Culinary Arts

A lot of our home schooling happens in the kitchen.  I have always wanted to learn to make homemade tortillas and finally set my mind to it.  They are actually pretty easy, although a little time consuming, but the taste makes up for the time spent making them.

Homemade tortillas taken to a whole new level, taco salad shells.  These are baked over quart size canning jars.  Healthy and yummy.

We have never really liked things that are flavored with curry, but I hate to give up on something so rather than write off curry forever, I decided to make my own curry.  It was fun, beautiful and a keeper, everyone liked it.  I used it in an Indian dish.

The kids join in on this project, making bread bowls for soup.  It was their ideas to try the jars and it worked great.  Plus, the potato corn chowder was a great way to use up all those potatoes and corn from the garden.

Tres Leches (3 milks) cake made for a baby shower.  It was melt-in-your-mouth wonderful.

First Days of School

 It's that time again, fussy baby or not...school time!
Part of getting ready for school this year was yet another face lift for the school room, this time with color and new shelving.  Here are the before and after pictures of our custom designed and built school room.

On the first day of school the kids woke up to find their school books and supply kits along with homemade chocolate zucchini muffins.

Seth is ready for the first day of school, wearing a onsie that says "Too Cool for Preschool."

Seth is also modeling our stack of read aloud books for this year.

While weeding the carrots we found this cool looking caterpillar and researched to find out that it will become an Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly.  We put the caterpillar in a jar and in a couple of days found this cool chrysalis.  In a couple weeks we came home to find this beautiful butterfly.  Unfortunately we missed seeing both transformations, but it was still good science to see the stages that a butterfly goes through.

In the book "The Witch of Blackbird Pond," the girls worked on their sewing, needlepoint and knitting each night so we decided to learn a little bit about these arts.  Krystal is learning to crochet.

Clarissa works on some needlepoint.

This is the flower that Clarissa made.

These are some headbands that I crocheted by watching a tutorial online.

Bridge Building

Today was our kickoff for our history and math Mondays.  We had a bridge building activity where we talked about how to bridge the gap between history and the gospel and then built bridges using different materials.  Liam, Amber and Krystal worked together in a group to build their bridge out of legos.

Cailin, Clarissa, and Delaney built a bridge out of marshmallows and toothpicks (it held just long enough for the picture).

Connor and Jared built a bridge using playing cards.  It held just fine, but wouldn't bare any weight.

Janet and Beryl were the master bridge builders with their bridge of straw and tape.

Then, the older kids worked on finding ingredients for cookies from the scriptures, we wanted to show that the scriptures are a great resource and can help you with many aspects of life, even making cookies.

Putting together the ingredients for our scripture cookies!  We hope to have a great year studying Early American History and the other world events that happened during that time period. 

A Summer Shakespeare Project

This summer the kids worked with some of their friends to put together an adaptation of Shakespeare's, "The Taming of the Shrew."  One of the things they did to adapt the play besides cutting it shorter was to make it a western.  Here is Jared at Peter (originally known as Petruchio) with his servant Greg, riding into town to look for a rich wife.

In the meantime, we meet Clarissa as Bianca, the sweet and virtuous daughter, Cailin as Katharina (or Kate), the Shrew and their father Baptista.  Baptista explains that although Bianca has many suitors, she cannot be married until her older sister Kate is married first.

Kate and Bianca fight (they loved this part).

Peter is introducing Horace (formerly known as Hortencio) to Baptista as an archery teacher in disguise whose real intent is to woo Bianca.  Peter has made a deal with Horace that he will help Horace to get Bianca for his wife and he himself with tame Katharina and have her for his wife and all her riches.

The kids did a dance to "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountian" before the wedding of Peter and Kate.

Peter shows up to the wedding wearing this ridiculous costumes and explains that Kate should be happy to marry him, not his clothes.  This is only the beginning of his tactics to tame this shrew.

Bianca with her Father Baptista.  What Baptista doesn't know is that all this time, Bianca is falling in love with Luke (or Lucentio) another suitor in disguise.

All the servants waiting for Peter to bring his new wife home.

Amber and Krystal were two of Peter's servants who helped to bring Kate food and water upon her arrival, which Peter quickly sent away to keep her humble.

Bianca and Luke are studying, "The Art of Love."

The shrew is tamed and comes back with Peter to prove that her love is more true than that of Bianca's and Luke's as she has learned to obey her husband and live Happily Ever After.

The whole cast, they did a wonderful job!  We are so grateful for Christine and her efforts of re-writing the script and directing these talented Thespians.

Old World, New World

 For presentations this month, Jared decided to give a presentation for his Reptile and Amphibian Merit Badge.  He was supposed to present the facts about three different reptiles or amphibians and he chose, the Horned Toad, the Frilled Lizard and the American Alligator.  He was very creative about it and pretended to be an officer presenting the facts for these three suspects which were at large. 

 This was his rendition of how the frilled lizard runs.  It was pretty funny.  We also watched a video of the frilled lizard running, which had everyone laughing.

 Clarissa was inspired by our studies of the New World explorations and the Ancient Americas.  Jaguars were important to the people of the Ancient Americas and she wanted to know the difference between a Jaguar and a Leopard, so she studies that and presented the identifying marks of the four great cats: The Jaguar, Leopard, Tiger and Lion, all of which are part of the Genus Panthera.  One interesting thing we learned is that there is really no such thing as a black panther, it is either a black jaguar (if it's in the New World) or a black leopard (if it's in the old world).

 Krystal gave a short report about William Shakespeare.

Then we did a short Reader's Theater called "Which Shoes do You Choose," it was really cute.

Protestant Reformation

Today we learned about the Protestant Reformation and the effect that it had on religions around the world today.  We talked about the different men who were part of the Reformation like Martin Luther: known for his 95 theses, William Tyndale: translated the New Testament into English, John Wycliffe: new teachings differing from catholic church and translated Bible into English, and John Calvin: wrote many commentaries on the Bible and taught teachings differing from catholic church.  We also talked about the role of the printing press in making the Bible accessible to the world and not just the priests.  As our activity, we did potato printing to get an idea of what printing would have been like, not quite as easy as typing these days, but still easier than copying everything by hand.

It's Safari Time

On this beautiful spring day, we took a break from our normal school schedule, met up with some friends from our LDS Homeschool group, and went to the Ft. Chiswell Safari Park.  We spent the first little while in the petting zoo where the goats were very friendly and seemed to think they were human. 

Then it was time to load up on the Safari bus.  The bus took us on a tour of 45 acres to see animals from 6 different continents.

One of the first things that happened is that an ostrich reached it's head right into the bus and stole Amber's cup of food, then while I was trying to help her get more food, another bold ostrich reached it's head in on the other side of the bus and dumped Jared's food all over his lap.  We learned pretty quickly to guard the food as the animals were not at all shy.

Krystal is looking on with trepidation, not sure what this ride will bring, but glad to be with her friends.

Amber and Liam are happy to watch the animals from afar, but are a little more cautious when the animals stick their heads in the bus windows.

I had to help feed the animals or the kids would have lost all their food, but they enjoyed seeing the animals, like this water buffalo, come right up to the bus. 

 The ostriches were very bold and obnoxious.  They tried to take everyone's food and with those long necks, you really had to watch them.

 Cody the American Bison was rather large, but very gentle.  He would just hold his mouth open and wait for you to pour the food in.  Amber still seems a little nervous about him being that close though.

Then came the camel.  He was not at all shy and really had the whole bus in an uproar of either crying or laughter.  He was very big and very friendly.  Most of the kids enjoyed petting the camel and trying to avoid being slobbered on.

 

 

 Clarissa and Cailin were two of the ones in fits of laughter over how close the camel kept getting to them.  By the end, everyone was really having and good time and realized that the animals were just fun.

 There were some more calm animals to see as well, like the turtles and the zebra.

 Once we were done with the bus ride, we spent some more time at the petting zoo.

 These are mama wallabies with joeys in their pouches, but unfortunately they wouldn't show them off.  Jared enjoyed feeding peanuts to the monkey and the monkey enjoyed trying to catch them.

 Clarissa's favorite animals were the pigs.  She saved some of her food from the bus to feed the baby pigs, but the mommies wouldn't let the babies get any of the food.  We all had a great time with friends and animals alike and enjoyed being out in the beautiful weather.