What can you do with lemon chips?

In the aisle with the Easter jelly beans, Bulk Barn is selling lemon-flavored baking chips--that is, yellow "chocolate chips." What can you do with them?  Lemon-chip cookies somehow just don't sound right. But I think you could use them in the sort of fudge we make at Christmas (mostly melted chocolate and sweetened condensed milk), or in other baking recipes that use ingredients like coconut.  I bought only seven ounces, not enough to make fudge.  These no-bake cookies are what I came up with instead.

Lemon Macaroons for Easter

In a bowl, combine (amounts are approximate) 1 to 1 1/2 cups graham crumbs, 1 cup quick oats, 1 cup unsweetened coconut.  (The oats were because I was short on graham crumbs, but I think they gave some needed bulk to the cookies.)

In a small saucepan, heat 1/3 cup milk, but do not boil it.  When it is quite warm, stir in 6 or 7 ounces lemon chips and stir until melted.  Combine with the dry ingredients.  Let sit for a couple of minutes to thicken.  Push by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper-covered tray.  Chill until set.

Wednesday school plans (Dollygirl's Grade 7, Term 3)

Book of Numbers, Chapter 11: the Israelites complain about manna, manna, nothing but manna, so God sends them meat; but they are also punished for complaining.



Key to Geometry, booklet 1, about lines and line segments

Making a chart for the 13th century: still working out the details for that one.

The Spring of the Year: "An Old Apple Tree."  I really love the "tree toad" part of this chapter.  Here's a snippet, but you really should read the whole thing.

"Seating myself comfortably at the foot of the tree, I wait. The toad comes forth to the edge of his hole above me, settles himself comfortably, and waits. And the lesson begins. The quiet of the summer evening steals out with the wood-shadows and softly covers the fields. We do not stir. An hour passes. We do not stir. Not to stir is the lesson--one of the primary lessons in this course with the toad. 

"The dusk thickens. The grasshoppers begin to strum; the owl slips out and drifts away; a whip-poor-will drops on the bare knoll near me, clucks and shouts and shouts again, his rapid repetition a thousand times repeated by the voices that call to one another down the long empty aisles of the swamp; a big moth whirs about my head and is gone; a bat flits squeaking past; a firefly blazes, is blotted out by the darkness, blazes again, and so passes, his tiny lantern flashing into a night that seems the darker for his quick, unsteady glow. We do not stir. It is a hard lesson. By all my other teachers I had been taught every manner of stirring, and this strange exercise of being still takes me where my body is weakest, and puts me almost out of breath. 

"What! out of breath by keeping still? Yes, because I had been hurrying hither and thither, doing this and that--doing them so fast for so many years that I no longer understood how to sit down and keep still and do nothing inside of me as well as outside. Of course _you_ know how to keep still, for you are children. And so perhaps you do not need to take lessons of teacher Toad. But I do, for I am grown up, and a man, with a world of things to do, a great many of which I do not need to do at all--if only I would let the toad teach me all he knows."

Easy Grammar Plus: continue predicate nominatives

Handwriting practice

Ivanhoe: King John's nobles have a secret meeting. There's a good part coming up where the Black Knight makes a new friend (see picture below), but we may not get that far today.

Isn't that an awesome illustration? It's by George Cruikshank, 1837.

Back Yard Nature: Two firsts today

In our back yard:

First dandelion.

First violets.

Spring is definitely here.

Photo from Wikipedia.

Reminder about the Carnival of Homeschooling

We are hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling, and the deadline is tomorrow night (Monday).  I don't have too many submissions yet, so I may have to come around asking some of you for help. If you have a post you'd like to submit, the directions are here.

Term Three Week Four: Dollygirl's School Plans (a short week)

A four-day school week because of Good Friday.

Monday

Book of Numbers.  Use Book of Centuries.

Saxon Algebra 1/2 

Hair and Skin: A Nutritional Viewpoint (Text: Nutrition 101)

The Easy Grammar Plus

Fix It..Write

Map drills (online)

Ivanhoe

Music history:  after Schubert?

Tuesday

Gospel of Mark.  Keep notebook.

Saxon Algebra 1/2

Hair and Skin:  see Monday

Balance Benders Level 3

History of England: "John and Arthur"

Fix It...Write

Poetry: "find the metre"

Return of the King

Wednesday

Book of Numbers.  Use Book of Centuries.

Key to Geometry

Something new in history:  Beginning a Century Chart

The Spring of the Year: "The Apple Tree"

The Easy Grammar Plus

Ourselves Book II: continue with the perils of the uninstructed conscience

Fix It...Write

Poetry: "find the metre"

Ivanhoe

Thursday

Basic Bible Studies: "God the Son"

History of England:  what charters are

Picture study:  Jan Vermeer, painting #3.  Use Book of Centuries.

Key to Geometry

Gothic Architecture: more distinguishing features

Money Matters workbook

Shakespeare's King John:  continue Act II

What's for supper? (Cleaning out the fridge and cupboard)

Tonight's what's-in-your-hand dinner menu:

Chicken Cacciatore (chicken breasts, onions, and canned sauce)
Egg noodles
Three small frozen panzerotti (call them hors d'oeuvres)
Odds and ends of green things
Pickles and olives

Oranges, cut up
Cottage pudding made with the end of a jar of jam
And (for snacks)
A small pan of Rice Krispie Squares, made with the end of a box of cereal

Tomorrow: groceries.

The many uses of homeschooling

I did a conference workshop last weekend and mentioned that reading Architecture Shown to the Children can improve your ability at crosswords (words like APSE).  They thought I was joking.

A couple of days ago I posted about Gothic architecture and ogees.

The crossword in today's paper has the clue, "Pointed arch."  Which has come up before, but this time I didn't have to look it up:  OGEE.

So there you go.  Homeschooling has its advantages.

A bird we hear a lot here: Cardinals

A well done three-minute video that also explains how birds sing:

Back yard nature: Sparrows

Outside the window this morning:  sparrows, up close and personal.

(Photo from Birds of Ontario at TorontoHiking.com)

Dollygirl's Nature Walk Photos

(From yesterday's nature walk)

Winterberry holly bush with berries.

All photos by Dollygirl. Copyright 2014 Dewey's Treehouse.

Linked from Nature Study Q&A and April Link-Up at Fisher Academy International.

A walk by the pond (our nature outing)

A short drive away from us, there's an old fieldstone farmhouse that is now part of a university campus. Behind the farmhouse, there's a nature trail around a large pond.  That's where we went this afternoon.  It's still pretty cold, and not much is sprouting or hatching or moving much around the pond, but we did have a good (although muddy) very-early-spring walk.  We saw several things to note down, and things we'd like to come back and look at again in a couple of weeks:

Tamarack (larch) trees, with cones but no needles. (More about them here.)

Winterberry holly--at least, we're pretty sure that's what it was.  Bright red juicy berries still on the bush from last fall, but no spring growth on it yet--maybe some buds.

A muskrat swam up to the edge of the water and then disappeared, probably into a hole in the bank.  Mr. Fixit and Dollygirl disagreed on whether it had a tail like a beaver or like a muskrat, but it was acting more like a muskrat.

Lots of ducks and geese, and robins, and a blue heron further out.

A few daffodils coming up at the front of the farmhouse.

There were a few little bits of green here and there, but it was a hard winter and I think spring is having a struggle.

End-of-the-week school plans (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

Thursday

The Age of Chivalry: "Taliesin"

Key to Geometry

Grammar of Poetry:  scanning practice (take bits of two poems and identify their meter)

General Science:  Skin and Hair

Fix It...Write (penmanship practice)

Plutarch's Life of Cicero, finish lesson 2 (very short) and start lesson 3

Map drills (Seterra, online)

King John, continue Act II

Afternoon Activities:  see the term's extra activities such as homemaking and crafts

Friday

Basic Bible Studies #15, A New Relationship with God the Son

BrainBox Game: The World

Key to Geometry

The Easy Grammar Plus

Picture Study:  Jan Vermeer, #2

Grammar of Poetry:  scanning practice (take bits of two poems and identify their meter)

History of England: The Crusade (continuing with Richard). Draw something in the Book of Centuries.

Money Matters

Composition time  (if you want, use the demo disk from One Year Adventure Novel that we picked up at the homeschool conference)

What's for supper?

Tonight's dinner menu:

2 Hungarian smoked sausages, baked with a casserole of brown rice and barley  (Whoah, that sausage turned out to be spicy.)
Spinach and feta perogies
Carrot sticks

Homemade butterscotch pudding...and here's the recipe.

Butterscotch Pudding (Source: Food to Grow On, by Susan Mendelson and Rena Mendelson, 1994)

1 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups whole or 2% milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium saucepan.  Whisk in milk, and cook over medium heat until thickened and bubbly.  (Keep stirring so it doesn't stick or burn.).  Stir 1/2 cup pudding mixture into the egg yolks, then stir that mixture back into the pot and cook for two more minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.  Pour into serving bowl or Pyrex pan, and cover with plastic wrap to keep skin from forming, unless you just like skin.  Chill for an hour before serving.

(Note: this recipe makes only about three servings, or four quite small ones.  But you can increase the amounts.)

Wednesday school plans

Opening hymn

Old Testament:  Book of Numbers, chapter 9: The Second Passover; The Fiery Cloud

Fix It...Write workpage

Architecture Shown to the Children: Introduction to Gothic architecture...did you ever notice that an ogee looks a lot like the top of a Dairy Queen cone?

Work in Saxon Algebra 1/2 (orally and do a problem with Mom--finish the lesson for homework)

Finish painting cardboard bunkbed for the dolls (with Mr. Fixit)

Easy Grammar Plus: introduce predicate nominatives

Balance Benders Book 3

Ivanhoe

The Grammar of Poetry: a bit of review

Nature Afternoon!

Some news from The Apprentice

Our Apprentice had not even started high school when we started this blog.  We have posts following her through ninth grade at home, her move to public high school, her hairstyling apprenticeship (yes, we thought it was funny too, because the nickname came before the real thing), and her moving on (and out) to university.  Apprentice would have had another year of school to go yet for the Honours program, but she has decided that enough is enough, for now anyway, and she will be graduating with her B.Sc. in June.

And after that?

The Apprentice (who we should probably rename The Graduate, except that Dustin Hoffman already did that) is already set up with her housemates and her mini slow cooker, so she's going to stay where she is and look for a job there.  And enjoy having absolutely no homework, at least after final exams.

CONGRATULATIONS, APPRENTICE!

Monday School Plans, and a new game (Dollygirl's Grade Seven)

Old Testament: continue Book of Numbers

New game we bought at the homeschool conference:  BrainBox "The World" (you can sample it here)

General Science: Skin and hair

Balance Benders Level 3

Saxon Algebra 1/2:  begin new lesson

Picture Study : intro to Vermeer, postponed from last week

The Easy Grammar Plus: continue nouns

History of England: The Pope's Gift; The Crescent and the Cross (intro to Richard)

How to Read a Book

French lesson

Poems

Ivanhoe  

(One day this week, when the weather's good, Mr. Fixit is going to take us out in nature somewhere so we can look for spring flowers.)

Conference Weekend!

Nature in our back yard, and a lot of others right now

Gray or speckled snow mold, proper name Typhula Blight.  (Or mould. Canadians can't decide how to spell that one.)  It's a mycelium that appears when the snow's been on the ground too long.  It's showing on a lot of lawns right now, as the snow disappears.

It's sort of pretty, in a weird, Spanish-moss sort of way.  It doesn't kill the grass, just damages the blades (and then hides for the summer).

Are you seeing this where you live?

(Photo found here)

What's for supper? Skillet Spaghetti

Tonight's dinner menu:

Skillet Spaghetti, made from celery, mushrooms, a bit of pepperoni, a bit of leftover homemade lentil burger, a can of pizza sauce, and some broken-up spaghetti.  Black olives for those who like them.  Cheese on top or on the side.

Steamed spinach

Slow-cooker chocolate dessert for those who eat their spinach.

Nature in our backyard

It's staying above freezing this week, which means the snow banks are shrinking and what's underneath is reappearing.  Dollygirl found her small shovel that had disappeared under a drift.

On the strange-wildlife side, a very corpulent raccoon waddled across our yard this morning.  We do get raccoons here (that's why we lock up the garbage), but not usually in the daytime.  We wondered if this one might be a mama-to-be.