What Has That Chicken Woman Been Up To?

Let us see..... I have been busy getting back into the routine of teaching my boys on a daily basis.  Lisa did move back to San Antonio with her mother for awhile before heading out to California. 

This week's classroom focus has on been on getting Saenz passed long division using a calculator and without.  Knowing how to work an answer depending on just what information the problem given is a fine art / language.  For example: does the question ask for an answer with a remainder, carried to 3 places to the right of the decimal place, converted to a fraction. This means basically, I have not only been teaching him how to divide but to pay attention to directions, break down a problem into parts, order of operations, and how to double check his work. 

Zephyr can now recognize about 50 printed words with some accuracy though, he will not sit still with a book.  So my next stop will be taping up index words all over the house and making a game for him to learn primary reader words and how to spell them.  Otherwise, once we get passed the reading issue I can then move him into the first grade.  Not too bad considering this his kindergarten year.  He is already tackling double digit subtraction, addition, and single digit mutiplication -- I teach along side the basics.  I learned this lesson the hard way with Saenz's difficulties in learning the multiplication.

Now onto gardening and cooking:

We have broccoli and this is my second cutting -- remember Egg Pie?  Today, I added cut leaves of the broccoli to our diet.  Yeppers, I said the leaves and have cut them up and placed them in my trusty crock pot of chicken noodle soup complete with carrots, onions, lots of garlic and heavy whipping cream for extra body.  Did you know you can eat the leaves of broccoli?  When I was getting ready to take the broccoli heads, I thought it is such a same to waste such lovely greens.  I got the idea from remembering how the Cretans used to walk the roadways and pick wild greens.  So I doubled checked to ensure the leaves are not poisonious like tomato leaves. 

Thanks to all those who wished us speedy recovery.  Though it is now cold and icky outside; we have gotten rid of the cold that was giving us such grief.  Can you believe in the 30s in Hawter than Hades South Texas?   Oh Yeah, I will be stopping by to visit all you folks seems I have let blogging slide a bit while I got us back on track. And a Big Ole Howdy to my new followers...thanks for stopping by.