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.

Exploring countries and cultures week 4 - United States

 I found this great site that has done all the work for me for our weekly memory verse, I am having #1&#2 do the coloring page, #1 doese the copy work the next day, then dictates the next. http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/bible_memorization.html

We used out giant floor size usa puzzle from last year, and it went together so much quicker since we have been memorizing the locations of all 50 states.

 This was a fun activity where using only 4 colors she had to color the states without 2 of the same colors touching, she only had one mistake and caught herself and changed it midway.

 for an american craft we did quilting, the non sewing way lol. They had fun making these cardboard quilts.

 In science we got out the national geographic tree guide again and #1 looked up trees and drew their leave.

 learned a little about the flag, really a review from last year, but we will do this for each country we study

 Testing of the 50 States, I gave her a list with all the postal abreviations on it and had her label.  Thanks to our music lesson on geography songs she was able to do this relatively quickly, I did one too, and mixed up 2 of the states but not bad, I am sure I would not have done nearly as well a couple of weeks ago.

one of the books we use for science, Living World Encyclopedia has great issustrations, #1 can pick something intersting and add it to her nature/science journal/notebook

 of course with everything we study there is food, my kids love to bake and EAT lol, since we have been trying to eat a little better around here, we have been sharing our treats - we made Mountain trail mix that #2 took as her snack to MOMS group.

We then made this New England Pumpkin bundt cake YUM!, we made it on our night for dinner with the grandparents, so we could share(I then made it again as pumpkin bars to take on my day to bring treat to MOMS and then gave away many of the leftovers)

Other things we did this week include finishing up the first section of Kingdom Tales, Tales of the Kingdom #1 really likes this and understands it way more than I thought she would.  In bible time we have been reading from Hero Tales , we learned about Moody.  We read a book called  The hundred Dresses and we are still working on Betsy and Tacy go over the hill.  I am sure we did lots more, but since I am catching up I can't keep it all straight.