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

No More Quiet Time

I have always thought it sounded trite to speak of “falling in love with Jesus.” But trite or not, isn’t that what I want for my children? To learn to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). With that in mind, and having run across this blog post on Pinterest several months ago, I created a morning devotion basket for the kids and I to use. You see, up till now, I would typically find time to read the Bible and pray away from my children. Away from distraction, away from the demands of dust and dirty dishes, and away from the 437 questions a four-year-old asks every day. Then I realized I was doing them a major disservice by disallowing them to see me in the Word regularly. If I want them to love the Lord God, then I must show them how I love the Lord my God! Our new routine is to wake up in the morning, prepare a simple breakfast — usually cold cereal for the kids, toast and tea for me — and sit d...

Fall SWAP progress

I finally have some progress to report on my Ottobre SWAP. There are actually six garments finished, but I only have pictures of four of them so far. You can see that the brown Maya blouse is lacking buttons. I didn't have anything suitable in my stash, so I'll "have" to go find some at JoAnn's. I'm thinking something to match the medium pink in the trim, but we'll see. I almost never buy buttons...I usually always make do with what I have on hand. The cream Maya blouse is made of a vintage pillowcase I picked up at Goodwill a while back ($0.50). It carries that oh-so-fresh smell that I love on my pillows and is super soft. I have a bit left that I'm going to hoard until just the right project comes up. I'm delighted with how dressy the little skirt came out! It's made of chocolate brown stretch velvet. Miss M thought it was great fun to pet it like a kitten. Modeled by the lovely Miss M...and just before naptime (what was I thi...

She Made It!: the Get to Work Apron

This weekend Miss M decided she wanted to sew something. I was elbow deep in a sewing project of my own, so I told her that if she wanted to sew, she would have to do it all by herself. I set up my old sewing machine on a little table for her and answered her questions, but otherwise she did all the work herself! First, she picked a project from Sewing School . (affiliate link) She choose the Get to Work Apron. It's a cute tool apron that helps you carry your tools or supplies with you while you work. Then she picked some fabric from my stash. She cut out the paper pattern and traced it onto her fabric with a piece of chalk. (We had to have a little talk about placing your pattern near the edge of the fabric and not smack-dab in the middle!) Then she cut out her pieces and pinned them together, right sides facing. At that point I gave her a piece of plain white printer paper to practice sewing straight lines on. ...

CHRISTEPHI

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