E is for Egg (Egg Salad Sandwhiches!)

We had a picnic today and decided to make egg salad sandwiches! Here is how we make ours!

What you need:

4 eggs

4 celery stalks

1/2 red pepper

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 cup mayo

6 slices of bread 

1. Take out 4-6 eggs (depending on how many people are eating).

2. Add cold water to a pot. Once it starts to boil turn on the timer for 7 minutes. Once the time is up, remove from heat and add cold water the the pot until the hot water is replaced with the cold water. Let eggs sit for 5 minutes and then peel and cut up into small pieces.

3. While the eggs are boiling cut up  red peppers and puree.

4. Mix eggs, chopped green onions, chopped celery and red pepper puree together in a bowl.

5. Add 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of paprika.

6. Take 6 slices of bread.

7. Add Mayo to the bread and a bit to the egg mixture. (For a healthier version add plain yogurt.)

8. Apply spread to bread and enjoy!!

              Once the food was ready, the boys and I headed outside to enjoy the beautiful day. Picnics are always full of fun!

Here the boys are looking for animals that begin with the letter “E”. Eagle, earthworm, elk….. My youngest say a bird and told me it was an Eagle!

E is for eating of course!!

My oldest gave me a beautiful flower and told me it started with E. I asked him what he meant and he told me that I would be “smiling from ear to ear.” E is for ear!

  

E is for the day we had…excellent!

Goodbye Ale!!!

We have hosted 35 students in our home in the last 5 years. We absolutely LOVE opening our home to people around the world! Ale is a precious girl from Mexico!! Her brother stayed with us a couple years ago and it was a joy having her become a part of our family the last three months. Why does this matter to our home school adventures? My children LOVE greeting our students from different countries. It gives them an experience in opening their hearts to many cultures and allows them to learn about different foods, beliefs, languages and such! We will miss our friend Ale dearly!!



 
Here we are celebrating Ale’s birthday!! Oh how the boys LOVE her!

She LOVED playing with the boys!! Here they are beautifying her!! We also taught Ale about St. Patrick's Day by making green cupcakes!!

China!!

We have started learning about China this week. We have spent a lot of time on it as the boys are half Chinese! We started off the week building the great wall of China. The kids were fascinated by it! We watched some real wonderful You-Tube videos produced by National Geographic about how the wall was built and what it was used for. The kids thought we would see pictures of the bad guys and were dissapointed that the wall stands for friendship now! Pretty cute!!
Erica at http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ has fantastic instructions on how she made this wall! The kids LOVED it!!!
First we started out by drawing some lines on white foam board and started gluing the craft blocks to it.


Then we made funny faces!! No just kidding! Here is the base of the Great Wall of China!

Then we put a layer of paper for support and added more layers!



The boys thought it was so funny that they could see each other on the other side! And Mateo is thinking about the Great Wall!!!
             
And… the final product!! The perfect touch…….Darth Vader and the clone wars!!! Might as well reenact what the wall was originally used for!!! This was an extremely fun project to do!!



This week we have learned where China is on the map, that is in the Northern Hemisphere and on the continent of Asia. The boys learned Yangtze and the Huang He rivers and located them on a map. We learned about the Yuan, we practiced writing our names in Chinese and much more!!

We read about what children are like in China, what their school day is like, what sports they like to play, and what foods they like to eat. The kids thought it was very cool that EVERYONE in China eats with chopsticks! My kids grew up using them! My little thought we should move to China since we do that already!! I told him I would move there any day!!


We put the most common animals of China on our animal wall. Here the kids are pointing to their favorite animal from China!! (See: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ for a list of these animals.)


Here we made Chinese Lanterns! See: http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ for directions or the book A Trip Around the World.



I am not quite finished, however above the kids beds, I have painted their Chinese names!!! This was lots of fun!!!

Japan

As soon as we heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I wanted to take the opportunity to teach my children about the country and teach them about what had happened there.
We had so much fun learning about Japan!
We started off by dating our passports.

  
We then located Japan on our globe. We learned the population of Japan, the official language, and capital and the ocean that surrounds it.


My oldest is teaching the youngest about earthquakes. In this picture he is describing how the plates shift. Hmmm….surprised that my 5 year old can explain that! Smart kid!!  The kids thought it was amazing that Japan is actually made up of many earthquakes!!

We also prayed for the people and the devastation of Japan. We host international students and were able to get a hold of all the ones who stayed in our home. We were extremely happy when we found out all 15 of them and their families are okay!!

My youngest did not really enjoy the Japanese snack we had!
   

We learned about the most famous and important shrine in Japan: Itsukushima Shrine. My plan was to try and get the kids to make it out of play-dough….here is their creations! (We’ll  have to try again!!)
 
We also learned about the meaning of the Japanese flag. My oldest thought it was so amazing that the red circle symbolizes the sun rising! He now thinks that Japan is REALLY hot since their sun is red!!
 
Here the kids are trying to write their names in Japanese. I went to Google and got a translator that translated the kids names. This was quite fun! My three year old even loved it!!

We made Carp necklaces and learned how important these fish are to the people in Japan. These fish are considered to be very strong because they swim upstream. On Children's day in Japan, many children will make these necklaces and hang a kite-like banner of Carp to symbolize the strength.
  
My oldest completed a lap book activity about Japan.

We learned about the animals from Japan and graphed them accordingly onto our graph. Here the kids are pointing to their favorite one!!


Origami is a very popular craft in Japan! We made these that I found at Michaels.
 



Other things we learned this week was about the seven continents, the five oceans, how to say hello and thank you in Japanese, sand a Japanese song,   and then we ended our Japan experience going for SUSHI!! My oldest could eat sushi every day of his life!! So….then next day for lunch we went out for SUSHI again!!!

** All ideas taken from http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/. Erica has an incredible website and we used her geography curriculum.