Turkey Cupcakes

With friends and family here we thought it would be fun to make Turkey Cupcakes. We used Nilla Wafers, candy corn, Twizzler Pull and Peels, mini chocolate chips, cupcakes and chocolate frosting. First you make any type of cupcakes that you want and frost them with brown frosting. Then you put 6-10 candy corns on the back side as the tail feathers, in the cake not just by the cupcake wrapper. You take a Nilla Wafer and you can either lay it down in the middle of the cupcake or kind of set it up on end in the middle, I like setting it up on end better, they look a little cuter. You then take two other Nilla Wafers and put them on the sides kind of standing up so they look like wings. Then take two mini chocolate chips and put some chocolate frosting on the back of them and put them on the middle Nilla Wafer as the eyes. Then you make the waddle with a small piece of Twizzler Pull and Peel.

Here are some pictures of the finished product of each person.

Alyssa


Samara


Natalie kind of did whatever she wanted. She had a lot of candy corns and sort of just stuck them all in. It didn't look much like a turkey but it was yummy anyway.


The big kids made some too. This is Auntie Erin's.

Brent This one has the middle Nilla Wafer standing up and the waddle sort of hanging down the cupcake.

Eric This one has the Nilla Wafer standing up and the waddle hanging down the cupcake.

Kim (me)

Micah (my wonderful husband) He wanted white eyes so he took the white pieces off the candy corns.

Lite Brite and Connectagons

The girls used their Lite Brite and their Connectagons. The Lite Brite we got from Wal Mart I believe and the Connectagons the girls got from Christmas from their Aunt Carla, she got them at Hearthsong.

On the Lite Brite they used these guides to create cool designs. They had a blast with it.

Nattie just made cool designs out of the Connectagons, although they are made to connect together. They had fun hanging out and having fun playing.

Thanksgiving Pumpkins

Tonight we looked on Familyfun.com to get a couple of ideas on what to do for snacks for Thanksgiving. This one seemed fun but was really sticky. It was kind of hard to do as well as we tried to smash it together and it wasn't as easy to manipulate the circus peanuts as I thought it would be.

So here's what we did. We took circus peanuts cut them in half. Then we cut a thin slice of a green gumdrop to make it sticky. We put this slice on the back flat part of the circus peanut and put the two backs together. Then we rolled it into a ball, or at least tried to. It was quite sticky and hard to roll but we kind of got it. Then we took the back of a knife, even though the recipe called for toothpicks, it was easier as the toothpick kept breaking, to put lines on the "pumpkin". Then we put a hole in the top with a toothpick and cut off another piece of the gumdrop and put it in the top like a stem.


Gumdrops


Circus Peanuts



Rolling the balls for the "pumpkins".


Here's the ball!

Nattie ready to eat her pumpkin.

Syssa ready to eat her pumpkin.

Mara ready to eat her pumpkin.

The girls LOVED their circus peanut pumpkins.

The finished product.

This is not something we are going to do again because it was a lot of work and a lot of stickiness for not a lot of results. I will probably post again tomorrow about all of the fun events, food, crafts, and messes, of course.

Our Homeschool Room

I have been putting together as much of our homeschool room as I can. This has been a work in progress. We still have quite a while left before school starts next year but I wanted to get a jump on things so I don't have to plan it all at once. The faster I can get things together the more time I have when I get the curriculum to plan it and focus on it.

On this side I will be putting up a table for On this side I will have the three desks as well

centers and crafts and those types of things. as my desk as you can see in this picture. The

The couch will be our reading couch. book shelf there will be where I put all the

curriculum books.

I'm still not sure what other types of things I'm going to get. I know I want a white board though. I want to get another set of shelves like the ones in the picture on the left. I got them at Wal Mart. I'm also going to get another book shelf for more books. My girls LOVE to read. As I get more set up I will take pictures of what I'm setting up.

Hubbard's Cupboard

I just wanted to add that I am using Hubbard's Cupboard this year for Nattie. I'm using the Preschool 3s program. I love it! We don't do it all the time, in fact I just started it and I use it but I need to get better about using it every Mon, Wed, and Fri. It's like my practice for full on homeschooling next year. Enjoy!

The Curriculum

After much prayer and thought we will be pulling our 3 girls, Alyssa (7), Samara (5), and Natalie (3) out of public school next year and we will be homeschooling them. Well, Natalie wasn't actually in public school but the other two were. We believe that this is what's going to be best for them and we are very excited about schooling our own children next year and possibly for years to come.

I have researched quite a bit of curriculum and have finally figured out what I may be using next year for my girls. I will have a 3rd grader, 1st grader, and a PreK4. All girls! I love them! Here's what is planned. (These may change slightly by next year.)

History/Bible/Geography/Art/Music/Science-----Adventure's In My Father's World I think I am going to have all three girls work with the same program. Nattie (our 3 year old that will be 4 next year will probably sit with us as we learn some of this but most of it will probably be over her head.)

Science-----Apologia--Exploring Creation with Anatomy--I may or may not supplement Science. I am going to get Adventure's and then see if I feel like it needs to be supplemented. Micah loves science and the science curriculum I will use if I feel I need to supplement sounds awesome. I'm thinking I'm probably going to do this curriculum but I'll let you know what we end up doing.

Math-----Math U See

Reading-----Explode the Code for Samara (she's going to be in 1st grade next year) I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with Alyssa (she's our 3rd grader next year.) Most likely I will just check out books at the library and do a reading program that way. We also have Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons that we will be using with Natalie.

Grammar/Language Arts-----I'm thinking of either Easy Grammar or Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons. I may get both and just see which one I like better since neither are too expensive

Writing-----I'm thinking of doing Writing With Ease and/or Writing Strands. I really like Writing Strands but may get Writing With Ease to look over as well.

Spelling-----Spelling Power

Handwriting-----Handwriting Without Tears

We are also adopting two girls from Haiti so we may be going over some Haitian Creole over the school year next year for their foreign language. I'm excited about this, well I was, but can't really find good teaching kids curriculum for this language. I'll keep you posted on what I do for this as well.

I hope I've gotten everything covered. If you can think of anything else let me know. I don't want to go overboard but I want to make sure everything's covered as well. The subjects I definitely don't want to leave out are Math, Reading, Writing, and some Science.