Monday, September 2, 2019

Studying Native Americans, Visiting Alaska, Batting Practice, and Life in General



We still have softball in full swing, although the season is winding down.  This week both games were cancelled, so we are practicing a lot!!


The girls are working on Models.  In Science we are starting the Prentice Hall Earth Science textbook for the year.  The first chapter is on how scientists study the earth.  Their assignment was to build a model that they could use to study a subject.  Lydia made a model of a sunflower from the sunflowers we picked last week.


The state we visited this week is Alaska.  We watched the two Aerial America specials, and also State Plate.  We had a seafood meal and made a specialty of a bakery in Alaska called Two Sisters Bakery.  It's a chocolate bread.  It is basically a doughball with chocolate chips baked inside.





Baked fish, crab cakes and some sort of a crab cake in a shell.  I'll be honest, I cheated this week and bought prepared foods...lol.  Heat and eat was my motto for this state meal..lol


I love these books.  Combining drawing and geography together.


I got a scratch off map from Amazon.  So the girls will take turns mapping our adventures across the United States the next two years.


We were able to borrow the Woodlands Native American basket from the local History museum and go through the replicas.










We attended a living history demonstration at a local history museum.  We got there a little late and missed some of it, but very interesting what we saw of it.  This museum used to be the county's poor farm.  So lots of interesting stories from the residents.




You could go into the old ice house.  This was interesting to see.








I want one of these to use in my kitchen!











We are learning about Chopin also for music.  One of his favorite foods was poppy seed cake.  So Caty prepared a recipe from our music book.



She really liked this, and it must have been good.  There was none left after the first day.


Caty's edible science project was souffles.  This was a mess nightmare!!!  She also did not like the cheese souffle recipe.  She wants to try these again, but as a sweet recipe.



Lydia finished up her poetry study with Lightning Literature.


Lydia is working her way through Daily Grams 7 for grammar/writing practice.  I'm hoping to let her start writing her own fiction story soon.  We will need to definitely use a word processor to get this done though.  She still struggles with writing extensively.  So we will work around that.

Caty's cooking experiment this week was homemade pasta.  Almost everyone really liked this.  So this will probably be something she makes again.




She served the cooked noodles with meatballs and gravy.


I'm trying to incorporate as many local library programs as I can over this year.  Several of the libraries are stepping up and offering lots of programs for homeschoolers now.  So this is very exciting.  Without attendance though, they won't offer them. 

We went to a nature program on wolves.  Caty LOVES wolves.  So she was pretty excited to see a real wolf this close.






Measuring her had next to a paw print.


Caty's picture was on the Napoleon Library Facebook page for her reading award.  I swear the only thing she did all summer was read.


Still a couple more weeks of softball to go.  Season is winding down though.


On Friday we took a long road trip to the southern part of Ohio to go with our Native American lessons, to the Serpent Mound.  This is an effigy mound, and the largest known one in the world.



There is a tower you can climb to see it.  So neat to see.  I haven been wanting to come here for almost 15 years.



A little friend joined me for a bit.




The coil pattern in the tail.



Next the kids got to choose our next stop.  They had a choice between a hands-on Native American village or Loveland Castle.  They all chose the castle.



It was very neat to see.  I'll be doing a separate post all about this hidden gem in southern Ohio.

After the castle we went to a brick oven pizza restaurant near the castle.  They all gave it thumbs up!


Saturday we went to a very cool bridal shower for a friend's son.  It was a cake and canvas.  They have a thing for pineapples, so we painted pineapples.  This was very fun to do!



We had a full week, which has led us to a very FULL September.  Lots of adventures to come up this month.

Hope everyone had a great week!!  See everyone next week!!


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