Ah, I feel so domestic when I make these, in an old-fashioned cooking-on-the-hearth kind of way. Pita bread is one of those very rare things that I did well the first time I tried. It was back, oh, around 12 years ago, right after we became Orthodox and soon after I began regularly baking bread. The recipe was even 100% whole wheat, which I didn't do back then. Back then if 1/3 of the flour in bread was whole wheat, I was baking whole wheat bread. Anyway, I made this absolutely scrumptious pita bread and took some to church for a potluck. We were attending an Antiochian Orthodox Church (translation: lots of Arabic people) and the older ladies just raved over it. "But why are you calling this 'pita bread'?" they asked. "This is *Arabic* bread!"
This bread is pretty easy to make, but it does take some work. It's made a lot easier if you have a baking stone. You bake the breads right on the stone or on the oven floor if you don't have a stone. Which means a lot of bending into the oven to put the rounds in or flip them or take them out. But the results are scruptious with butter and honey, or tomatoes and cheese, or falafel (we had so many fava beans in our CSA box this spring that I tried making falafel with fresh favas....with delicious results) or even just peanut butter and jelly.
Zachary begged me to make him a number line. Or, *another* number line. He's been fascinated with the concept ever since I introduced him to number lines probably a year ago. He wanted a *big* one this time, so I made one that continues over hte whole page, with four lines in all. It goes to 109, and he's been busy writing out problems for himself to solve and then solving them.
And Hibi made a foray into the land of cooking today. She's of the "cookbook? who needs a cookbook?" ilk. And this time it came out alright! She made carrot soup.
There's our homeschool day. I like blogging about days like this, because I feel like a successful homeschool mom! ;-) I probably won't blog about the days when we're all at each other's throats and we sit around eating junk food.
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3 comments:
The pita looks yummy! We've been making lots of flatbreads on the grill this summer. I bet pita on the grill would be good...
What's a number line?
I'll bet pita would be good on the grill! We don't have one, though. Got rid of ours when we went veg for lack of use. Sometimes it'd come in handy, but not so much that we'd keep one around when we don't even have a good place to grill....
A number line--didn't you use them in school? In its simplest form, it's just a line with numbers, like from one to ten. 1, 2, 3, etc. You can do a problem like 2 + 3 = ? by going to the 2, then counting 3 spaces to the right, and you end up at 5. Just another visual to help learn math, like using counters like M&Ms.
A fun thing to do with number lines is to make patterns with them. What you need is a number line in the form of a hundreds chart. Graph paper makes this easier, or you can find published ones. Anyway, have ten squares going across, and ten squares going down. Label them 1 to 100, with 1 through 10 going across the first row. Each row will be its own decade. In other words, the second row will go up to 20, the third row will go up to 30, and so on.
Okay, now the fun part. You can do this with any multiple, but my favorites are 9 and 11. Let's do 9s. Color in the 9, the 18, the 27, and so on up through 99. Voila! The child (and you--homeschooling's fun for the grown-up too) gets to SEE the nines tables! Some people call it skip-counting. It's so much fun doing these patterns, that they kept our oldest son occupied for hours one day. You can do skip-counting, or equations. The point is to be able to SEE the pattern. Great for visual learning.
I suppose you could make this tactile, too, by gluing something onto the squares, like macaroni or beans or sand. Then when it was dry they could have fun running their fingers over it with their eyes closed. And every child likes glue!
Another thing kids like is turning the hundreds chart into a game board. They can make this simple or complex. Think of games you've played for ideas on rules, card decks, chutes and ladders, or whatever. The kids can even have fun decorating a really elaborate board if they want to. They could make this thematic based on a favorite book, too. Lots of fun possibilities.
--Suzanne
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