Halloween Handwork......a ghost tee-shirt

This is what we did for handwork recently, using  homemade stencils and acrylic paints.

It started with the little orange book on the right. It is a list of  ideas that Toucie made for herself :
wich
blak cat
gost
skilatn
monstr
gobln

The word gost is circled.

She had doodled some funny ghost faces on a piece of construction paper, so I carefully cut those features out to use as stencils. Then I made a stencil for a ghost body.

We used pale green paint to stencil on the ghost bodies and black for the faces.

Boo!

Halloween Baking...Pumpkin Pie

Toucie and Daddy went to a pumpkin farm recently. They went on a hayride, puzzled their way through a corn maze, saw an emu (and an emu egg!), picked a pumpkin, and took not one single picture for mama.

The pumpkin that Toucie brought home was adorable and small. She marched it right into the kitchen and announced that she wanted to carve it into a jack-o-lantern, then bake it into a pie. I am happy to assist such decisiveness!

Let's pick up here...post-jackolantern and pre-pie. We cut the pumpkin in half and baked it at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes until it was soft.

Toucie scooped the cooled pumpkin out of its shell and into a measuring cup...we were going for 2 cups of pumpkin.

Ingredients:

2 c  cooked pumpkin
2 eggs
1 1/2 c heavy cream
1/2 c raw sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt

(preheat oven to 425)

She mixed all the ingredients in a bowl and beat well. Then into the pie crust it went. Our pumpkin was not a special "sugar pumpkin" or "pie pumpkin"...it was a run-of-the-mill jackolantern type, so the flesh was not the rich, orange color that we normally associate with a perfect pumpkin pie. (We didn't care!)

The pie goes into a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes, then we turned the temperature down to 350 for another 40 minutes of baking time.

The MOST delicious pumpkin pie we've ever had. No kidding.
I think it lasted about 11 hours :)

Conkers....a game for autumn

If you are lucky enough to live where buckeye trees (or horse chestnut trees) thrive, then you probably are already in love with the fat, smooth, brown nuts that they drop in September.

Here is a game you can play with buckeyes (or conkers, as they're called in England)...we learned it from the book All Year Round. Its so easy that a bright 3 year old could join in, so fun that grandparents will want to try, too. Extra bonus: we count this as math in our kindergarten!

The 3 necessary ingredients are:
- buckeyes (15 of them)
- a stone to toss at the buckeyes (or you could use another buckeye)
- a flat bit of ground to play on
We cleared a patch of our gravel driveway to play This is a very challenging surface, but we've also played on pavement, hard dirt, sidewalk, and indoor wood floors :)

Here's where some of the math comes in. You set up the game by placing the buckeyes in a grid ... there are five rows. The first row has one nut, the second two, the third three, the fourth four, and the fifth five. They should all be placed equidistant from each other. Of course, I don't say all this to my kindergartener, I just do it and she imitates me. After a few games she was able to set this up herself.

Here's what the set-up should look like .

Get your shooters ready!

Take turns tossing your shooter from behind a line...determine where your line should be based on the age/skill of the players. The goal is to touch the buckeyes with your shooter...if you are really good, you can skim your shooter along the ground and upset many buckeyes in one go! After your shot, you collect the nuts that your shooter touched and put them in your stash.

The game ends when the very last nut has been hit. If you are into competition, count up your nuts (more math). The player with the most buckeyes wins!

October Watercolor....Pumpkin Painting

This idea came from Our Little Nature Nest. Mado joined Toucie and I for painting time and it was great...she is an expert at wet-on-wet watercolors! I adapted the story to suit our own style, so here it is with the changes (and a tip of the hat to Kytka from whose site the story came originally):

The golden moon shone bright in the indigo sky.

(paint a large yellow circle in the center of the paper. Rinse brush and begin painting blue around the edges of the paper for the sky)

The sky pressed in from all sides but the glowing moon said, “You must leave me some room to breathe”, so the blue sky surrounded her gently, but did not touch her.

(try to paint the sky in rich blue without touching the yellow so as not to create any green!)

The autumn night was chill and the moon felt very cold. Nearby, the Red Star saw her shivering and said, “I will warm you, Moon!”.  The red starlight washed over the moon and she felt a glow of warmth all over.

(rinse and dry brush, dip into the red paint , and paint over the yellow circle, creating an orange circle. Rinse and dry brush.)

“Oh!” said the moon, “It is very cozy to be clothed in starshine, but I cannot see out! Please open some spaces so that I may peek out.” And so, the sky opened up a little hole for one eye to peek out, and then another, (etc, for the nose and mouth).

(with a clean brush that you’ve dried on your paper towel, begin to lift off paint, rinsing and drying the brush again after each “erasing” stroke you make on the painting. Create a jack-o-lantern face out of the “holes” you open)

Anyone down on the earth below who was looking up at the moon that night was quite delighted and surprised to see a _______ shining down on them!

(My 5 yr. old child was quite amazed to see a pumpkin face emerge from her moon painting . I paused in saying the sentence above to let her fill in the blank with “jack-o-lantern!” as if she had worked magic right there on the paper! Which, of course, she had.)

Toucie's pumpkin

Mado's pumpkin

October baking....creme scones

Oh so delicious....I can't say enough about these simple-but-rich scones. Our recipe is a variation of one from the Joy of Baking site, here. This is a recipe that deserves to be framed and hung permanently in the kitchen. Naya and Sodie have called from college requesting it.  I love the way it showcases our lovely, farm-fresh, raw cream. It is absolutely a keeper.

Ingredients:
2 c unbleached flour
1/4 c demerera sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
5 or 6 TBS cold butter
1/2 c heavy cream
1 egg
1tsp vanilla

In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter (or a fork) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal or sand.
In a separate small bowl, blend together egg, cream, and vanilla. Add wet ingredients all at once to dry ingredients. Blend VERY gently just until mixture hangs together.

Turn this crumbly "dough" out onto a work surface and pat it into a rough square. Cut into 16 triangles. (See...this gets filed under math...fractions, geometry....)

Transfer to a baking sheet and bake at 375 for about 16-17 minutes.
Enjoy plain or with jam...they are a great accompaniment to tea. Also, they make an excellent base for strawberry shortcake! Yum!

Michaelmas moments...

michaelmas daisies

mado's faraway kite

crabapples

toucie's kite

dragon-roasted sausages

catch a falling leaf for good luck all year!

Happy Michaelmas...strength and courage to us all!

Michaelmas watercolor....Dragon painting!

The sun rises high (paint a rich yellow sun. rinse brush)
In an indigo sky. (paint a rich blue sky. rinse brush)
A sunbeam streaks by (dip brush in yellow and drag through the blue sky into the yellow sun)
So a dragon can fly! (refine your streak into a dragon shape...the green will appear as you stroke the brush from the blue sky into the yellow sun and back)