Scorpion sighting

The starts of the rains (late October, but picking up momentum in November) brings a variety of critters out of the ground.  We had this little visitor in mid-November.  We also had kumbi-kumbi (plump termites that local people like to fry up as a snack), one snake in the yard/garden, a variety of beetles, and a ton of flies.  If it ends up being the same as last year, hopefully these guests are mostly limited to the beginning of the rainy season and shouldn't be bothering us too much longer. 

Some friends (THANK YOU!!!) sent us a small UV flashlight which makes scorpions easy-to-spot.  Their exoskeletons glow in the dark!  We were able to try it on this one and have given the flashlight to our night guard to use in the yard/garden at night.  We've also heard that chickens are expert scorpion hunters, so maybe that's why we haven't seen more.  Last year we had 3-4 (only 1 inside) and so far this is the only one we've seen (also inside).

Thankfully scorpions are pretty easy to kill-- a basic old navy flip flop took care of this one!  A word to the wise... don't ever use a hammer to kill a scorpion.  We made that mistake in Musoma and the scorpion exploded!  We were finding bits of exoskeleton for days! 

A good reminder to wear shoes in the house, though.  Especially in the evenings!

-JLR

UK Week

(side note: I have another 2-3 posts in the works as soon as the internet will cooperate and load pictures.  Keep checking back for new stuff in the next week or so!)

North America.... check.  South America... check.  As I started to plan for our unit on Europe I noticed a little problem.... they forgot the UK!  Well, not forgot completely, but it wasn't one of the 3-5 main countries we'd focus on.  Since we are on an international team and more than half of the expats in our little town hold British passports, we decided it was worth a bit extra planning.  Not to mention that we spent more than three weeks in the UK (London, Oxford and a little village in between!) in 2009 and have such fond memories of our time there.

My friend Cat helped me brainstorm some additional activities and we came up with some good stuff.  We had extra activities in geography, maths (yes, they use an [s], art, music, vocabulary, literature, and cooking.  Some of my favorites were the 34 terms we collected and made a matching game.  Things like the boot (trunk) or bonnet (hood) of the car.  Or plaiting (braiding) your hair. 

We picked a book by E. Nesbit as our read-aloud for the week.  The Railway Children.  Have you read it?  There's also a film (movie) to go with it.  So we planned a UK dinner-and-a-movie night.  Cat came over and helped Micaiah make Toad in the Hole (sausages cooked in a batter).  We filled out the meal with some mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, and baked beans.  They also made scones, which we served with jam for pudding (dessert).  It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed discussing some of the things we learned that week with all of our guests!  

The challenge spelling word we picked was "monarchy."  This was the sentence Olly and Cat helped us come up with. :)

Cat gave Micaiah some heart-shaped UK flag earrings.  Micaiah loved them!

Using scales to measure flour.  It's not a normal thing for Americans-- usually we use cups to measure flour, not grams or pounds. But it made for a very good math(s) lesson!

She loved mixing the scones dough with her hands!

A little light kneading... nothing this girly can't handle. :)

Working with Cat to make scones and Toad in the Hole.

Our UK night party with our friends in Mpanda.

This is what Toad in the Hole looks like.  It's normally made with proper sausages, but we substituted hot dogs... gotta make do with what we can find here!

-JLR

Canada Unit

This week we started our Canada unit, and Micaiah was really excited!  We lived in Langley, BC for almost two years while Tim finished his MA in Linguistics (2009-2011).  Consequently we have a lot of friends and a great church family there!  So in honor of the first day of our Canada unit, Micaiah wore her special shirt.  We talked about hockey, maple syrup (a conversation stemming from a discussion about the flag), sang the Canadian national anthem, talked about the loonies/toonies, learned the provinces/territories, and discussed some of the special wildlife (like bears and moose) in parts of Canada.  We even talked in exaggerated Canadian accents!  The only other thing I would have done if I'd had the ingredients was make some Nanaimo Bars ... mmm...

And in case you're wondering, no, we weren't making fun... we were reminiscing about our time in Langley and it made us miss living there.  Micaiah and I both spent a good part of the morning in tears as we remembered our friends, thanked God for the time He gave us there, and prayed that we will have the opportunity to go back, visit, and catch up with them all again soon, Lord-willing.  We have been blessed to have developed such close friendships in such a short time, and we know that was a gift from God.  So this is a shout-out to any of our Langley friends if you happen to be reading this... we miss you!


-JLR
ps... if you're Canadian, what else am I missing that is essential either to your region or to Canada as a whole?  We have one more week of study and I'd love to include your ideas into our lesson plans somehow if possible!

World Cake

Homeschool is fun for a lot of reasons.  But one thing I really love is the surprise activities I randomly find mixed into our curriculum!  At the end of week two, our fine arts assignment was to bake and decorate a world cake.  It was tempting to skip it as I thought through all the work of baking a cake from scratch (no cake mixes out here) and making our own icing (which involves sifting down the super-chunky "powdered" sugar and using precious butter).  Not to mention the fact that we've cut down our sweets quite a bit, and having a cake around is just too tempting!  But I figured out a work-around for that, too. (see below) 

And honestly, I just love making edible art.  My Grandma taught me most of what I know, and the rest I've just experimented with on my own.  She sometimes struggled with a shaky hand, so as a teenager I remember going over to help her with the text... I loved those special times with Grandma! 

Micaiah chose white-on-white, our family's favorite.  One twist is that we love to add almond extract to the icing.  Growing up, I was convinced that all good icing tasted like my Grandma's, which had a heavy almond flavor.  To this day, if you tell me otherwise, I won't believe you.  Almond is the best with white cake.  Period. 

Anyway, back to our cake day...

Micaiah did all the measuring and mixing

 The cake fresh out of the oven. My original plan was do bake the cake in a bowl so we had a hemisphere to work with, but the bowl I wanted to use was cracked and the only other one I have that size is plastic.  Plus, then we'd have to decide which hemisphere is the best---North? South? East? West?  We live in the South/East but are originally from the North/West... we wouldn't want to have to choose.  So it worked out in the end.  We decided to go for a flat map, modeling it after the one in our atlas.  In retrospect we could have trimmed the top and bottom to make it closer to the right shape for this type of map, but it's only second grade...

Sorry there aren't more process pictures.  We were both consumed with the task, I suppose!  First I free-handed the outlines of all seven continents (as we reviewed them).  Micaiah wanted to fill in the continents, which is admittedly much more fun.  We did the same with the five oceans as we reviewed them. 

The final result... we did pretty well, I think!  Plus it accomplished its purpose of helping us review the continents oceans. 

 And then just for fun, we attempted a population map. Totally not accurate, but a GREAT excuse to add sprinkles!  And the oceans got blue sprinkles to help them be physical maps (showing depth)... much easier to remember the different types of maps when you have sprinkles to help you!  And no, I wasn't even going to ATTEMPT a political map!!

It tasted great!  mmmm... almond butter-cream icing.... :)  And to avoid eating it all in one sitting, after we had each had a small slice, we cut the rest into individual servings.  We separated them with small pieces of waxed paper, wrapped the whole thing up in waxed paper and plastic wrap, and popped in the freezer.  Done.  Not staring me in the face, and we could pull it out a piece or two at a time as a treat.

Not a bad way to review maps, continents, and oceans, is it?

-JLR

School-Related Posts

Welcome new readers!  If you are looking for updates about our school adventures, you can find them at the following links:

On to Second Grade!

The Chalkboard

The School Room A picture tour of the school room.
Back-to-School Excitement Some of my school-related musings...

Otherwise, feel free to look around and even glance through our archives.

Thanks for stopping by!

-JLR