Expedition Earth: Israel

Here we come Isreal! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Shalom! Paint and tin foil transformed into a couple Dome of the Rocks.

Agents H & E defending their sukkah. It's a shelter used at the end of harvest. They snacked on some homemade almond cookies (I'm nearly out of vanilla thus the almond) and Agent H played us some after snack music (he doesn't play yet but it was pretty).

A few other things we did (all links are on my Pinterest board):

We watched

-a clip of the Israeli version of Sesame Street

-some kids do traditional Hebrew dance & a local Israeli dance team

-how to build a shofar

Read and learned about Petra.

Baked pita bread (well it's on today's to do list)

Looked at Israeli cloths and carpets that a traveling Arab salesman sold to my Grandma years ago.

Here is a link to my Pinterest Board for India.

A few late added photos:

And an Israeli game similar to tic-tack-toe.

Our pita and an embroidered napkin from my Grandma T's supply.

She's up and crawling

A quick break in all the geograpy to announce that Shortcake is up on all fours and moving forward! She is one happy girl!

Expedition Earth: India

Here we come India! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Rolling out our clay and setting stones for our mosaics.

A visit from Ga brought special items to admire as she gave an account of her visit to India.

A look at the globe,

An Indian child's practice bow & arrow,

An ornate jar with perfume,

A fan,

A toy ball,

Yards and yards of fabric . . . all tucked in place.

We studied the formation of mountains (Mount Everest in particular). I love how Netflix usually has a little something that I can show the kids. This time we watched a bit of National Geographic: Everest, 50 years.

Youtube was good for some clips on henna and then National Geographic again for footage on peacocks. One of my favorite places to share with the boys has been Operation World. We go there for each country and we watch a beautiful movie about the country and learn how we can pray for them.

Okay, the food . . . We smelled curry but that's as close as we came to anything authentic. The Kid's Multicultural Cookbook recommended macaroons so I made this recipe and dipped them in chocolate. They were delicious!

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for India.

Expedition Earth: Japan

Here we come Japan! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Wood block painting by Agent H & Agent E (printables found here).

Our meal: the main dish was fettuccini alfredo (ahem . . .not so Japanese), but I also served rice balls from The Sneaky Chef, and tea in little tea cups. Mostly we went for ambiance with this one. The boys and I cut paper lanterns, EH strung the white lights and found an Asian station on iTunes. Paper fans that the boys made decorated their plates. We bowed lots and repeated "Konnichiwa" over and over. :) As we were half way through with the meal, Agent H said "These are the best manners I've ever used!". It was accompanied by a great slurping noise as apparently that is considered polite in Japan.

Dessert! My inspiration for candy sushi was found at Not Martha. I don't recall the last time I bought anything made by Hostess. Yes the boys have been dutifully informed that it was terrible for us. So now they ask "what's the name of that stuff that is SO terrible but is SO tasty?" Twinkie honey, twinkie.

Here is the link to my Pinterst board for Japan. I really wish we had gotten around to the Samurai hat and sword!

Art Appreciation

Art appreciation casual style. I laminated this pocket frame and stuck it to the bathroom mirror. Every couple of weeks I switch out the work of art (from Child Size Masterpieces and put a new descriptive label on it. Goodness knows they spend enough time in there, might as well have them absorbing something. Oh that reminds me, awhile ago I took a photo of something else I'm doing in the bathroom. Inside the cupboard door (across from the throne :) ) I hang posters. For a while we had the books of the Bible in there. Right now the presidents are up. Just another way to soak in information.

Expedition Earth: South Korea

Here we come South Korea! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Yep that's pretty much it for this week. Well we did do all the reading and mapwork that came with the curriculum but it also happened to be the first week of our homeschool co-op soooooo it was a crazy week.

Expedition Earth: China

Here we come China! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

An Asian sensory box. This is more for The General but the other kids have fun exploring it. It includes RICE, plastic white tigers and panda, fortune cookie messages, red pom poms, chop sticks, bamboo spoons, a special fabric case with a carved ivory stamp.











Practicing Chinese characters 1-10 and their names (and whatever that is that Agent E is working on).

A guest story teller (who happened to bring Dilly Bars - YUM!) Thanks Grandma!

We're kind of a taco & pizza type family so I'm trying to expand our culinary experience through this geography study. :) Here's our Chinese buffet done in a way that I hoped it would be eaten. Honey-glazed chicken wings (The Kid's Multicultural Cookbook), chicken broth with chinese noodles, egg rolls (store bought), and fortune cookies.

And finally our Wall of China (sculpted out of all the mixed together colors of Play-doh, time for some new doh)!

I'm keeping a collection of online resources to share with the kids on Pinterest. Here's a link to my China board.

Shortcake in the morning

Shortcake in the early autumn morning sunlight. A beautiful breath of heaven!

































8 months

Catching up on posts

I've been going through iPhoto again trying to catch up on some posts. Here are some links to posts I've post-dated:
Shortcake napping
Agent H's birthday
Summer 2011 Vacation
The General's birthday
Shortcake meets Great Ga

Facepainting again

The General requested "A tiger . . . ROAR!"













































Agent E requested his usual, a superhero. Oh how he loves that blue cape Grandma made for him!

Agent H's book challenge

This summer we set a goal for Agent H to read 100 books. He took to the challange and won. The way he loves to read there wasn't really any question that he would. We rewarded him with the set of his choice from the Lego stash a friend passed down to us last year. He also completed the library's reading chart of 20 hours so his name was placed on a book plate in a library book.

Intro to World Geography

This first week we broke in our new assingment folders, cracked open our new workbooks, started reading some new story books, and did a general study of the continents with our Expedition Earth curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

"Excuse me Momma, I need help with my stickers."

Story time at the kitchen table. Keeping hands busy with some pop art beads.

For our Intro to Geography, we played with our continent hop cards from Spell Out Loud.

Made our "Me on the Map" from Counting Coconuts.

Painstakingly dipped & layered for our paper mache' Earth . . .

. . . which, um, didn't turn out.












Even Shortcake got in on the geography studies.

Oh the pies! How could I forget the pies! Over the weekend we read How to Bake An Apple Pie and See the World and of course I baked an apple pie (and a cherry for Papa). Yum! I just found myself wishing we still had some around. . .