Adventures in U.S. History Week 6

Prep this week was fun. I noticed in the teacher’s manual this week that we needed a glass bottle for science. Since we don’t keep any around the house, I ordered a pack of root beers on our grocery pickup order. Naturally, we needed ice cream to make root beer floats. It was totally necessary for the school process and highly encouraged.

Our new Bible theme is “Jesus is the Bread of Life.” We read about the feeding of the 5000 and manna from heaven. The boys made a communion craft from our Craft2Learn Adventures bundle. The craft had our memory verse printed on it.

We used those necessary root beer bottles to experiment with yeast. We noted that yeast needs sugar to produce the carbon dioxide necessary to blow up a balloon. It did not work with salt.

We also read a cute little book called Sun Bread and made a loaf of Sun Bread. This would be an adorable project to do during the cold and dreary winter months because that is the setting of the book. The first week of August doesn't have us longing to see the sun, but we sure enjoyed playing with the dough.

Our History reading was about the settlers of New Netherland. We made Pilgrim Butter by shaking small jars of cream.

It has been a while since we have done this and I forgot just how much shaking is necessary! I read a book and they listened to their Patriotic and Latin songs while they shook the jars. This jar is all three of the butter jars combined!

After the bread had time for a second rise, Dad helped the kids pop it into the oven while I went to pick up groceries. When I came back they had a beautiful bread creation. The Pilgrim Butter went great with the Sun Bread. Turkey went well with it, too!

Big Brother worked on his latch hook project for handicrafts. It is a Christmas project and I am not sure we will finish by then.

We started The Courage of Sarah Noble this week and have found it to be a fascinating read. Dad, Middle Man, and Little Sister went to grandparents to work on Dad’s car. That meant that Big Brother and Mom had a weekend together. We went hiking at our normal state park, but decided to try the trail that we have not explored yet. Mom did not realize that it was nothing like our normal trails! We ended up deep in the woods like Sarah Noble. It was a great time to talk about how to “keep your courage up.”

Dad and the Littles came home in time for us to cook up our next Raddish Kids kit. This month was themed after Japan. Dad has a friend that lives in Japan, so we talked a lot about him and what he told us life was like there. It was also a great reminder to pray for him.

We made Udon noodles, sushi, and teriyaki chicken. The sushi was not a hit, but we loved everything else.

Also, in preparation for week 11, Big Brother helped me come up with a letter to email to all of the state governors. I spent two afternoon quiet times filing out forms requesting travel guides from each state last week. We taped a blank U.S. map next to our wall map and each time he receives mail, Big Brother has to find the state on the map and color it in if it is a new state.