Busy day

I am so terribly disappointed in T. We were studying his words all week and when I tested him on Friday, he knew them all. When I pick him up from Chinese school, I find out that he did not complete his test. It was sitting on his desk. When I asked him what happened, his teacher tells me that T told her he didn't know the words. What?!? Of course, he knows the words. I just tested him on them. His teacher is letting him re-take the test next week. I told T that he is lucky that he has such a nice teacher. Another teacher might have just given him a zero. Sigh. We're going to have to do a lot of studying this week...

On a bright note, today was a very productive day. Since everyone is sick (not that that is a good thing), we stayed home and skipped soccer class. We had a nice breakfast and then proceeded to hang out in the kitchen. I set T to work on practicing writing some Chinese words that he was supposed to know for his test. While he was writing, I was asking him the words and their meaning.

I was planning on baking with the boys. While I was prepping, I had L sort cookie cutters by color. He had fun doing that. In fact, he repeated the exercise a couple of times. Then he counted how many cookie cutters he had a color group. L has always wanted to help me "cook." I wanted to make his pumpkin muffins. I thought this was perfect opportunity. L went to wash his hands. Hygiene is of utmost importance when cooking! I had pre-measured all the ingredients. And as I named the ingredients, L would pour it into the big mixing bowl. Then we mixed it all up. L had a blast! He wanted to eat his pumpkin muffins right away! He climbed into his seat and asked for his muffins! Ummm....L, you have to wait for them to bake?!??! As the first batch was baking, I realized that I left out the vegetable oil! Yikes! So before making a second batch, L got to try his pumpkin muffins. He thought they were yummy. So I guess he wasn't missing the vegetable oil. So here is the complete recipe. I used canned pumpkin. And of course, L's gluten free flour and egg substitute. You can also put nuts or raisins in them. I baked them at 350 for about 20-25 minutes, until the toothpick comes out clean.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 cups real pumpkin (If you are going to use canned pumpkin then it is 1 1/2 cups of canned pumpkin and a 1/2 cup of water.)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt

Tyler read Elmo Says Achoo! We also re-read Count Your Way through Egypt. We discussed more about Egypt and T added some facts about Egypt in his Social Studies journal. I made paper pyramids for the boys.