Saturday, September 19, 2009

An Apple a Day!

My kids all love to eat applesauce. In fact they have it every morning as part of breakfast and sometimes later in the day as a snack. I came accross some free apples last week so this is what I did on Wednesday last week as I waited for my Mom and Dick to arrive.
I started with two laundry baskets full. Doesn't look like much but it took most of the day.





Wash...The boys wanted to help so their job was to take the apples out of the laundry baskets and put them into the water for me. Boo thought it was more fun to splash. Little C thought the apples were balls so she threw them all over the house making more bruises on them!!



Cut...by the end of the day my right hand hurt so much. I could barely get them all done and was very close to quiting!




Cook... Just put a little water in the bottom of the pot and let them cook until they get soft.

Strain...I love the food strainer! It makes the process so much easier! I'll like it even more when my kids can really help with this part!


Satisfaction...The process is not all fun but the end result is very satisfying!!


When all was said and done I got 24 quarts! This is the sweetest applesauce I have ever had and there is no sugar added. I have no idea what kind of apples they were!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Summer Fun!

Wow, I'm on a roll, two posts in one day! Here are some random pictures from our summer!

School Days

Well, we have officially done four weeks of school so far. We are using My Father's World Kindergarten and Big C loves it! He asks to do school everyday and wonders why we don't do it on the weekends! We started school in August so we could get ahead a bit because we took last week off to go on a vacation to the Dells. Now that we are back I am faced with tomatoes to can and will have my mom and her husband visiting later this week so it's nice to be ahead of the game with school instead of feeling like we need to catch up! I love the flexility of homeschooling!! Here are a few photos of our homeschooling fun so far!


The first thing we do for our weekly activity is look up our topic in the encyclopedia. Sounds a little dated in this computer era but still an important skill to know! Big C loves to look at the encyclopedias now that we got them out of the attic!!




In these two pictures the boys are painting their sun for "Ss." We made the rays for the sun by tracing and cutting out their hands. The first two weeks of the MFW curriculm was a unit on Creation. Then it goes on to the 26 lessons of learning the letters of the alphabet. Big C knows all of his letters and sounds so we can cut a lot of that practice out for him but it's great for Boo who doesn't know his letters or sounds yet. The curriculm is a great fit for both boys to work through at the same time.