Week 6- Going Colonial

    This week we spent more time in Colonial America. We learned about New Amsterdam and the Dutch colonist that settle in modern day New York. Yesterday, the girls got a work out making butter. Today, we made maple wheaten read from a colonial recipe in a very good book I found at our library called  Hasty Pudding ,Johnnycakes, and Other Good Stuff: Cooking in Colonial America by Loretta Frances Ichord. Written in simple language with fun facts, my girls have enjoyed it, and I think we'll try some other recipes next week, too.

Butter in a jar :The girls were amazed that this really worked!

Yang kneading our maple wheat bread.

I had to attended a class for work on Wednesday, so Daddy handled school on Wednesday and tackled both science experiments in one day. The pack really got a kick out of it. Hands on stuff has been much easier this week thanks to Hulk and Taz starting school. Both boys love going and are tired when they come home leading to decent naps times. ;)

 I have decided to list our favorite book basket books each week to give some ideas of book my girls truly enjoyed perusing and reading. Our Colonial Selections so far:
Going to School in Colonial America by Shelly Sateren
The Dreadful,Smelly,Colonies: The Disgusting Details About Life in Colonial America by Elizabeth Raum ( This has been a huge hit. Who knew they used corn cobs as toilet..umm outhouse paper?)
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Doctor & A Day in the Life of a Colonial Sailmaker by Laurie Krebs

Again we've got other books in the basket, but these three have really caught their attention and held it enough that they've chosen to read on.

Independent reading this week:
Ying finished I Survived The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 by Lauren Tarnish, and started I Survived The Battle Gettysburg 1863 by the same author. This is a newer series,  featuring boys and some of the more catastrophic  events in US History... Shark attacks, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.... They have really caught her attention. reading level is on par with Magic Tree House. We are just glad to get her reading again after our problems last year. 
Yang finished I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor 1941 again by Lauren Tarnish and has moved on the The Bad Beginning in the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. She seems to be doing well with it. I have found lots of good online reading guides for all the  books enabling me to have discussions with the girls even though I am not reading parallel right now.

    Primary Language Lessons and I are just not jiving. I have tried for 2 weeks now to get going with it, but its just not happening. The dictation and memorization pieces are just not for us. My girls are in the audition phase for our winter musical at church and have plenty to memorize and speak. Doing the musical in front of 1000 people is going to count for our public speaking. Dictation is going to wait another year. Just not what I want to work on. So, I have started to piece together some basic language arts stuff on my own. At the end of this week we started talking about nouns and identifying them. I plan to continue nouns next week, then move to verbs, and then show how you need both for a complete sentence. They have been informally taught this over the past 2 years but I figure for our writing to improve we need a better knowledge of structure.  We'll see if I am off my rocker or not... As always pray for me because Lord I know not what I do....

Thank you Lord for the boys enjoying school and the peaceful atmosphere its provided for the girls to focus. Be with us Lord and guide us along the path you have laid out for us. Do not let us turn left or right but boldly step forward on the narrow road. In Jesus' name. Amen.

P.S. Our Ship has made the long journey from St. John's and ironically is moored off shore waiting to enter the port of New York.