Exploring Countries and Cultures week 9-11 - Brazil

 Here Molly is playing her Brazilian flute we made using out Global Art book

 We had a field trip to our local fire station - "we know a guy"

My Friend is the wife of a fireman and she arranged a the field trip for us and a couple of other families at church who teach their kids at home also.

 Cooking in Brazil - we made these tasty treats and the meat stew and as a side note the girls also talked me into buy a chocolate bar at Aldi's the other day because it said "Ecuador chocolate on it"

 In math we have been doing some measurements with grams, ounces and what not, so we got the scale out - actually the scale DH uses for our Awana club to weigh cars.

 We made these MAF planes after Finishing our read a loud Nate Saint in the Christian Hero's series from WYAM

 an animal puzzle book I picked up this summer - Rain forest page

 Our experiment with arches and eggs to see how strong they are

 13 books and I think if our eggs were closer in height it may have held up much longer

 Making an anaconda for art. The kids have now named it Anna and it looks like she is here to stay for awhile.  It's 2 wire hangers unbent with a sheet wrapped around it and then painted, so it's now bendable. From Global Art

 we experimented on how birds feathers have oil that keeps them dry by running paper feathers under water, on sprayed with oil first.

 The highlight of our school year so far!!!! This is a friend of mine from Bible study, I knew she had been a missionary in Eudora at one time and lost her husband at the time in a plane crash.  I invited her over to lunch to share with us about her time in Ecuador.  AMAZING - she met her late husband while serving as a missionary as a teacher to missionary kids in Ecuador.  He grew up there the son of an MAF pilot, became a MAF pilot.  Well not only that but they knew Rachel Saint personally and actually called her aunt.  She has also met Elizabeth Elliot and had pictures of Acua Indians and shared some amazing stories about the people and how her and her husband would fly in and stay the weekend with tribes.  She then showed us pictures of the Shell Mera house/Nate Saint house.

 Some more geography vocab cards

 we didn't have any Brazilians to color, but while in South America we did a brief study of Venezuela.

 I don't need to do this, but I have been testing at the end of each area and #1 got all the SA countries right!
I know we did other things and read great books, but since I haven't been very timely in my posting I have since forgotten.

Exploring Countries and Cultures week 7 & 8 - Canada

 Our Canadian feast - we used the book Eat your way around the world to make Maple Chicken and blueberry crisp - they also had a recipe for wild rice, but I had some brown & wild rice blend at home that we made.  I love this book, the recipe's are all just a few ingredients and easy to make.

 #1's Inuit soap carving from Global Art, it's a puppy dog .  We learned all about the Canadian Inuits and read a book called Tikitak or something like that.

 We learned, but did not memorize the Canadian Providences and Territories due to lack of time, but the Geography songs cd had a song for this on it.

we are learning John 3:16 in the language of the countries we are studying.

 We did leaf stamping with a maple leaf

The girls have been coloring pictures of kids around the world to decorate our classroom, I usually do a read-a-loud while they color.

Our favorite part of Canada was probably reading Anne of Green Gables and then watching the movies, we only read book one, but would love to read the whole series in the future.

Exploring Countries and Cultures week 6 - Mexico

we made paper flowers

 we tried yarn art - it bombed, the kids got board and sticky with glue so they never finished

 we made Mexican smoothies - banana, milk, vanilla and cinnamon

 we had our first field trip - to the apple orchard

 #1 did a cheerleading clinic, and she cheered at the Merrill Football Game

 We ended our stay in Mexico with a Fiesta, I made homemade tortillas and we had a kinda taco bar.

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 we broke open our pinata

we had a couple of friends, plus grandparents and Aunt and Uncle over to celebrate

Exploring Countries and Cultures week 5 - Mexico

 Well the passports arrived and so it's a go, we boarded a plane and headed to Mexico

The girls packed backpacks for a carry-on.  As their flight attendant, I served a mid flight beverage and snack, but was begged for a meal, I told them that you only get a snack, it's not first class and then they begged to be in first class.  They ate lunch on their airplane trays.

 a little introduction to Mexico

 #1 read this book and then drew a picture of the volcano.

 More geography vocabulary cards

 The start of our pinata, thank God for good weather to work on this outside.

a little mexican food from Burrachos - my favorite!

Well that was our week, we learned about Harriet Tubman in Hero Tales and have been playing the geography game, wow I can't believe how much I don't know.  We each have a map of North America and draw cards with country names on it and then have to place a marker on the country, trying to get more correct than the other player.  I bet by the end of next week though, we will both be able to label a map of North America Correctly.