Pectin-Free Raspberry Jam

Now Hazel has been asking to make raspberry jam since last year. Last summer we made strawberry jam with my mother and then blueberry jam and peach jam after we picked both fruits ourselves. We had picked raspberries, but not enough for jam. When looking for recipes for our post on Gail Gibbons' The Berry Book, I found a recipe for raspberry jam that used frozen raspberries and no pectin at About.com. We bought some frozen raspberries and finally found time to make it over the weekend.

Hazel loved measuring the sugar the night before and mashing them in the morning, but she got sick of stirring pretty quickly. So I got to do most of the work. Then I tried the method of flipping the jars upside down, but left them upside down for too long.

All of the jam was stuck to the tops and didn't fall until I put them in a boiling bath and did the old fashion method. Of course several of the jars did not seal well with my mixed ways of doing it, so we are now enjoying lots of raspberry jam--or at least Hazel is. I am doing a cleanse this week so I cannot have anything with sugar. Hopefully next week I'll get to enjoy some! Hazel on the other hand loves it!

Now with my cleanse, I have been putting chia seeds in my shakes and I noticed a recipe for blueberry chia seed jam without pectin, so we may have to try that one next.

Beach Trip and Beach Play Mat

Last week we visited my parents on Cape Cod. Now I headed up on Friday so my mother and I could drive to Connecticut for a family wedding. Steve brought Hazel up on Sunday when my mother and I were returning. He stayed for the day and Hazel and I stayed until Wednesday. I promised her we would go to the beach. On Monday Hazel and I took my mother to her rehab class (post heart surgery) and my sister and nephew came up. My sister was dropping my nephew off for his summer visit with my parents. They live in North Carolina and usually come north twice a year--for his July visit and Christmas. So with all the excitement of the crowd and everyone's ideas for what we should do each day, the beach did not happen until Wednesday morning. I knew we would only have a couple of hours there since we had an appointment at home at 3:15. And of course it was low tide that morning. Normally we go to the bay side beach near my parents house so Hazel can swim and play without much fear or waves. However at low tide you can walk for miles before being able to swim on the bay side. So we headed to the ocean side for her first time swimming with waves. She loved it!! Since I was holding her hand or her while we were in the water, I did not get any pictures of her in the water, but got some of her playing in the sand.

Now I have had an idea for quite awhile. I was inspired by crafts at the Jo-Ann Fabric's Cape Discovery Summer Craft Challenge. You may remember the jungle diorama I shared at the end of May. They had some beautifully crocheted sea shells and other sea things. They inspired me to make a beach play mat. With this in mind we have been gathering small sea life toys and shells, etc. My idea changed form several times and then I saw a large, stiff piece of sand colored felt at a craft store. I bought it and some blue felts. Then that night I pulled out my needle felting roving and decided to needle felt the water to the felt. My original plan was to glue actual sand onto the sand part of the play mat, but I never did and I think I like it this way (mess free) instead.

Now the felt was not wool, but it was easy to needle felt to it. I tried to use different shades of blue as well as make some texture for waves. Then I put the shells and animals on it and left it for Hazel. She loves it!!

I am happy with how it came out and am glad we have been collecting the various sea animals for it. I am thinking I may make her some peg dolls in bath suits next.

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: Cinder-Elly

This week we are going to focus on an American Cinderella story since it is the week of July Fourth. I chose Cinder-Elly by Frances Minters. This is a modern version of the story with Cinder-elly living in New York City. I thought this would be the perfect time to explore the Statue of Liberty, after all we are celebrating America's birthday this week. First a bit about New York City.

Source

New York City is the most populous city in the United States. It is also the home to the United Nations Headquarters and is described as the cultural capital of the world. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York City making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. It consists of five boroughs which were consolidated into one city in 1898. It traces its roots to a Dutch trading post founded in 1624 and named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings were under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II granted the land to his brother the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790. 

Times Square Source

New York has many different world renowned landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Broadway and many more. Times Square is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. Since the New York City Subway runs 24/7 it is one of the most extensive rapid transit systems worldwide. (Source)

Fireworks over New York City (Source)

July Fourth is Independence Day for the United States of America. It commemorates the day in which the Second Continental Congress voted for the Declaration of Independence which happened July 4, 1776. It is often celebrated with parades, barbeques, picnics, concerts and fireworks. Some interesting New York City traditions for Independence Day are:

• Since 1916, Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City supposedly started as a way to settle a dispute among four immigrants as to who was the most patriotic.
• The famous Macy's fireworks display usually held over the East River in New York City has been televised nationwide on NBC since 1976. In 2009, the fireworks display was returned to the Hudson River for the first time since 2000 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's exploration of that river. (Source)

Source

It is the day that Americans show their patriotic colors with red, white and blue everywhere. So for a change I am going to share our crafts. We honored the Statue of Liberty as well as a few other New York City and State staples. The first thing I have to share that we found is from My Shae Noel. She has an amazing Statue of Liberty packet available for free including one of our crafts. (She also has a great lesson packet on fireworks.)

 

Since Lady Liberty represents democracy and freedom and of the United States, I thought it was the appropriate thing to honor from New York City this week. The first craft we did was a paper plate craft. The pattern and instructions are from My Shae Noel's packet.  Then we also made a torch and a paper crown for Hazel to dress up. Since we only had small green paper, I taped two together, and then added a third one to hide the middle seam.  The torch is just a piece of green paper rolled into a cone and a piece of yellow tissue paper stuck inside. I also had Hazel do some coloring pages.

We had a discussion of the color of a taxi. Hazel rode in her first taxi on the way home from the airport when we came back from Florida, but of course it was not a typical taxi. Oh, well. I guess we should have talked about color of the other things she colored, but all the buildings are apparently blue.

Now onto our story. The story is written in rhyme and has a cartoonish quality to it.

Cinder-Elly lives with her family in New York City. She is the youngest of three girls. Unlike her two sisters, she is kind and neat. She does all the cleaning and even gets her sisters drinks at their request. They however just sit and watch television and play video games and never let Cinder-Elly play. One day all three of them are given tickets to the basketball game. All three want to go, but the two sisters tell Cinder-Elly she cannot go since she is too young and doesn't have clothes to wear, and their mother agrees that she cannot go since there is not enough money to buy three new outfits and since she is the youngest, her sisters should go. 

The night of the game, the sisters go off to the game and Cinder-Elly stays home. While sweeping the steps, a woman comes and talks to Cinder-Elly. Cindy-Elly says she cannot talk to her since she is a stranger, but the woman says she is her godmother and asks if she remembers her from the last time she saw her when she was two or three. The godmother waves her cane and Cinder-Elly's clothes change. Then she gives her a pair of glass sneakers. Then she changes a garbage can into a bicycle for Cinder-Elly to ride to the game. She warns her that she must be home by ten since the magic will be gone then. 

Cinder-Elly goes to the game and has a great time watching Prince Charming play. At one point he misses the ball and Cinder-Elly catches it and gives it back to him. After winning the game, he asks if she will go out for pizza after the game. He says he will go shower and do his hair and meet her. She waits until 9:58, but then leaves walking home since the bike is a garbage game. She however loses one of her glass sneakers which Prince finds. He makes up flyers and hangs them all over the place with his number. The sisters see a flyer and call him. He comes over and they of course cannot fit into the sneaker, then Cinder-Elly comes out and tries it on and pulls out the other one. Then the godmother shows up and waves her cane so Cinder-Elly is dressed in her basketball game clothes. The sisters apologize and Cinder-Elly forgives and everyone lives happily ever after.

Passport for our Virtual Exploring

The other day I was exploring on line and discovered a neat site, Making Friends. What caught my eye was their Thinking Day Passports. Making Friends sells the passports, but offers free printables of country fact pages.  I thought about how neat it would be to make Hazel a passport for all the places we have explored with Around the World in 12 Dishes, Fairy Tales in Different Cultures, and just some of our Multicultural Monday posts. I did not want to spend money on this or at least not much. I also wanted to make a passport for Flat Stanley, so we could keep track of where he goes. 

I designed a cover for them. If you would like one without a name, it is available here.I found some spiral notebooks at AC Moore on sale for 75 cents each and bought two (well four, but two are for Hazel and her friend). Then I printed out the countries that Making Friends had including the United States since that is where both started out. I made an inside cover sheet with their name, picture and such and also made fact cards for Finland and The Netherlands since Making Friends did not have them yet. A blank version of the inside cover and the pages for Finland and The Netherlands are available here. I used Wikipedia and Eupedia as sources for these (and copied much of it from them).

I took pictures of the cover, the traveler information and one country for each passport. I let Hazel glue the pages in so some of them are not very straight. Then I added pictures for each country of the things we have done with them in hers and of Flat Stanley from the country.

I think they will be a great place for Hazel to learn even more about each country and to remember what we did when exploring each one. What do you think?

Also provided by Glittering Muffins for Around the World in 12 Dishes here is a passport page for Spain this link  and for a fun Spain-themed placemat, this link. Here is the Finland passport and the Finland-themed placemat.
The France coloring placemat right here and the passport right here. The Ireland coloring placemat right here and the passport right here (the cover for the passport is right here for you!).

Sharing Saturday 13-25

Wow, where did the week go. I know I feel like I have been on the run all week and in my car all week. The few posts I got up were written last week or at my parents house. Hopefully we can have a restful weekend. Thank you to all the people who shared their amazing ideas with us last week. I have not gotten to visit all of them (the whole being in the car all week), but hope to get to more of them. I hope you will visit them as well.

From True Aim Education

And a Few of My Favorites

1) From April's Homemaking: Happy First Day of Summer and Taking a Micro-Hike -- What a neat way to explore outside!
2) From The Gift of Curiosity: 4th of July Montessori Activities -- Many great ideas with printables to get your child learning while celebrating the 4th!
3) From Loads of Fun, Loads of Love: Peter (and Us) in Blueberry Land -- Love using the book and peg dolls to entertain in the car and give them clues as to where they are headed for a fun family day!
4) From The Good Long Road: Our Special Summer Book Nook -- I love that it is an outdoor book nook and the great activities she did to introduce it to her children!
5) From Little Bins for Little Hands: wonderful Watermelon Sensory Play 2 -- I loved that she used a real watermelon for the sensory play!! I know Hazel would love to do this!
6) From Laly Mom: DIY Fruit Snack Name Favors -- What a great idea for a party or for just a fun snack!
7) From For the Children: 3D Recycled Art with a Technology Twist --I love the process for this one!

Thank you to everyone who shared last week and two weeks ago!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: This week we were very busy visiting family. My sister and nephew are up from North Carolina or I should say were up. My nephew will be staying with my parents for about six weeks, but my sister was just dropping him off. We took advantage of their trip north and spent some time with them (plus we went to a family wedding). So I have not been too active on my blog. Sorry!! But to me family is the most important thing. We did share one of Hazel's FAVORITE Cinderella stories which gives the lesson of point of view and we also extended the story of Lady Winter and Sister Spring from Debbie Ouelett's How Robin Saved Spring with Girl Summer and Madam Autumn.

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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