Week 1: Kids' Summer Bible Lesson & Zucchini Macadamia Muffins

Thought I would try to chronicle our way through our learning adventure this summer. As I mentioned in the previous post, we are working this summer to show the love of Christ to others. We have several ways we are planning to do this....two are featured here. The photos were taken over a couple of days during this first week of summer break (although daddy is still hard at work with high school students still in school).

Our muffin this week is the Zucchini Macadamia Muffin. Just Benjamin helped with it this week....while JonJon snoozed away. Our goal is to bake muffins every Monday and share a batch with friends and another with someone we don't know very well (maybe a new neighbor or whatever). 

Master egg-cracker....look at the intensity in the expression!

Grating Zucchini....I fell in love with zucchini bread when I was in college and went to Hickory Street Cafe way too much with all of my friends. We all just got the Zucchini Bread sandwich...two pieces of the bread encasing a whole lot of cream cheese. Um, wow.

These muffins turned out pretty yummy!

Zucchini Macadamia Muffins

2 cups grated zucchini (about 2 zucchini)

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 (heaping) tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped macadamia nuts

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 dozen muffin (spots?) in tins with paper liners.

Combine zucchini, sugars, oil, and eggs in a large bowl and mix until combined. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Fold in nuts and extract. Divide batter between muffin (spots?). Bake until a tester inserted in the middle of each loaf comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes on wire rack. Remove from tins to storage...or to tummy. Makes 3 dozen.

We surprised some sweet friends with a batch....the boys thought this was great! They are already discussing who next week's recipients will be. We ended up ruining the last batch by refrigerating the batter in between bakings....so we just had the one batch to share (and since Daddy was home on Monday, one batch mysteriously disappeared). Next week, we are planning on doing a Lemon Ricotta muffin and already bought the makings for three batches....just in case.

We also did our first Bible lesson this week. Since we are Showing the Love of Christ, I chose a Servant Heart lesson that I found here. This site was chock-full of great resources and lesson plans that I am hoping to make a dent in this summer with the boys. 

We covered the basics (I tried to keep it simple) and the boys really loved it.

We had our memory verse (pictured above). The boys would earn a quarter when they memorized (I use that term loosely with the three-year-old) or could recite the verse back to me. I know it sounds odd to "pay" kids to memorize scripture, but when a certain red-headed friend told me her parents did this when she was growing up, I was sold! (And if you know who her parents are, you know why I was sold!)

The money is actually going into little buckets I made for each of the boys...at the end of the summer it will be donated to....well, somewhere. (Still working on some details and thinking of things as I go).

We had a small (and I mean small) craft. Just pulled out some paper and put something together....no frills on this one since I still need to make a HobLob run to get a few more supplies.

But they really enjoyed the craft. We also read (from one of their children's bibles) the story of the good samaritan. I was hoping to try to do another lesson this week, but time has gotten away from me so it may be one lesson per week from here on out.

I emailed out my lesson plan to a couple of friends this Monday, if you're interested in the lessons, I'll be happy to include you on the email list, just let me know!

I posted photos on Facebook from our visit with David's parents over Memorial Day weekend. Since we just used phone photos, I am now having a hard time getting them from FB to here. But, a fun time was had by all! From picnicking to playing, the boys really enjoyed hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa Pecos.