Adventures in U.S. History Week 22

I got a bit behind in my blogging about our weekly Adventures! I'm going to catch up now because I know there are lots of other homeschool mamas out there looking for ideas and inspiration in their own homeschool adventures. I hope to stay caught up after that!

This week we learned about George Washington Carver. He was an African-American scientist who developed hundreds of uses for peanuts, soy beans, pecans, and sweet potatoes. His innovations were a great boon to southern farmers. To honor his contribution to history, we made sweet potato pie.

Miss M mashing sweet potatoes for sweet potato pie.

The recipe was included in our Teacher's Manual for Adventures in U.S. History by My Father's World. And oh, my stars! It is so good!!

Delicious sweet potato pie!

We learned about why a body needs a head and why Jesus is called the head of the church. The human body is one of Miss M's favorite subjects and she spent several hours pouring over human anatomy books. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of that part of our week! And we didn't get around to making a quilt to go with our study of covered wagons, but that's okay.

At the end of the week we took a trip to the county fair! Miss M and I had each entered some items. Last year it was so hot that we didn't go to the fair at all. It was a much more tolerable temperature this year!

This is about as good a family picture as we're able to get these days.

The first thing we did at the fair was to visit the exhibit room. I always enjoy seeing the variety of items people enter! One year I won first place for my loaf of yeast bread…of course, it was the only entry in that category! You just never know what there will be from year to year!

Each of Miss M's items received a ribbon! A blue first place ribbon for the skirt she made.

A red second place ribbon for her Get to Work Apron. She said she thought this one would win first place and was surprised that the skirt did in stead.

And a white third place ribbon for the Hello Kitty figurine she painted with her Nana.

Hubby's parents went to the fair with us and in typical grandma fashion his mom started bragging on Miss M to any stranger who happened to be standing nearby. It's always so much fun to enter items into the fair!

Afterwards we rode some carnival rides. Miss M and I made the mistake of riding the Spider Octopus. Our mismatched weights caused the car to spin out of control the entire time so that we both came off it a bit green. Hopefully that's out of her system for a while. At least until she's a teenager, right?

It was mostly a week of the same-old, same-old. We're chugging our way through the murky middle section of our school year. But we have some really fun and exciting weeks coming up! Next week we get to Missouri…the one Miss M has been waiting for!

Our adventures from previous weeks:

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6,

Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12

Week 14, Week 15, Week 16, Week 17, Week 18, Week 19,

Week 20, Week 21

The rest of our adventures:

Week 23, Week 24, Week 25,

Week 26

MFW ECC: What's different this time around?

I am so excited to go through Exploring Countries and Cultures again. The last time my kids were so little -- 3rd grade and Kindergarten. And now they are in 5th and 8th grades! They have grown so much over the past five years. As I began to think about our plan for this year, I realized two things: 1) my gifted eldest child remembers just about everything we covered in ECC the first time, and 2) my younger one hasn't had many of the basics that ECC covers. So I was faced with a dilemma -- how do I adjust ECC to suit the very different needs of both children? How do I shift the focus for my 8th grader to aspects of ECC that she hadn't spent time on before (such as types of governments, imports and exports, etc.) while also taking my younger child through the more foundational information that he missed when he was just a kindergartener? ECC is designed to be parent-led, family learning, with a supplement for 7th and 8th grade. But I came to the conclusion that I need to deco...

Review: Seed Starting by Gary Emmett (an ebook)

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Hawaiian Sweet Rolls

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