Candy House Bonanza

Porter and Matilda each invited a few friends home after school today to decorate houses. I can't say gingerbread house since I just did my usual cheater graham cracker house assembly. However, with all that candy flying no one seemed to complain!

 It's important to sample the supplies. 

 Success, another candy house in the books.  

Before

If you don't hear from me, it might be because I've been entombed in icing.

Certifiable

It's Chime Season!!

Hands down, my favorite Christmas decoration.

Naturalist

I love this shot that Tim captured of Matilda on our hike in Joshua Tree last weekend. She likes to carry a notepad on any nature walk to document her observations, thoughts and quick sketches of any animals we encounter, especially the cute fuzzy ones! It is amazing to me the quantity of little notepads that she manages to fill. Thorough documentations is important in good research I suppose.  

Weather!!

We are thrilled to be getting some much needed rain. Although water falling from the sky seems to be such a rare occurrence that it's making people act a bit crazy. Walking back to the car at pick up from school, we heard the principal come over the loudspeaker system asking a parent who had left their car double parked in traffic to please return to their car immediately. Don't lose your head everyone, it's just some precipitation.

Sous Chef

Porter is all about food these days. He must be approaching a growth spurt because he's eating SO much! Constantly hungry and eating crazy quantities. He is also super helpful in the kitchen. For dinner tonight he made our salad and was very happy to have the freedom to choose all the ingredients and wash/chop/peel/slice to assemble it himself. 

Keeping with the food theme, the week before Thanksgiving break I went into his class to present a lesson related to food. They were doing a food unit and the teacher (knowing my loved for all things food) asked me to prepare something. I found a really great lesson plan online about "Eating a Rainbow!"which discussed the nutrients in fruits and vegetables and why it's good to eat a bright variety of produce. It's so fun to see their minds cranking and turning! After the discussion they all got to make rainbow kebabs for a snacks.

I forgot to get a good photo of all the trays, but they looked really beautiful.

I also made kale chips and sweet potato fries to sample and it was exciting to see how many kids were willing to try them. Beside enriching all of his 25 other classmates, all the prep work was worth it just to see Porter so proud and happy to have me in class.