Week 8: Already?

Good grief! Time is flying and I cannot believe we've ended Week 8, we're in September already, and it's almost Fall (my favorite season, by the way).

Let me get into the Homeschooling aspect of our week, then I'll go into a few more fun things that happened.
We absolutely have our Circle Time established. K knows the routine, he asks for activities by name and in the right order, and he is taking the lead in some of them. I love to see how he's such an innate leader and he loves to take charge. The only challenge about this is that when I'm introducing a new activity (one he's never seen or worked on before), he is impatient and wants to mess around with it instead of waiting for me to show him how the activity goes, what the steps are, and what is to be learned from it.  That is the difference between work and play and I really want him to understand this difference.  With some things, I do let him explore them and try to figure out how they work or what their purpose is, but with other things, it is imperative that he practices patience and learns through observation first.  He is getting better and better at it every week.  He is just so eager to work that he get ahead of himself sometimes.

For Culture (Geography), we have been learning where we and K's grandparents live.
He really enjoys pointing at the map and saying the names of the states. Soon,
we will be adding the names of the cities, followed by the names of the states.

K loves to point and say the months of the year. As you've noticed, he's wearing a pull up only. We are still potty training and put him on the potty often, but it is easier to have him in a pull up during school, just in case he has an accident.  I'm excited to let him wear big boy underwear only during homeschool, too.  He already is at his daycare and he's only had one accident per day.

One of K's favorite things to do is practice left and right (yes, he already knows which is left and which is right) and yes, those are his very own handprints.  I think it personalizes it and makes it more special.  We started around week 4 with just left and right hands.  Now, we are practicing left and right hands, feet, knees, shoulders, cheeks, eyes, ears, etc.  He loves this activity because it's like a game to him.  Lots of giggles there.

This is the number train. The engine has a 0 on top (in red) and 1-9 in 3x3 squares (in black). The first wagon has the number 10 on top (in red) and 11-19 in the squares (in black).  The next wagon has the number 20 in red and 21-29 in black underneath.  You get the picture. We call them families (the 0 family, the 10 family, the 20 family, etc).  He can now count from 0-50 while pointing at the numbers and 0-40 by memory without looking at the numbers.  That is pretty good for a 2.5 year old! 

For the months of the year, I added little tabs (top right on October, for example)  to teach K whose birthday is when.  For now, I made one for Dada, one for me, one for K, and one for A.  Later, we'll add the Grandparents and eventually all of the aunts and uncles (there are too many of those right now, haha).  The tabs are small enough that won't get too much attention, but colorful enough for him to notice them when we talk about it.

Here's my other beautiful student.  She loves participating through observation and gets
a kick out of watching her brother sing and dance and recite stuff.  I'm sure she's eager to do the same,
but she's still too young for that.  Soon enough, though.

Let me explain to you what the following pictures are.  I found this activity on Pinterest, where you take pictures of a Mr. Potato Head and instructions on how to add body parts.  My sister-in-law took a bunch of these pictures and I'm working on putting them together and printing them as cards.  Each picture will have a number on top, to let him know the order the cards need to go in.  
It is a great activity that K can do on his own and it is great on teaching a great skill: Following Directions.  We all need a little bit of that, in my opinion.  Without even knowing it, K will be learning so much through play.  I love it! So, here is an example of what the pictures look like:

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K's new memory verses are 
Psalm 121:5 (The Lord Himself watches over you.) and 
1 Peter 5:7 (Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.).
He loves reciting them and I hear him reading them over and over. I love to know that he is hiding God's words in his heart.

Here's what we got this week in our basket, except that this is a different company and it is all local produce and it comes with beans, rice, and a dozen eggs.  We usually buy the cage-free, grass-fed eggs, but this will do every once in a while.  It was $25 for all of this, except that I forgot to picture 3 bananas and a bag of lettuce that come in with this as well.  All in all, we got 98 items (counting the bag of rice as one item and the bag of beans as one item and the bag of lettuce as one item, but counting each egg as an individual item) and each item ends up costing a quarter (25/98).  Not bad, considering that mangoes are about a dollar a piece, the bag of lettuce is about $2.50 apiece, the watermelon about $2.50-3.50, etc.  A friend who also got this basket said that se guestimates that all of this would've cost close to $36, maybe more.

These homemade cinnamon rolls are one of the breakfasts that my family lives for! They are so good! I've made them so many times, that now, I feel very confident substituting ingredients to see how well they turn out.  Let me post the original recipe first and then give you a few variations that I've liked.

Original recipe from www.allrecipes.com.

I use organic sugar in all the variations below.

Variation 1: Follow the exact instructions, but use store-bought cream cheese frosting.  I know, it's fattening, etc, but it is easy to use, it isn't used often, and it's pretty delicious.

Variation 2: Instead of using 3 cups of white flour, I use 1 cup of oat flour (throw one cup of old fashioned oats in the blender), 1 cup white flour, and one cup white wheat.

Variation 3: Use 1 cup oat flour, 1.5 cups white flour, and .5 cup coconut flour.  Instead of an egg, soak 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseeds in 3 tablespoons of water until it gels and throw it in the mix like you would an egg.

Variation 4 (haven't tried this yet, so I'm not sure how it would turn out): GLUTEN FREE Use 1 cup oat flour, 1.5 cup ground gluten free rice chex cereal (or corn), and .5 cup coconut flour.  Same egg substitution for egg as variation 3.

Variation 3 is the closest to making this recipe VEGAN, but I still have to figure out how to substitute the powdered milk to make it completely vegan.  Suggestions are accepted. :)