Martin Luther on families

I found this Martin Luther quote in Elizabeth Elliot's book, The shaping of a Christian family.



Our natural reason looks at marriage and it turns up its nose and says, "Alas, Must I rock the baby?  Wash its nappies? Smell its stench? Stay at nights with it? Take care of it when it cries? Heal its rashes and sores? And on top of that care for my spouse, provide labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that? Do this and do that? And endure this and endure that? Why should I make such a prisoner of myself?"


What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all those insignificant, distasteful and despised duties in the spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, "O God, I confess that I am not worthy to rock that little babe, or wash its nappies, or to be entrusted with the care of a child and its mother. How is it that I without any merit have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving Thy creature and Thy most precious will? Oh, how gladly I will do so. Though the duty should be even more insignificant and despised, neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery or labour will distress me for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in Thy sight.

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

I've loved the Robert Frost poem Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, for years so was pleased to be able to get the Susan Jeffers' illustrated version for the children.

It is difficult to describe this book as anything else other than beautiful and it would make an excellent present for a poetry loving adult, as well as for children. It is fun to muse on meanings for the poem while reading it to the children.

 After purchasing the book, I discovered that it was a Five in a Row book. It is our "row" for this week.
One of our aims for the week is to learn the poem.
For fun, we turned our box model of Mary Ann from Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel into a sleigh.

 Sleigh pulled by faithful hound. Note the snow made from a blanket.

The children hadn't seen a real sleigh so we found a video of reindeer pullling a sleigh in Finland.
I found this idea for a rhyming tree and had fun doing this with Miss Belle.

We have some other wintery books and poems to read:

Out and about through the year by Shirley Hughes. This is a seasonal collection of poems which we read frequently. The winter poems go well with this week's book.

The Shepherd boy by Kim Lewis

Kiss good night, Sam by Amy Hest

Winter Garden by Ruth Brown

This is linked to TGIF Linky party, Mouse grows, Mouse learns. and Wierd, unsocialized homeschoolers.

Apple recipe compendium part 2

I meant to put this up a while ago but after about three months of apple picking, processing and desperately pressing bags of apples on friends, I took a bit of a break from thinking about apples. Now it is apple time again.

This is the second part of my list of apple recipes. I decided to take out the cakes as my list wasn't particularly long and there are plenty to be found. A couple of friends have told me about the amazing Apple recipe round up at The Pink Whisk. Definitely worth a look-I'm looking forward to making apple lemon curd. This isn't a comprehensive list of the dessert recipes that we use-just a few favourites.

Desserts 
Apple pie with shortcrust pastry.
 Do remember to read How to make an apple pie and see the world with your children when you make this.

Apple pie with filo pastry
 I use ready made pastry. Put two pieces of filo pastry crosswise in bowl, drizzle over melted butter, add two more pieces of filo pastry and repeat butter, fill with peeled, chopped apple, add sugar and cinnamon to taste, cover with two more pieces of filo pastry. Take the pastry ends and roughly cover the apple. Drizzle with more melted butter. Cook at 200C/400F for 25 minutes.

Apple turnover
basically a parcel of puff pastry filled with peeled, chopped apple, sultanas, sugar and cinnamon. Glaze with milk or egg and cook at 200C/400F until the top is browned.

Apple cobbler

Christmas pudding

Baked apples
Ingredients
Apples-one per person
Dried fruit
Brown sugar
Mixed spice
Method
Core but do not peel apples.
Stuff the core space with dried fruit and a little sugar. Note that the dried fruit is sweet so only a small amount of sugar is needed.Sprinkle with mixed spice. Cook at 180C/350F for 25 minutes until the apple pulp is soft. Serve with custard.

Cranberry thanksgiving

I am a bit hesitant to write about this book so have the caveat first-I'm English not American. Having said that, I am writing about Cranberry thanksgiving because the children, and I, have all learnt so much from it. I love it when I learn from the children's books and the Five in a Row books often bring up things that I hadn't known before.

Cranberry thanksgiving, by Wende and Harry Devlin, is the story of a girl who lives with her grandmother on a cranberry farm. Each Thanksgiving Day, they each invite a visitor to eat the meal including Grandmother's famous cranberry bread, made from a secret recipe. The guests this year are the smooth Mr Horace and the rougher, old sea captain, Mr Whiskers. An attempt is made to steal the famous recipe and it turns out that things are not as they seem.

Geography: We found New England on the world map. I have been fascinated to learn about cranberry bogs and the harvesting of cranberries-something that I knew nothing about before last week. We watched a video about harvesting and looked at the four air sacs in the cranberries which enable them to float.

Bible: This story has such a strong link to Samuel being sent to anoint David in 1 Samuel chapter 16. We have talked about "Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." and read about David's anointing.

History: I was brought up on the old Ladybird history books and we have a little collection. This week was the turn of the Pilgrim Fathers.

The children acted out the story of the Mayflower and the arrival in the New World-they loved this.

Science: I was inspired by Almost Unschoolers to use the anthocyanin iin cranberries as a pH indicator using vinegar and sodium bicarbonate. It worked well although I didn't take photos as we used very small quantities of my rather precious cranberries. The photos on Almost Unschoolers show their results beautifully. Of course, we had to add the vinegar to the sodium bicarbonate and see what happened. 

A first introduction to the concept of acids and alkalis although Miss Belle and Mr Exuberance had seen what happens when they are added together in various volcano experiments before.

Maths: We had to make cranberry bread. This introduced the concept of  recipes which use volume measurements rather than the weight measurements that are more familiar in the UK.

Language: It was appropriate to read books about thankfulness and blessings alongside Cranberry Thanksgiving.

We  read the beautiful illustrated Psalm 103 by Johannah Bluedorn.

and Count your blessings by Jeane Cabral. This is a counting book with magnets to add to each page.

Lastly, we had a turkey Thanksgiving dinner along with our cranberry bread.

 Hopefully, some happy memories and learning for this book.

Happy Thanksgiving Day, especially to my American readers! 

This is linked to Mouse grows, Mouse learns.

Nature study-oak trees

In our area, oaks are probably the most common tree. 

I wanted the children to be able to identify an oak, know a little about the importance of oaks in history and to understand about how they shelter other wildlife. 

My favourite children's book about oaks is Lord of the Forest by "BB".

 Middle Son and I have read this previously but it is rather old for the little ones. Instead, we looked at the pictures and talked about the text regarding the English oak in the Reader's Digest Field guide to the trees and shrubs of Britain. We discussed old houses where the oak beams had previously been part of ships and how oaks have had to be protected. The supply/demand issue caused a fair amount of interest. 

Of course, then we had to go to see the oak in the garden and make rubbings of the bark.

There were acorns and leaves to collect for rubbings and drawings.

While the children drew, I read aloud The secret life of trees

and Sara Coleridge's poem Trees

The Oak is called the King of Trees,

The Aspen quivers in the breeze,

The Poplar grows up straight and tall,

The Pear tree spreads along the wall,

The Sycamore gives pleasant shade,

The Willow droops in watery glade,

The Fir tree useful timber gives,

The Beech amid the forest lives.

Perhaps next, to go and identify these trees-most we can find easily, although I'm not so sure about the aspen or poplar.

This literature based approach to nature study seems to be working for us and is so easy. I'm using books that we already have. Equivalents are easily obtainable at the library.

Spending time with older children-exploring breadmaking

Middle Son doesn't always appreciate our breadmaker bread so we asked him to make his own.

He used the BBC white loaf recipe but added garlic to the butter and chopped spring onions to the flour. The top was sprinkled with mixed herbs.

The result was yummy-this is definitely a keeper. We need to add a couple of tweaks-cook for a little longer and perhaps add fewer herbs but I really hope that he carries on with his artisan bread making experiments.

Spending time with older children-checking the car

My husband volunteered to show Middle Son how to check out the car

• the oil
• the water
• the water for the windscreen
• the indicators
• the lights
• the tyres

So they went out in the autumn sunshine to look at the innards of the car.

The oil

The water for the windscreen-also a good time to talk about anti-freeze

Mt Exuberance, aged two, also thought this was very interesting and managed to get rather oily hands in the process. He was particularly disappointed when he had to go indoors-maybe tricycle maintenance next.