Advent Calendar

We are way behind in posting things we have done in school. But in the interest of keeping the focus on what's important...we are just going to jump in with our current project!

Yesterday, one of my children asked me why we have a Christmas tree. It dawned on me that we hadn't talked about traditions from other countries for a while. I did this as a homeschool lesson when they were younger, but not recently. Now, maybe they just wanted to sample food from other countries again... ;)

...but either way, I decided it would be a fun way to review Europe since we just wrapped up the Renaissance. This should make for a nice clean start in January. So while my family takes a country by country tour reviewing our history lessons, and enjoying some Christmas traditions from those countries, I am going to share some activities that you can do with your kids in the traditional Advent Calendar style. I hope we all have fun!

Middle Eastern Feast Night

Super did a fantastic job of preparing the food for our feast! Phil said he thinks Super may be a master chef in the making! We even added a few things to the menu.

For our appetizers, we had a mixture of nuts and dried fruit, pita bread, hummus, and garlic stuffed olives. The boys loved the hummus. I thought it was awesome that the nut mixture had both pistachios and pine nuts in it. It seemed unusual to find a mixture like that in the grocery store. It had some basic nuts like almonds too.

For the main course, we had beef kebabs, couscous with split peas, fried eggplant, and the cucumber and yogurt salad. Tutone really enjoyed the eggplant, which was funny since he was wrinkling his nose at the name of it before dinner. But it was really spicy and anything spicy is right up his alley. Super liked the beef kebabs that he made, but he wasn't too into the couscous. He thought it had too much curry in it.

For dessert, Super made a banana date nut cake. We are still waiting to digest so that we can try that!

Tutone was very thrilled about the idea of reclining on pillows while eating. Now that I think of it, that was one of the things he enjoyed about our feast last year as well. As he patted his belly during the appetizers, he announced that he felt good to be in his "natural state". I think he meant with his stomach being filled and relaxing at the same time. He's a weird kid. But you've got to love him!

Persian Breakfast

We started our "Sultan Saturday" with a Persian breakfast. According to the websites that I read, breakfast in the Middle East is "the most relaxed meal of the day." I am all for that on a Saturday morning. So after a leisurely start to our morning, we ate breakfast late around 8:30.

Our menu was...

Fruit Salad - bananas, oranges, and dates
Pita bread and goat cheese mixed with garlic and herbs
Yogurt

Tutone loves dates. Super isn't into the idea of fruit "salad". He likes his fruit to be separate.

After breakfast, Super started working on his Banana Date Nut bread that we will be having for dessert tonight. I am sure that when he has prepared it, he won't mind that the bananas and dates are touching each other. ;)