Where is Blucy? Special offer & $100 GC Giveaway

What is more exciting than a new book? How about a new book, a BOGO offer and TWO giveways?

We are participating in a Book blast for a Julie Dweck's new book 'Blucy'. Blucy is a Cat with a very  special talent! When Mandy adopts him from the Shelter she in in for a surprise and a lot of fun.

Title: Blucy Author: Julia Dweck Illustrator: Erika LeBarre Year published: 2013 Publisher: Xist Publishing Number of pages: 21 Recommended age: 3+
We really enjoyed the cute illustrations and rhyming text. The story reminded us a lot of all the excitement and challenges of adopting a Kitty

Get your copy today and take advantage of this special offer!

Purchase Blucy (e-book) through Amazon, and receive FREE electronic copy of Julia Dweck's newest book, Mary Had a Sleepy Sheep (to be released September 5, 2013). All you have to do is forward your purchase confirmation email to sales@xistpublishing.com and Xist Publishing will send you a complimentary copy of Mary Had a Sleepy Sheep!

Where's Blucy? Contest

Before we get to the $100 Book Blast Giveaway, we have a special treat for you. If you head on over to Julia Dweck's Facebook Fan Page, you will find the "Where's Blucy?" contest. Julia Dweck fans are invited to post suggestions of "blue" places Blucy could be hiding, (e.g., near Elvis' blue suede shoes). The most creative answer will win a print of the Blucy cover by the artist, Erika LeBarre. Head on over to Julia Dweck's Facebook Fan Page to enter and...

Pssssttt... if you enter the contest before August 20th, 2013, you gain 5 entries in the $100 Book Blast Giveaway below!

 

$100 Book Blast Giveaway!

Prize: $100 Amazon Gift Card or PayPal cash (winner's choice) Contest runs: August 13 to September 15, 11:59 pm, 2013 Open: Internationally How to enter: Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget below. Terms and Conditions: A randomly drawn winner will be contacted by email within 48 hours after the giveaway ends. The winner will have 72 hours to respond. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, a new draw will take place for a new winner. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. If you have any additional questions, feel free to send us an email!

* This giveaway is sponsored by the author, Julia Dweck and by Xist Publishing. *

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Piwi Kids Summer Fun: Making Healthy Dog Cookies!

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Making toys and treats for Perry and Butter is at the top of our Summer to-do list. Recently the kids had fun mixing up some Blueberry flavored treats for Butter. Miss K was itching to try all the cookie recipes in 'Feeding your Best Friend Better' by Rick Woodford. You can check out a review of this cookbook here.

We started with Blueberry Moons. Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, kindly agreed to let us reproduce the recipe here.

Blueberry Moons (makes 100 cookies)

1 cup Frozen Blueberries

1/4 cup Beef, Chicken, Fish Stock

3 tablespoons Olive Oil or Safflower Oil

2 Cups Whole Wheat flour

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Microwave the Blueberries and stock in a Microwave safe bowl on high for two minutes. Combine Blueberry mixture, Flour, Baking Powder and Cinnamon in a food processor and pulse for about a minute or until the mixture gathers into a ball. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a 10 inch square. Transfer to a baking sheet and cut into 1 inch squares with a pizza cutter. Bake for 25 minutes for a soft cookie or 40 minutes for a crunchy cookie. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet before breaking them apart at the cut lines.

The Kids really wanted to try out the new cookie cutters we bought when we ordered the book!

Allowance per day (1 inch square cookie): 10lb dog (2 cookies) 20lb (4 cookies) 40lb (6 cookies) 60lb (8 cookies) 80lb (10 cookies)

 Here are a look at the finished product....

 And the taste test.....

They were very popular! Here is Butter giving me 'sad eyes' for more!

Holy week Activities Pt 2:Cooking Bible themed foods

The Piwi Kids enjoyed the Calvary Chapel Bible study lessons,  puzzles and coloring pages so much we completed 2 each day. I am seriously considering adding several each week to our regular curriculum.

We like cooking together and we tried to make some foods like Jesus and his Disciples would have eaten. We started with Dates. We made a plant based recipe from the Happy Herbivore Abroad -it tasted just like my Nana's recipe!

On Holy Thursday we made the Last supper craft from Catholic Icing.  The instructions and printables made it so easy to create a centerpiece that looks like it took forever!

The 'bread' in front of the 'table' is Un-leaved bread or Matzoh similar to that which Jesus and his Disciples ate at the Last supper. The recipe we used was from the Sunset magazine for Homemade Matzos. These huge crackers are Crisp, Light and extremely yummy!

I mixed up the Flour, salt and Olive oil (that's all it needs), divided it into 12 portions and then handed them over to the Piwis to roll out.

  

They cooked very fast 2-3 minutes on the pizza stone and they were ready! 

Matzos became Holy Thursday's Movie Afternoon snack

Thanks to our Kiwi roots It isn't the Triduum without Hot Cross Buns!  Last year I shared the recipe we use. This year were the most successful batch yet thanks to (I think) a new type of flour I switched to recently for bread making.

Every afternoon during Holy week we sat down together with a snack and watched a Movie. The majority were Veggie tales. A selection that I hadn't previously considered for this week was Rise of the Guardians. This review by Gail Finke at the Catholic exchange convinced me it was worth renting. We all loved it and it generated a lot of discussion between Miss K and I about the themes in the movie and how it related to faith.

We all learnt a lot this week and really enjoyed the time we spent together on our 'Stay-cation'.  The Piwi's, however, said their favorite part was an egg hunt and their Easter baskets (they picked the activity that involved Chocolate of course!).

Math with Apples Project

This week we read 'An Apple pie for Dinner' and practiced our measuring skills with an apple Math investigation.

This book is very cute! Granny Smith (pun intended) wants to bake an apple pie but  she doesnt have any apples. All she has is a basket of plums and sets off in the hope that she can trade them. The illustrations are very fairy tale like and reminded me of the amazing shadow applique my grandma used to create.

Apple Math:

Earlier in the day we had compared raisins and grapes and talked about how drying removes the water.
The goal for apple investigation was to find out how much weight an apple looses when it is dried. Mini Piwi was chief fruit weigh-person, Miss K was the data recorder and self proclaimed 'calculator  of the important stuff'.

Here's the method I wrote for the Piwis to follow

1. Have a grown-up peel, core and slice 2 apples into thin pieces.

2. Line a baking pan with baking paper and ask Mama to turn the oven on to 200 degrees

3. Weigh the slices from each apple and record the measurement for each one

 4. Lay the apple slices on the pan

5.  Ask a grownup to put the pan into the oven

6. Wait patiently :-) for about 1 hour until the apple slices are dry.

7. Ask a grown up to remove the pan from the oven at let tthe apples cool

8. Weigh all the dried apples to find their new total mass.

 9. Eat the apples!

There are so many things you could have kids calculate from this activity. We kept it fairly simple and I asked Miss K to find:

1. The total mass of the apples before they went into the oven
2. How much mass the apples had lost from the drying

Another calculation that occured to me (after we were done) was the mass of the core and/or peel we had removed.

 The Piwi's really enjoyed their snack and even Miss K declared that this kind of math was actually fun.

Getting ready for Valentines day-gifts and decs

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The Piwi's have been busy getting ready for Valentines Day this week. Miss K is a natural party planner and it looks like Mini Piwi is now her apprentice.

 

I made these multiplication 'broken hearts to practice her times tables. She matched them up and then decided to tape them together so she could turn them into a Heart banner for Valentines day.

 

Mini Piwi made a basket of flowers for Miss K from the dyed coffee filters she made when we were tracing marker letters with water. She has them hidden in her 'stash' to give Big sis. Mini Piwi has taken over a cupboard and stores all her treasures there. It is known as her 'stash'. If you can't find something it is most likely there.

Mini Piwi made some paper plate valentines cards which were later used to decorate the fridge after Miss K put her copy work there.

 The kids made felt toys for Perry the cat. I had previously punch holes in the edge of Mini piwi's felt so she could use a plastic needle and yarn to stitch around her one.

 Miss K blanket stitched her one....I'm pretty sure Mr Perry will be happy with his gifts!

 Mr Perry had decided not to eat the wet food Piwi Daddy had purchased in a case of 24 last week. I was going to take it down to the local Petco and donate it. Miss K had a better idea and to wrap them up individually for the cats at the local rescue center we visit frequently. The Piwi's aren;t old enough to volunteer but they are allowed to the adoption events and hang out with the kitties. We are going to take the gifts down over the weekend and give them their valentines gift.

 Tonight we made decorated chocolates. This time it was just melted chocolate. The food processor didnt come out like last week's recipe for 'old school chocolate'. Last week's cacoa nibs are probably preferable though as this red colored chocolate was near flourescent!

They were supposed to be for Valentines dessert but this plateful disappeared pretty much as soon as I took the picture. Thankfully there are still plenty!

Mini Piwi chilled out after the chocolate with Splat the Cat new Valentine book

Happy Valentine's Day from the Piwi's!

Fish bowl dessert

This activity was part of our P is for Pet week theme.

Mini Piwi learnt about a goldfish habitat by making a fun dessert. In the morning we made up some blue jello with canned mandarins. The Piwi's didn't know what it was for, they were just happy I was letting them have Jello (mean mama lol!). I surprised them with this set up.
Blue Jello (water), Mandarins (fish), crushed cookies (gravel), goldfish (extra fish), mini choc. chips (fish food).

 

 

 First into the 'tank' went the 'gravel'(to filter the water and to look nice)

Next we added the 'water' and the fish.I explained we couldn't add a lot of goldfish because they needed room to swim around.

 Just a pinch of  'fish food' so the fish don't get sick

 

 Yummy Fish Tank!

 

I used this fish tank site for reference.

 

After our snack Mini Piwi finished up fish day with some sorting.

 

This is the from the Mail box Theme Kit: Beach & Community Helpers (Preschool). I got it on sale at the Mail box site and it continues to a favorite.

Shared with the new linky party....

Monday kid corner