Resurrection Rolls

The Resurrection cookies were a flop! They didn't rise at all, which wasn't really a surprise. What was a surprise to me was that Kiliegh still wanted to try them. I ended up breaking a piece off of one of the "cookies" and gave it to her to try but noticed that the middle still looked wet, so she only got a taste She loved them and actually wanted more! I had to throw them away to keep her from picking at them! I am going to have to try the recipe again so we can all hopefully get a taste of what these cookies are really suppose to taste like.  

I had a back up plan already planned in case the cookies didn't turn out, I had read that they could be touchy and I ended up finding this recipe on the same blog that I found the Resurrection cookie recipe. This recipe was called "Resurrection Rolls" and the recipe was super simple and fail proof!

All you need is a pack of Crescent Rolls, cinnamon, sugar, butter and large marshmallows. If you want the actual recipe and directions you can go to Mother on a Dime and she will give you everything you need to know!

Jasmine and Kiliegh made the rolls. They were going to be our desert for our Easter dinner. (If you read yesterdays post, then you will remember that our Easter celebration together is actually today.) 

Vada supervised while eating the "faulty" marshmallows in the bag.

The girls gave Justin the honors of being the first to taste their desert and the first to look into the "empty tomb". They were proud of their desert and of their accomplishment and I was happy that it turned out for them and that the story of the Empty Tomb could be fully seen through this baking lesson.

Resurrection Cookies

My older two girl's have different fathers than Vada as well as each other. Their visitation schedules are different as well but I have worked very hard at getting them to be as consistent with each others as possible so that they are all home together as much as possible. One huge arrangement with our schedules is that we flip flop years for holidays. Last year was our year to have the girls on all of the holidays, now this years we wont have them on any, other than our birthdays.

Since the girls weren't here to celebrate Easter with us on the actual day but came home later in the evening I thought that making Resurrection Cookies would be a nice opportunity to spend the remainder of the holiday together and talking about the true meaning of Easter.

 I found the below recipe on a blog called Mother on a Dime. I was thrilled because she had a printable version all ready for me (for anyone who wants it) as well as all kinds of Bible verses to go along with the story of Jesus' Resurrection. All I had to do was print it all out and get the ingredients together.

As the girls were crushing the almonds we talked about how the nuts represented Jesus; bones and how he was beaten.

My sweet girl, Kiliegh, got all serious when it was her turn and said "but Mama, I don't want to break Jesus' bones".

We talked about the egg representing new life.

The girls tasted all of the ingredients with the exception of the eggs. The salt was bitter and represented the tears that were shed for Jesus. The sugar was Jesus sweet love for us. The vinegar was a reminder of how at His last moment He asked for a drink and was given vinegar.

And then we spent fifteen minutes mixing the ingredients together.

I turned up the power once Jasmine got to hold onto the mixer because it wasn't really "fluffing" up the way I had anticipated. At one point she was holing the mixer just right and she had the mix split into two and said "Look Mom, just like Moses in the Red Sea, when he open it for his people." Ahhh..., I was a proud Mamma at that moment because she was linking more Bible stories to this one.

After the timer went off, fifteen minute after beating the mixture, I looked into the bowl and told the girls that I didnt think that our cookies were going to turn out but they were both pretty optimistic about. So we continued. 

The "mounds" of cookie dough (mounds, hehe) were suppose represent Jesus.

And the oven was the tomb. The tape was suppose to represent how the big stone was placed in front of the opening of the tomb.

The cookies are to stay in the oven over night and we are suppose to check them in the morning of Easter. However, since were actually doing this on Easter evening, we will be checking it on Monday. Wish us luck, im pretty for sure these cookies are not going to be rising!

Easter and a Mouse

The talk of Easter has been a big topic of discussion in our house over these last couple of weeks and Vada has been seen carrying the below board book with her throughout the house as well and on numerous occasions. 

The book, The Story of Easter by Patricia Pingry, has also been one that I have been reading several times a day, every day for the last two weeks! I didn't plan on reading it so much. I brought it out because of Easter being so close and left it close to the rocking chair, where we read before her naps and bedtime every day and she ended up asking for it over and over again! I like Pringrys board books and have a couple of them that I bring out for the holidays, so I am fine rereading this one, especially for the message that it shares about Jesus' love and His ultimate sacrifice for us. 

Since learning about FIAR and BFIAR which I mentioned a little here, I started putting together curriculum ideas around If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff and then last night as I was searching through Confessions of a Homeschooler (COAH is one of my favorite homeschooling resource blogs), I found all kinds of free printable's that were for Easter and I thought that it would be perfect to add her printable learning games to Pringys' Easter book, since Easter is now only days away. So I printed out what I liked, laminated for extra protection and set everything out for class time this morning...

Vada and I began our morning by reading this story once again and then talked about the number of crosses in the book. Afterward we looked through the book for the crosses, we did a color matching game that I downloaded for free from COAH. On her blog she suggests printing one sheet and cutting the crosses into halves and matching those pieces together. I decided to print instead and matching them together. I laminated one full sheet and then cut cards out of the second sheet and laminated those separately, using those as our matching cards. 

Vada doesn't seem to know her colors yet. I say "seem" because again there is that language barrier that I have mentioned so many times before. Because she is so quiet, I do most of the talking and I just assume that she is taking it in because she seems to be watching and following along. Color matching games is a good one for us to have many different versions of, in my opinion. I think the more ways she can see a color, the better. Today I did notice that she did her version of the sign for "blue" before I spoke the word. That was exciting, once I figured out what she was doing!

To stay in the "theme" of the book we did a craft that I again printed from COAH. I really liked Erica's (author of COAH) suggestion of what to do with this printable, she uses power magnets and puts the correct colors of magnets into the white circles on the picture. Since I do not have power magnets (yet), I made a craft out of this printable and Vada and I glued pom poms onto it instead.

In the spirit of Easter, I printed out the Easter counting Eggs from COAH and used baby shower clothes pins that I had left over from a fine motor project and clipped the amount of clips to the correct numbered egg cards. I always counted out loud as I put the clips on the cards (because this is a task that Vada has yet to learn how to do) and counted out loud as Vada removed them. This was very interesting to Vada and held her attention for a very long time! 

Next we learned a Bible verse. This was another sheet that I printed out from COAH. I laminated the sheet and then cut the paper into squares, mixed them up and then put them back into order. Once they were back in numerical order I read the verse out loud a couple of times...

But the angel answered and said to the women,"Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for He is risen,as He said." Matthew 28:5-6

 and then I read from Pingrys Easter book where she has the angel telling Jesus' friends that He has risen, so that Vada can see what the two have in common.

After Vada and I learned about the true meaning of Easter we moved onto If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by: Laura Numeroff. 

Somewhere along the way of having three girls we have picked up the actual plush mouse from the book. It was from one of my older girls but im not for sure which one! What I do know is that Vada has taken a liking to him and it was awesome to have him for this lesson!

After giving Mouse kisses and hugs we read his story.

The Mouse Treasury is a really neat book to have, if you don't already have the actual "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" book, I would recommend getting the Treasury instead. Aside from getting four books in one you also get a CD with fun musical songs on it, and recipes in the book, that go along with each story, which helps when you like to build curriculum out of the stories that you read with your children!

After finishing the story we put the CD that came with the book into the CD player and danced to The Mouse Cookie by: Sarah Weeks.

Vada even got down and boogied with just Mouse himself!

For Math we did cookie counting. I got out the cookie sheet that we usually put the play-doh on, just to be more realistic.

I used Vada's pointer finger to point at the "chocolate chips" while I counted them out loud and then I flipped the cookie over to show the matching numeral.

After showing Vada both sides of the cookie I would hand her the cookie jar and ask her to put that specific cookie into the jar and then to put the lid back on and then we would repeat the whole process all over again -with her picking out a new cookie to count on. We did that until all the cookies had been counted.

We also spent a little time playing with Play-Doh. I made some letters and she just squished away. It was getting really close to lunch time so our morning was pretty much done and over with but we had a little time to talk about the colors and the three letters that I had made.

Afterward we came upstairs for a quick snack. Jasmine (my oldest) and I had made sugar cookies last night just for today's lesson and to help with tomorrows lesson...

Justin sat down for some snack too!

Then we all put on our jackets and headed out for a mini family "field trip". 

Someone recently sent me an email asking about a possible yearly curriculum that I may be using and I said that right now I have more of a yearly goal plan set for Vada. Being able to go up and down stairs on her own, by the age of four is one of the goals that I have set for her. (She can totally crawl up stairs all on her own but I want her walking up them.)  Here are some pictures of Justin helping Vada go down our back stairs...

We made sure that Vada brought Mouse along with us for this particular trip...

Our "field trip" ended up being to a near by pet store. I wanted to show Vada a live mouse. The only problem was when we got there, the store only had one cage of mice and those mice were all sleeping inside a plastic cave! So we ended up checking out the rats instead. 

I wish that she could have talked, just to tell me what she was thinking at this very moment because she seemed so intrigued! 

We talked about the rats and what they were doing, eating and how they were all different colored.

And then we moved on to look at the rabbits. The pet store is full of them this time of year! I personally love rabbits and have had two of them as pets in my lifetime! My girls have a special place in their hearts for rabbits as well but we wont be a pet family again (another story for another time).

Vada did a good job at her "nice touches" when handling the rabbit. Once, however, she was quicker than Justin and grabbed under it's belly and almost had it out of Jasmine's hands!

Our last stop before heading home was to say good bye to the birds. This store will be seeing a lot of us. We also come here to buy our plants for gardening and were here last week looking into buying a tadpole for a life cycle home project. Next week I am planning on reading The Rainbow Fish by: Marcus Pfister, so we will come back again to look at their fish! The weather is warming up too! So maybe we will be able to take a trip to the Zoo as well..?