Maggie's Bistro

Thanks to Papa, Maggie had such a fun time playing restaurant!  We invited over several family members to join us for an evening of delicious food, compliments of Maggie's Bistro.  With a little help from Papa, Maggie was able to make most of the dinner herself.  It was a delicious meal with tomato basil soup, caprese salad, spaghetti with meatballs, and gelato!  ;)

Menus and chef's jacket were a must.

It was great!  Thanks Papa for putting together such a fun evening!  

Ancient Egypt End of Unit Celebration {BiblioPlan Year 1}

Like I mentioned in our previous post, we decided to go all-out and have a fun end-of-unit celebration of our own.  Finishing up Ancient Egypt, we were excited to share with our friends many of the things we learned!  We decorated with our projects, history pockets, and pictures.  The girls prepared presentations, dressed up, and we made special food!

Thank you to Luci, James, Janet and Gary for being the "grandparents de jour."  The girls loved having a receptive audience to share with!

For dinner we made a relatively authentic "mess of pottage."  We also enjoyed dates, figs, olives and (thanks to Luci!) Kamut bread!

For dessert we made mummy cupcakes...

Maggie shared a presentation on Moses and the 10 Plagues.

Kayley demonstrated how to mummify a body!

Each presentation was followed by a Q&A.

Luci shared some great info with us too on ancient grains!  

We had a great time and we will definitely do an end-of-unit celebration again!  :)

Ancient Egypt - End of Unit Celebration - Preparations! {BiblioPlan Year 1}

We are not Tapestry of Grace users...but something that they offer with their curriculum is an "end of unit" celebration.  I thought they looked like a lot of fun so we decided to host our own celebration about the end of our Ancient Egypt unit!  A lot of preparations went into our celebrations and here are a few of the days of hard work leading up to our party!

We experimented with paper mache.

It was a MESS. 

We decided to make some canopic jars.  We used water bottles from the Dollar Tree, aluminum foil and masking tape to start the basic shape. 

We then covered them with paper mache and began shaping the heads.

It took a long time... 

Did I mention it was a GOOEY mess? 

Almost finished!  

Once they were dry we spray painted them gold (among other treasures we created)

We also worked on making our own herbal oils. 

Cuniform Tablets

We made them out of clay...

As well as Hieroglyphics on papayrus (ok, its actually a paper bag)

We painted a couple of cat statues. 

Posters were made... 

As well as history pockets! 

Presentations were prepared !

(Kayley spoke about mummification and Maggie about Pharaoh and the 10 Plagues) 

We sent out invitations to a few neighbors and had a great night!  

I'll get some pictures up of our party soon!  Thanks for stopping by!

Risen by Angela Hunt {Book Review}

Finally!  Just in time for Easter I finished the book Risen.  I know, I know!  The movie has been out for a while, what am I waiting for??  The book Risen, by Angela Hunt, is a novelization of the motion picture and tells the Biblical story of the resurrection through the eyes of Clavius.  Clavius is a Roman military tribune (basically Pontius Pilate's right-hand man in all military matters).  During this time of "Pax Romana," peace is kept by military force and Clavius with his assistant Lucius, are overwhelmed when they hear that the Israelites so-called "Messiah" has died. When people claim that He will rise again from the grave and there is a frenzy of excitement and rebellion through the people when, on the 3rd morning the body of Jesus has vanished.  Pilate wants this whole matter cleaned up and quickly.  Jesus' body MUST be found before it causes and uprising among the people.  Clavius and Lucius are tasked with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in order to prove that there is no such thing as a risen Messiah and avoid upheaval in Jerusalem.  

Although she takes a back seat through though the book, I also enjoyed the parallel story of Rachel.  A widow, whose husband was killed by a Roman soldier, Rachel becomes friend and lover to Clavius, opening a door for him to consider the possibility of the truth and reality behind this person the people call Messiah.  

I don't want to tell much more because you may want to see the movie and I don't want to spoil it, but, I really enjoyed the book and following Rachel's and Clavius' conversion story was powerful.  This was a wonderful read leading up to Easter!  

Disclaimer:  I received Risen free of charge from Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group free of charge in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions expressed here are my very own.  Thanks so much!

Random Happenings...

We recently went to the KGBX Women's Show, the Lawn & Garden show and then, hit the Severe Weather Expo.  Here are some fun pictures of a few of those random happenings!

The students of SBU School of Nursing had a small training 

where they taught us how to do CPR!

Smile Zone taught us the proper way to brush our teeth!

The Butterfly Palace had a GREAT set up for learning about butterflies!

Kayley met the artist Peter Longley and they had a fascinating discussion on impressionism.  I was pretty impressed when Kayley pointed out that his art wasn't "true impressionism" because he mixed his colors on the canvas instead of just globbing it on his canvas.  He thought she was pretty clever.  LOL. 

The girls posed for a picture with Kevin Lighty's awesome storm chaser vehicle.  

THAT was pretty cool!  ;)