Chinese Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional Chinese festival held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar (varying from late May to June on the modern Gregorian calendar). Commonly known as “Duan Wu” in Chinese, this unique occasion is grandly celebrated everywhere in China and also observed in various other parts of East Asia as "Double Fifth Day". In the West, it is popularly known as “Dragon Boat Festival” and is typically celebrated during the summer months with dragon boat races and competitions being the focus of the activities.  Dragon Boats are painted traditionally green, red, yellow, white, and black. Dragons are powerful of full of good luck, so the Dragon boat races spread good luck.

Here is a great coloring page of a Dragon Boat (here).
Crayola shows how to make Dragon Boat Puppets (here).
I printed out two Dragon Boat cut outs for the kids to color, assemble and race (find it here).

Children on that day wear bracelets of five different colors to protect against Evil, they are called the Five Poison or Wu Du charms.  It is the favorite decoration of this festival. According to Chinese custom, the "double fifth" is the hottest day of the month, when all the poisonous vapors are in the air, so every attempt is made to harmonize yin and yang so that danger and disease can be avoided. The Five Poison Charm is made up of a snake, centipede, scorpion, lizard, toad and sometimes spider. It was thought that the strength of the 4 poisons would counteract the poison of one. It is embroidered on clothing, stamped on cakes, engraved on charms, and used for decorations.  You can read more about the Five Poisons here and print a a Five Posions coloring sheet here.

Celebrating Flag Day

Today is Flag Day in the USA.

The kids and I worked on a 4-H project to help them learn about Flag Day.  I read them a short story about Betsy Ross and how it came about that she sewed the first flag.  McKayla colored a picture of Betsy Ross holding a flag (find it here).  In the story it talked about how a sheet of paper was folded and cut with only a single cut to create a five point star.  I found the directions on how to do this and the kids and I made stars.  They thought that was really cool.  Both Evan and McKayla colored pictures depicting the original 13 colonies flag sewed by Betsy Ross.

I also read the story of the Star Spangled Banner song to them.  We talked about what the flag means to our country and the feelings it invokes in people when they see it.  Finally, we made kazoos from recycled toilet paper rolls and played the Star Spangled Banner on them.

We recorded it all in our 4-H project book as part of our Civil Education portion of this year.

Zucchini Bread

I made two loaves of zucchini bread with some of the zucchini that Heather brought over on Monday.  I need to use some more of it up as the ends are getting soft.  I may bake up a few more loaves and freeze them for later.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread Recipe

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 eggs
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
 
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans.

2.Beat together eggs, sugar, oil and applesauce. Blend in the grated zucchini, and then the sour cream. Mix in the baking powder, soda, cinnamon and flour. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared pans.

3.Bake for 60-70 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

I also made homemade pizza for dinner tonight.  It is a family favorite around here!  Tonight was a cheese, a pepperoni and a carmel apple dessert pizza too.
 
McKayla's School today included the "F" theme in preparation for tomorrow's celebration of Flag Day.

Letter "F" Activity Sheet (here)
"F" Word Search and Find (here)
Color the pictures that start with letter "F" (here)
Fun with Fruit - shapes and counting (here)
Match the Opposites (here)
Finally, I helped her read through "The Great Race" Thomas & Friends book.

It is interesting to observe how she reacts to this structured learning that she has asked me to do.  She is excited to do her "school work" but about 15-20 minutes is about all she wants to do even though she says she wants to do an hour three days a week.  After about this much time she starts to fidget, not listen well and look for other things to do.  She boars easily if the things I have selected are too repetitive.  When I see her attention start to slack I always ask her if she is done for the day... she has always said "yes", so I send her on her way to play.  I can't imagine forcing her to sit for hours on end, for five days a week, working on repetitive worksheets.  But, I will keep these small  pockets of structure going until she asks me to stop.

McKayla's School today included:

Count the Stars (here)
Trace and Write - Oval (here)
Number Match (here)
Count the Money (here)
Trace and Write - bear (here)
Color Name & Shape - Green Square (here)

I also put together a File Folder game that I found here.  I can make my own question cards so we can use it for whatever we happen to be working on.  The cards I made for it today are clock faces with hour and half hours on them.  I also made some single digit addition cards.  I will make more as time goes on.  McKayla LOVES to play games so this will help me feel a bit more "unschooly" during this current need of hers for structured school work.

Oh, I thought I should start recording the books that I am reading to the kids.  Last night I started A Pool of Fire by John Christopher.  It is the final book in the White Mountains Trilogy.  Neil owned these books from when he was a kid and fondly remembers reading them.  I had never read the books myself but had followed the animated story printed in Boys Life when I was younger.  I have enjoyed reading the series with the kids very much.

Neil got the lawn mowed this morning and then tinkered a bit on the vehicles.  Now that we have our own Suburban back we need to get his parent's Suburban cleaned out and returned.

I discovered three newborn ducklings under our game hen in the barn this afternoon.  She is still setting on about six other duck eggs so I just left the ducklings under her for now.  She is very protective of her hatchlings no matter what species they are.  In the chicken coop I pulled six duck eggs from the pile that has been growing on the floor and put them in one of the chicken nest boxes for one of the hens to set on.

I made stuffed zucchini for dinner with the Patty Pan squash and green and gold zucchinis I got at the Roxboro Farm's Market yesterday.  It was a great one dish meal as I stuffed them with our farm raised ground beef and some Italian sausage.  Here is what I did:

Stuffed Zucchini

4 medium zucchini (I used 2 zucchini and four patty pan squash)
1 pound ground beef
1 link of hot Italian sausage
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup dried bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 Tbs Italian seasoning blend (I make my own)
Salt and Pepper to taste (I used about 2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper)
2 eggs, beaten
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 cup mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350F.  Brown ground beef and sausage and add onions.  Cook until beef is cooked through and onions are soft.  Let cool while you prepare zucchini.  Cut zucchini in half the long way and spoon out seeds to create boats.
Reserve seeds to chop and add to stuffing.  Combine beef mixture with bread crumbs, parm cheese, seasonings, reserved seeds.  Stir in beaten eggs.  Stuff zucchini boats fully.  Spoon crushed tomatoes over the tops of filling.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Remove from oven and top with mozzarella cheese.  Return to oven and continue cooking for 10 minutes.  Enjoy!

Today is a "school day" for McKayla.  We worked on rhyming words today.  We made a matching game out if it and she had fun.  Then she worked on a tracing wordlist that started with the letter "A" (find it here), a "what comes next" pattern sheet (find it here), single digit addition (find it here) and finally she worked on a clock worksheet (find it here).

Lego Smart Creativitiy Contest

I found out today that I was selected to compete in the 2010 LEGO^® Smart^TM Creativity Contest, challenging teachers and home educators across the United States to become LEGO Smart!  The contest doesn't begin until August but they will be mailing Lego kits out in 4-6 weeks so I can start working on my contest entry.

We also received SIX postcards in the mail today!

One from Quebec showing Autumn colors.

One from Texas with a Yucca plant and Bluebonnets.

And three Ohio State Map cards all from the same family.

And finally, the same family from Ohio sent a recipe card too.

The goat kids are fine today. I always worry about them for the first 24 hours. It is possible to cause some brain damage to the kids if the hot iron is left on too long. I have never seen it but I fret none the less.

Postcard Trading

The kids and I have started something new lately. We are trading postcards to learn about other parts of the world. We are trading within the US for State map cards, state bird, flag, flower, animal, scenic views and more. We are also wanting to trade internationally to learn about other countries too.

So far we have received state map cards from New Hampshire and Arizona. We also have a Washington State card of the World's Longest Beach.

Some of the places we have found to trade cards are:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/postcardkids/
http://www.postcrossing.com/
http://www.swap-bot.com/

If you would like to trade cards with us just leave me a comment! We have several different cards we can trade from North Carolina.