the History Center, the Toads got to pretend to make butter. Here's the post about that. They had such a fun time, I promised them we'd try the real thing soon. We don't have a butter churn at home but we were still successful. Here's what we did: 

We put one cup of heavy cream into a pint Mason jar.  We let it come up to room temperature.  We added 3 clean marbles.  We put on the lid and shook.  I seem to have a memory of butter taking forever to set up, hence why we added the marbles.  I had a premonition of each kid shaking for 30 seconds and then I'd be stuck having to do the rest until I passed out.  It only took 5 minutes and they did all of it!  They've eaten their butter on pancakes and crackers and they're proud it's something they made.  We saved the whey and that was the liquid in their latest batch of pancakes.

Cooking up U.S History says virtually the same things as I did but they didn't suggest marbles.  It's a great book that many homeschooling moms have recommended to me.  It's getting hard to get, but perhaps your local library has it.

I've shared this post:
733 
Crafty Moms Share
Imagination Tree 
Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons 
Ladybird Ln
Lil Luna
Milk and Cuddles

Vegan with a Vengeance

I just had to do a post about how cool Isa  Moskowitz's cookbooks are.

My husband has a love/hate relationship with tempeh.  There's several things I've made with tempeh that he'll say are the best thing ever and yet if you were to ask him about tempeh he'd say he hates it.

Tonight, he made by special request for me Isa''s Tempeh Mango Sammiches for the first time.  Even though I've had her Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook for years, I have yet to make everything in it.  I don't think I've owned a cookbook yet that I've done everything but it's great when you own one that keeps you lovin' it.  I also own Veganomicon which is good and she has several others out that I don't own.  You can visit her website here to find out more about her and her cookbooks.

Even if you're only veg curious her cookbooks are a great place to start.  Many things I've made from her recipes that I've taken out and about have gotten rave reviews from proud meat eaters.  For the record, we're not a vegan family.  I think my kids would have died long ago without meat and cheese but if I didn't have them I'd probably be vegan.  I'm sure before they die they will try a bean of some kind and before that happens I'll smile on the nights I get to cycle in recipes from some great vegan cookbooks.