Ground Beef Gyros

I'm participating in Secret Crunchy, which is kind of like secret Santa in December. The person who has me gifted me a membership to emeals. Anyone who knows me well, will know that I LOVE GREEK food! Seriously, it's one of my favorites. My past pregnancies have created a love of olives and I have always liked feta cheese. This recipe is simple and uses ground beef rather than lamb. Here is one of the recipes I modified a little bit and made.

Ground Beef Gyros

Ingredients:
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup chopped seeded cucumber
2 tablespoons minced onion
1 teaspoon sugar
1 lb grass fed ground beef
2 teaspoons Greek or Mediterranean seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
6 pita bread rounds, cut in half
1 tomato, sliced thin
1 cup of lettuce, shredded

Directions:

Stir together yogurt, cucumber, onion, garlic, and sugar in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate. Combine beef, Greek seasoning, salt, and pepper and mix well. Shape into 6 patties. Preheat broiler. Broil patties in a broiler pan for 10 to 12 minutes or until meat is no longer pink. Turn after cooking 5 minutes. Cut patties into thin slices; stuff into pitas. Add tomoto and lettuce to pitas and serve with yogurt sauce.

Serve with pita chips, hummus, carrots, and olives.

Thank you emeals and Secret Crunchy!!

Popcorn Bird Feeder

This past week we studied quail. I thought it would be appropriate to make a bird feeder. Since I'm cheap and didn't have any bird food, we used popcorn and a toilet paper roll. I have organic, non-gmo popcorn kernels that we popped and grabbed an empty tp roll from the recycling bin. 

We popped the kernels in a paper bag

I spread some peanut butter on a plate and had my son cover the toilet paper roll with peanut butter.

 
Then I put popcorn on another plate and he rolled the tp roll over the popcorn as well as stuck it on it.

Somebody had to sample it to make sure it tasted good. :)

Last, I put some string through the tp roll to hang it. My son ran outside to hang it on the tree.

This was a fun, cheap, and easy craft.

The next day all of the popcorn was gone!

Week 29 of Pre-K

We just finished Unit 25: Quail, of My Father's World Kindergarten. We have one more unit left and we will have completely this year's curriculum! This was a busy week as Caden had gymnastics camp twice! Our verse and main theme was very practical this week. Lately Caden has complained about certain things, especially if he doesn't get his way. We've been working on having a good attitude and being thankful for the things we do have. 

Memory Verse: Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life. - Philippians 2:14-16a NIV

Main idea: I don't grumble or complain; I am thankful.

We started the week off talking about when the Israelites traveled through the desert and complained to God because they were hungry. God sent them manna, food from heaven. But the people grumbled and complained. 

They said, "We wish we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt. It didn't cost us anything. We also remember the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we've lost all interest in eating. We never see anything but this manna!" Numbers 11:4b-6

God's people complained because they didn't have the kind of food they wanted. This reminded me of the many times Caden doesn't want to eat what we're having for dinner but would rather have something that he wants. In this story, God was very angry and sent them many quail to eat. This made the people sick and many of them died. God does not like complaining. We are very blessed and we need to learn to be grateful and content with whatever God gives us and not complain about it. 

Later in the week we talked about Paul and Silas in prison and how they thanked God for what they had and sang praises to Him while in jail. You can read about their story in Acts 16:25-27

We pretended to be birds and even made a bird feeder. We practiced thankfulness. I asked Caden if he wanted a treat. So he sat at the table and I brought him a package of crackers from take-out from a long time ago. He asked what was that? I asked him if he wanted it. He said, "no thank you." Then I gave him his real treat since he had good manners and was polite.

I also made some stick puppets for one of our stories this week. I read Goldilocks and The Three Bears to Caden and Gracie and used my stick puppets to act it out. They both liked it. Caden played with them for a while and wanted to make some of us own later. 

We had a good week this week.

Dinner one night, quail! Just kidding, it's chicken.

Handwriting practice

Sound discrimination

Math, subtraction

Explode the Code

Making a popcorn bird feeder

Hanging the bird feeder

Playing our new alphabet bingo

Reading and writing words

This week he drew: a cherry, a quilt, a marker, and an apple.

The Three Bears Stick Figures

I tried to get an action shot in the middle of the story and turned Goldilocks around

Bird nose

Week 28 of Pre-K

We just finished our 28th week of preschool, which was Unit 24: Vegetables of My Father's World Kindergarten. We have two more units left and then we'll be ready to officially start our kindergarten year! I'll be doing a review of My Father's World Kindergarten once we are finished with all of the units.

Memory Verse: The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.  Psalm 145:13b, 15-16 NIV

Main Idea: God gives me all that I need.

This was a fun unit. Our family loves vegetables and it was fun to try new things and talk about how God makes things grow. We have a little garden and Caden has enjoyed picking tomatoes all summer long. We also have lots of different herbs, squash, watermelon, and a few other vegetables growing as well as a peach tree.

This week My Father's World recommends teaching subtraction. We've been practicing subtraction with Caden for a while since he loves numbers. I think one of the best ways to teach subtraction and addition is with food or other tangible objects. It makes it easy for your child to see what you're talking about.

Caden went to gymnastics camp at The Little Gym twice last week and while he was at camp one day, Gracie and I went to the grocery store and picked out a few vegetables I had never tried before. I got jicama and chayote squash. That afternoon I showed Caden the new vegetables I bought along with the other ones. I cut some up and let him paint a picture using different vegetables as his paint brush. He LOVED this activity! He hasn't been able to paint for a while and he loves painting so this was an extra special treat. Gracie enjoyed watching him creative his master piece. For dinner I threw all the vegetables in a pan with some olive oil, fresh garlic, and a little salt and pepper. I also heated up some thin steak I bought to add with it and bought some fresh garlic bread. It was a tasty dinner.

We went to the children's museum twice this week with two different groups of friends. The second time we went we saw the IMAX film about Lemurs, which was Gracie's first time to see an IMAX, movie, show, etc. She didn't pay attention that much to the screen and they are only 45 minutes and it's educational and the show moves slowly. 

We are hoping to plant some pumpkins soon to be ready in October.  Some stories we read about gardens include the story about the Seed from Richard Scarry's What do People do All Day? book, we read this story weekly, sometimes nightly. We read The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter a few weeks ago.

Here are some pictures from this past week.

Balloon vegetables: A cucumber, tomato, squash, and Lowly the worm

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Museum

Cooking potato chips. Slice really thin, cover with olive oil and salt/pepper, bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.

Painting with vegetables.

He painted with kale, a carrot, tomato, squash, pepper, chayote squash, asparagus, and jicama.

Baby with a kale paint brush!

This is how I prepared his vegetable paint brushes.

I'm ready to create something!

I think it looks really cool!

Dinner with our new vegetables and old favorites.

with the steak

IMAX picture

Dino dig

Wall to make ping pong balls marble run

I finally bought him some Sands Alive! Cool stuff!

Another yummy dinner uses tomatoes from our garden as well as herbs.

Painting to classical music. He drew a boat, rain, and the ocean.