Weekly Character Traits: Perseverance and Friendliness

Each week as part of our homeschooling, we focus on one character trait. Last week it was "Perseverance," and this week it is "Friendliness."

Character Trait Perseverance
Character Trait Friendliness

To see all the documents I have available, just click the "homeschool downloads" tab at the top of this post. Or you may easily view and print or download all of my documents by clicking this: cbethblog's Scribd documents.

You may use any of these documents for any purpose as long as you are not selling them or otherwise making a profit from them.

USA week!

We recently did a USA week as part of our homeschooling. I plan to do at least one more week like this during the school year--there is still a lot more I want to cover about our country!

On my Delicious page, I've bookmarked lots of ideas for doing a USA week. You can check that out here if you're planning your own USA curriculum.

The kids made lapbooks again, and they turned out great! We used parts of this free lapbook template, and added our own touches too. Again, we coordinated our theme week with Ann, and at the end of the week her son Coqui and my kids Chickie and Zoodle enjoyed presenting their lapbooks to each other.

Click any of the photo collages to see them larger!

Coqui worked hard on his lapbook, and it turned out great!

Here is Zoodle's lapbook. I loved the "Civil War" part of his U.S. History Timeline (top right photo.) That's one guy saying, "I Wen" (I Win) and another saying, "I Loz" (I Lose.) I also laughed at the sentence he asked me to write on his Statue of Liberty minibook: "I wish Lady Liberty was MISTER Liberty!"

 

Chickie was proud of her lapbook, and it turned out great. You can see in the top right photo that when she drew our first President, she thought his classic portrait was a little too somber. Her version is much more cheerful! The bottom photos show one of the votes we did during USA week. The kids and I voted for what we should have for lunch. Grilled cheese won over PB&J--in fact, it was unanimous!

I'm still really enjoying doing theme weeks in our homeschool, and I'm learning right along with the kids!

Weekly Character Trait: Obedience

Each week as part of our homeschooling, we focus on one character trait. This week it is "Obedience."

I used this opportunity to talk about being obedient to authority, but also to discuss times the kids shouldn't obey authority--any time they're told to do something bad. I also told them if someone tells them to do something bad and keep it a secret, they should still come tell me. It's not the type of stuff I like to think about, but it's important, and I'm glad we had the discussions we had this week!

Character Trait Obedience

To see all the documents I have available, just click the "homeschool downloads" tab at the top of this post. Or you may easily view and print or download all of my documents by clicking this: cbethblog's Scribd documents.

You may use any of these documents for any purpose as long as you are not selling them or otherwise making a profit from them.

Apple Bacon Chicken recipe (and lots more apple ideas...)

I'm still getting Bountiful Baskets produce, and loving the experience! You can read about it in my blog post here.

A couple of weeks ago I got my regular basket, plus a big box of Gala Apples...about 38 pounds worth. I'd paid $24 for them. I couldn't pass up such a great deal, but I had to figure out what to do with so many apples! I have made...

• Lots of Slow Cooker Applesauce (much of which I froze)
• Apple Pie (using this pie recipe, with added cinnamon and nutmeg; and this crust recipe)

 

• Apple Coffeecake with Streusel Topping (skipping the glaze; the cake is awesome without it)
• Apple Bacon Chicken

I haven't used all the apples.... There are some still in the fridge, and I also froze a bunch of slices for future use.

But let's go back to that last bullet point...Apple Bacon Chicken.

It was a big hit. I used this recipe, but I adapted it for the oven instead of the slow cooker. My recipe follows. Enjoy!

Apple Bacon Chicken (adapted from chef-in-training.com)

Ingredients:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup barbecue sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
4 large apples, peeled, cored, and diced
8 slices bacon

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Trim chicken, and pound it to a uniform thinness (doesn't need to be super-thin; just pound out the thick parts to match the rest!)
3. Cut each chicken breast in half.
4. Wrap a piece of uncooked bacon around each breast half. Arrange chicken in a large baking dish.
5. Mix together barbecue sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, and diced apples. Pour over chicken.
6. Put a meat thermometer into one of the pieces of chicken. Choose the thickest chicken piece in the dish. (If you don't have a meat thermometer, it's a great time to get one! I like the digital ones that beep when they hit a certain temperature. I think mine was about $10 at Walmart.)
7. Cook until temperature reaches 145 degrees. Honestly, I don't know how long this took...maybe 30-40 minutes. If you don't have a meat thermometer, cook until the chicken is almost done, but not quite.
8. Turn on the broiler. Keep the chicken on the middle rack. You're just going to finish cooking the meat, while letting the bacon get more crisp.
9. Cook until chicken is done (internal temperature of 165 to 170 degrees.) Be sure to scoop some of the yummy sauce on top of the chicken when serving. We had ours with rice.

Note: As much as I love leftovers, this was a bust when I reheated it in the microwave. So if you're serving just 2-3 people, you may want to halve the recipe. The men at the table ate two pieces each; I ate one piece; my 6-year-old daughter ate about 80% of one piece; and my 4-year-old son ate about 20% of one piece. Unfortunately, he's very picky about meat these days, so eating more than one bite is a victory for him!