Christmas presents

Ruth has really enjoyed making Christmas presents for her sisters this year. First we made the teddy "bean bag" for Hannah. Ruth was given one of these for her birthday and so we used that as the idea for Hannah's. I did not get photo through the process but Ruth really enjoyed sitting on my lap and doing the sewing. We sewed all the pieces on with the machine and she would sit and push the button to make the needle go up and down and also lift the foot when we needed to shift the material. We had so much fun with it.

We decided to go for a cat for Rachel (who loves cats). So I found a pattern on line and Ruth cut that out. I transferred the lines onto the material and then Ruth helped me sew the picture onto the material.

We sewed the two pieces together (the wrong way around) and then Ruth turned it the right way around (hiding all the stitching inside).

Fill with wheat and stitch closed.

Rachel and Hannah were thrilled with their presents.

Math-U-See started

Ruth was so very excited about the copy of Math-U-See Primer that we picked up yesterday. She wanted to get started straight away. Eventually I had to say "enough for today". It's a introductory level so the children don't need to "master" each lesson as they do in the other years. This year it's just about exposing them to the math concepts. In the introductory lesson he even says that for some children they are not able to write well enough - and that's ok - you as a parent can just have them dictate to you and you write for them.

It's all about allowing children who are interested to have fun with math and start that journey of loving math. So although I would never have thought Ruth would start this before she was 5 (having never seen the Primer level before), I do know that she is ready for it and is going to have such a fun time. Already she wanted to show Dad what she could do and she was very excited about telling him that when it's 1, 2, 3 or 4 she can just know straight away how many - that she does not even need to count - she just sees how many there are.

Fruit Brulee

200g strawberries and 110g blueberries
We used strawberries and raspberries.
Dust 1 tbsp icing sugar over berries and toss to coat.

Whisk 120ml cream. Add 2 tbsp icing sugar,
200g Greek yoghurt and 1/2 tsp vanilla.
Place on top of the berries and sprinkle with brown sugar.

Place in the freezer for 15 min.

Heat the grill to high. Grill as close as possible
to the heat until the sugar has melted.

Cool slightly  before serving so the sugar forms a crisp crust.

Christmas decorations

Placing the pieces right side together and pinning.

Ruth was really excited about the sewing project we started. Julia had given us this lovely material and the idea of Christmas decorations and Ruth learnt so much through this project.

Working carefully with pins. She did a good job.

Rachel did the sewing on the machine and Ruth helped
me over lock the edges.

Ruth had tacked a few of them together
and so she took that sticking out now.

Then the tricky part - turning them the right way around.

Getting her fingers into the corners.

Then stuffing them.

Some red ribbon to hang them by.

Rachel sewed them closed on the machine.

They look lovely. This is the front.

And pretty bright colours on the back.



Helping Rachel wrap the present. This one is for
their ballet teacher.







Preschool Nativity Pack

I printed this Preschool nativity Pack off the Internet yesterday and Ruth and Hannah had a lot of fun with these pages this morning.

Ruth said "This is easy" :-)

"Jesus starts with ....."

And then the letters on her own. Good job Ruth.

Differences

Rachel needed to do a Brownie project where she collected 5 weeds and did something nice with them. The girls collected these weeds a while back and they have been drying in my flower press.

Today was the day for making the cards. This was Ruth's creation. I should have taken a photo before I laminated it. :( Hopefully I will remember in the future.

Ruth was a great help today in sorting out Dad's work socks. For some reason I missed his weekly wash and so ended up with almost two weeks of socks in one load. At least I know he has enough for two weeks. :-) She did a great job in matching them up as some of them are very similar.

Dark and white chocolate puddings

Ruth was excited when I suggested we make these puddings this afternoon. Mind you - so was the rest of the family. Excited about eating them that is.  Especially with all that chocolate. :-)

It was fun watching how the dark yellow duck eggs got lighter and thicker as they were beaten up with the sugar.

After putting a little bit of the mixture into the cupcake the girls then added a white chocolate truffle. We used what we had left from the ones they made on Friday. We should have planned better and made smaller ones without any outside coating. But it was great that we had some.

Successful but not a recipe I will use again. Although we may hide truffles in normal chocolate cupcakes as an experiment one day.

Chocolate Truffles

The girls made Chocolate Truffles for our afternoon guests today. At first they both wanted to do the white chocolate and then Ruth said "ok - you do the white chocolate because you are white and I will do the brown chocolate because I am brown".
Such a sweet girl. :-)
Melt 100g (4 oz) plain or milk chocolate (or white)
with 3 tbsp double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
and 15g (1/2 oz) butter

Once it's all melted and mixed together let the mixture cool. Then put it in the freezer. Stir every 5 minutes or so until the mixture is thick and fudgy.

Roll a teaspoon of the fudge mixture into a ball in your hands (quickly so it doesn't melt). Then roll it in cocoa, coconut, 100s & 1000s or choc chips.

The 100s&1000s and choc chips were our favourites. 

Banana Butterfly Cakes

Good job mashing those bananas.
Arms and fingers all getting stronger.

She is really enjoying using the scales.

She even learnt how to crack eggs
today and did such a good job.

Always fun putting the batter in.

Unfortunately it was a bit too hot today and the icing did not
work very well. It was made with Cream cheese, Butter,
Caramel and icing sugar. I think we may just use caramel if
we do them again. They looked really pretty though.

Pear Meringue Tarts

It was the first time I have bought
pre-made pastry. Ruth did a good
job of cutting out the shapes.

Carefully putting them on
the tray.



We used pear instead of apple as we have
bottled pears that we made. Ruth mashed
them with a fork and then filled the tarts.



Bake at 200 for 15 minutes. Then add meringue made
from egg white and sugar (1 egg to 40g caster sugar).

Cook for a further 3-5 minutes. I would never have
thought to make apple or pear meringue but it
was really lovely and I am sure will be made again.

To do list

Ruth wanted to have the same type of "to do list" as Rachel had - so I got hers done last week. Rachel's are on the top and Ruth's on the bottom (where she can reach them).

Her "Art" this week. A picture
for Dad. She also ended up with
lots of stickers on herself. :-)

It was lovely to see how this week she took over the job of doing the chooks from Rachel (the red lables). She takes them any scraps, fetches the eggs and checks that they have enough food. She is such a big girl already.

Other items on her list are "Tell" when she tells me about the story that Rachel has read to her, "Music" for violin practice, "Computer" - a friend lent us a couple of new games so she is enjoying those and learning a lot. And then she has some items that are not for everyday. I have made enough for every day but for starters we are going to have it our goal to get to them at least once a week. "Baking", "Art", "Read" - at this stage it's just work on the alphabet, "Math" - at this stage just work on recognising the numbers or doing some counting or adding, "Sew" - she loves sewing and I want to try and get her something to do every week and "Clean" - it's nice for her to have a record of packing up or cleaning that she has done.