Beginning the 18th Century Study

We are halfway through our first week of study on the 18th century. So far things are going well. Here is what our weekly plan looks like:

Math (individually) Monday through Thursday

Language: Monday is Bible dictation from Matthew 5:14-16. The rest of the week, they are working on memorizing this verse. Tuesday is copywork from the Mayflower Compact. Wednesday through Friday we work on their individual spelling lessons from All About Spelling. Because we are using a more unit study approach, this is all the dedicated language we are doing. However, there is more writing and reading included in the rest of their work.

Monday through Wednesday are focused on history, and Thursday and Friday are reserved for science. Our unit study is called A Journey Through the 18th Century. I have scheduled three weeks to get through this study. This week is covering the slave trade, the French and Indian War, Daniel Boone, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere, American Revolution, Patriots, and Loyalists. Yes, it seems pretty quick, but it is just an overview. We will go into many of these topics more in depth later.

We are also using Drive Thru History America: Foundations of Character. On Monday, we just watched the introduction. This is a 9 week study. Also on Monday, we read from "A Child's Story of America", chapter 7 Royal Governors and Loyal Captains. It went very well with our reading today from First Course in American History. We read Chapter 13 on Nathaniel Bacon. Yes, I know this was actually in the 17th century, but the events were essential to the understanding of the Revolution.

My favorite resource so far is George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster. It is quite a long book, so it will take us the full 18 weeks to get through it. The book looks at the life of George Washington, and then gives a snapshot of others that lived alongside him. I can't remember how I came across this book, or who I got it from. But thank you to whomever it was. This week, we read about when George Washington was a boy. The others we read about were Daniel Boone, John Adams, John Hancock, Abigail Smith (Adams), Pontiac, and Benjamin West. I can't wait to read this one again next week. I also just noticed another book by the author on Abraham Lincoln. I'm going to have to see if I can find that one before we get to the next century.

Our science lesson is from God's Design for the Physical World: Inventions and Technology. We will study the telegraph and Samuel Morse. (I have an older edition, but you can see the newest edition here)

In the evenings, we are doing our Bible reading from 1 Samuel. We are also reading a story of John Wesley.

So far I am very happy with the plan. I still have tweaking and weekly planning to do as I go. I also am going to be looking for some more readers and maybe some movies or shows from the library. I hope maybe all my hard work and planning, can help some of you, and make your planning not as difficult. I am putting links to many of the resources I am using. Note, that I am in no way compensated by or associated with these companies.

Focus on History

People complain about how messed up the world is today. They say, "It's getting so bad." Yeah, the world is messed up, but it's not a new thing. Pick up any history book and start reading. In fact, start at the beginning. Just read the book of Genesis in the Bible. Wow, that is beyond a PG13 rating there. However, there are also many good things happening today and in history. We need to appreciate the good, and learn from both the good and the bad.

I heard a rumor that my current state of residence no longer feels it is important to teach about the American Revolution in schools. That doesn't really surprise me. Why would a government trying to gain more control of the people teach about the dangers of a government with too much power?

I spent two days this week, trying to figure out our school plan. I have been so frustrated with trying to teach history. I can't find a curriculum that covers everything in a way to make it stick. I liked using Mystery of History. It was a great overview of the time period, but I don't think it went in depth enough. I was left wanting more. I like the concept of My Father's World. It lays out plans using tons of books and even living books. However, I just didn't like all of it. What to do? Create my own plans. I love the way unit studies incorporate so many different subjects and elements into them. I also love living books. I love adding movies into our studies. I haven't completed my plans, but came up with an initial plan that we will start on Monday.

It's been nearly a year since my last blog post. After hearing about the non teaching of history, and my planning days, I feel inspired to get back to it. As we go through the plan that I've created, I'd like to share it with you. Maybe it can inspire others who have been sharing my frustration with finding the right fit for our family. Let me start with my overview.

About halfway through my first planning day, I had my light bulb moment. First, I had to set a goal. What is it that I want to accomplish? My oldest is in 7th grade. I have grand thoughts of a 4 year plan of attack for high school, starting with ancient history in 9th grade. Therefore, I need to get through our current cycle by May 2013. I calculated that gives me 15 months to get through 3 centuries of history. Fifteen is fabulously divisible by three. That gives me 5 months per century. I spent the rest of my two days planning out the first segment. We are studying the 18th century (aka the 1700's). For you history buffs, you know that encompasses a ton of information. The key is narrowing down what to cover. I will post more about our specific projects and lessons as we work through them. I'll share all the good, bad and ugly of it. I'm sure, as usual, some of it will go great, and we will struggle to keep up with some, and we'll probably have some utter failures too.

To my friends: Right now, I am very excited about this and really want to share and post about everything. I give you permission to hold me accountable. When my excitement starts to wane, I need to continue to post.

Pancakes

I tried to come up with a really cool alliteration for the title of this entry. However, these pancakes were so good, I just couldn't come up with a fitting "P" word to describe them. I have been experimenting with different flours lately. I have this great grain mill that I was only using for grinding wheat. I felt like there was so much more that I could do.

Not long ago, I got some oat groats and started making oat flour. If you don't know, oat flour has a very low level of gluten, which can be either good or bad. In a scientific sense, gluten is what makes for good yeast bread. It makes the dough sticky and respond properly to the yeast. Different kinds of grains, even different kinds of wheat have differing amounts of gluten. Therefore, oat flour, because of its low levels of gluten does not make for great yeast bread on its own. I can be great for quick breads, cakes, or muffins that use baking soda/baking powder. I thought it would be fun to try in pancakes. I started with a combo of wheat and oat flour. I followed the recipe exactly, just substituting oat flour for part of the wheat flour. They tasted fine, but came out more like crepes than pancakes. The batter was way too runny, and they did not fluff up at all. It was a very good lesson in the texture of oat flour and how it works.

That brings me to last Friday. I've been wanting to try spelt for quite some time. Spelt is an ancient variety of wheat. It has a higher level of gluten than oats, but for some people that have a gluten intolerance, they are able to tolerate spelt, I've read. The problem with spelt is the cost. The same bucket of wheat that I can get for around $40, costs about $100 for spelt. Definitely not something I want to pay for on a regular basis. However, I did want to try it. I splurged for a small one gallon bucket, and it came in on Friday. I decided to give it a go making pancakes again. I mixed it with the oat flour to make a nutritionally packed pancake. I had no idea how they were going to turn out, or what they were going to taste like. However, taking my lesson from my first attempt with oat flour, I changed the recipe a bit to adjust the amount of liquid. The pancakes came out really light, fluffy, and delicious. DH and I are both very particular about how we like our pancakes. However, those particulars are very different. In this case, we both agreed that these pancakes were fabulous. The 12yo said, "For some reason, these pancakes are really good." The picky 8yo, who doesn't like much of anything, ate them without complaint.

The Recipe:

• 2 cups spelt flour


• 2 cups oat flour


• 2 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder


• 6 Tbsp sucanat


• 1 tsp sea salt


• 4 eggs


• 2 cups almond milk

I also added a smidge of vanilla and cinnamon. I can't tell you how much though, because I didn't measure.

For those of you who don't have a grain mill, you can buy both spelt and oat flour at the store or health market. The next day I also made bread substituting spelt for 1/2 the wheat in my normal recipe. The bread came out really soft and yummy. I am starting to think that spelt may be worth the splurge.

We Interrupt This Program

One of the most fabulous things about homeschooling is being able to tailor the program to exactly what each individual child needs. Some days that means we need to stop what we are doing and work on something totally different.

For example, with my 12yo, we actually use a combination of two different curricula for math. He LOVES Life of Fred, and actually doesn't fight me to do math as much. He doesn't love the math, but the story and the way the book is written. There are also limited problems each day. However, sometimes we get to a topic where he just needs a little more practice. That is when we pull out the Saxon Math and practice for a few days, or sometimes longer. Saxon Math is a great curriculum, he just does not love ALL the repetitiveness and many, many problems. Therefore, the combination of the two seems to work the best for him.

This brings me to the challenge of the day. My 8yo is still at a tender age where he is not ready to handle all the information in current events. I do not watch the news in my house, and only discuss with them what I think they are ready to handle. I read my news from multiple sources, so as to try to get the full story and find out what all sides think on an issue. I had not discussed with them the tsunami or the situation in Japan at all. However, my parents were over for lunch yesterday. My dad brought up the tsunami as a topic of conversation. The 12yo was very curious and wanted more information. That's great. We discussed this with him and answered all his questions. After lunch, the 8yo went to his room and was crying. I had no idea what was wrong. It took me quite some time to get him calmed down enough for him to tell me what the problem was. He was scared that a tsunami was going to destroy America. It took me about half an hour to explain thing to him. I thought he understood and was fine after that. Around 8:30pm, he came into my room and said, "I will not be able to sleep. I think a tsunami will destroy America at night." Sometimes it is a very good thing to be obsessed with science. I just happen to have "Our Planet Earth" and "Our Weather and Waters" that I picked up from the Creation Museum when we were there a couple years ago. I knew I wanted to do them someday with the boys, but we hadn't got to them yet. Well, today's the day. We have been studying Swimming Creatures. We interrupt our regularly scheduled swimming creatures lesson to break into studying geology and weather. I'm thinking a trip to the beach may be required to fully study the waves too.

"Green Eggs and Ham"burger

I am not Irish. Well, at least I don't think so. Not that that really matters. St. Patrick's day is really more of an American celebration of a non-Irishman who happened to go to Ireland. Of course, if St. Patrick saw how he was being remembered by most, he would probably be very broken hearted. That is not really my point. My point is that I don't like corned beef. I'm not all that crazy about cooked cabbage either. The kids, however, like to do a little celebrating of the greenness of St. Patrick's day. Therefore, I decided to give St. Patrick's day a little Dr. Seuss flair, since we missed his birthday a little more than a week ago.

"Green Eggs and Ham". I'm sure you can already guess the multitude of problems I have with that. First, ham is a severely processed meat that is not part of my balanced diet. Second, I am trying to avoid any kind of artificial food coloring. The first problem was an easy one, I just turned ham into hamburger. The second problem was pretty easy too. I just added some lovely green vegetables. The eggs were not really green. They were still very yellow, but the dish as a whole was a lovely green color. I probably could've baked it and turned it into a quiche, but I didn't think about that until just now. Oh well, it was a very delicious meal anyway, and my 12yo actually ate his green vegetables. That hardly ever happens, unless I mix them into a smoothie. The 8yo did not eat it, but that doesn't surprise me. He is still in that phase of not eating anything. He had an apple, some grapes, and some baby carrots for dinner.

How I made the green eggs and hamburger:

1. brown 1 lb of ground beef, remove from pan
2. saute about 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a green pepper both finely chopped (the smaller the better in my opinion)
3. add in a bunch of kale, cook until wilted which only takes about 30-60 seconds (I prefer to just use the leaves for cooking. I hear the stems are good for juicing, but I just fed them to the rabbit. He's got to eat too. I have been blessed with an overflowing of kale lately, from a friend's garden. I have been looking for creative new ways to use it. This was perfect.)
4. In a bowl, whip up about 6 eggs with whatever liquid you would normally add to make scrambled eggs. I also added a bit of sea salt and black pepper. Add this once the kale is wilted. Cook until eggs are well scrambled.
5. Add beef back into pan, and mix well, just making sure everything is warm.

After it was done, I thought it would be good on a tortilla. Of course, I didn't have any. I wrapped mine in lettuce instead. The 12yo just ate it with a fork, covered in ketchup. The important thing is that he actually ate it. DH at it in a very large bowl, adding a dash of cayenne pepper. His sense of smell and taste are not very good. Therefore, he prefers to eat things that are on fire.

I had a difficult time coming up with a green dessert that didn't involve artificial color of some kind. I finally found some directions online for natural food coloring, so I decided on chocolate cupcakes with a mint frosting.

Chocolate Cake/Cupcake Recipe:

1. Mix together 1 3/4 cup fresh milled flour (use soft white wheat for cakes, or if you are buying the flour you can look for whole wheat pastry flour, or if you prefer all-purpose flour will work too), 3/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt
2. In a separate bowl, mix together 2 eggs, 1 cup milk (I used almond milk), 1/2 cup grapeseed oil, 1 cup honey. Add to dry ingredients.
3. Mix for about 2 minutes.
4. Slowly add in 1 cup of boiling water. This will make the batter really runny. It's ok, it's supposed to look like that.
5. Bake at 350*F for about 25 minutes for cupcakes, 30-35 minutes for cake

For the frosting, I read that you can mix in about 1/2 of an avocado to get a nice green color. Start with 1 stick of butter, beat until fluffy. Mash the avocado and mix in with the butter. At this point, I added about 1/2 tsp of mint extract. Add powdered sugar about 1/2 a cup at a time. You can add in a little milk in between, if necessary. Keep adding until you get the desired consistency. I think I ended up using about 2 1/2 or 3 cups of powdered sugar. It came out a lovely off white color. It was so not green. Not even close. So, I caved and added a dash of green food coloring. Oh well, I will try again with something else next time. On the bright side, it did get my kids to eat avocado. I may continue mixing it into the frosting just for that purpose.

Chicken Coleslaw Wraps

This one started as a crazy post online. I said, "What can I make for dinner with a head of cabbage and two leftover pieces of chicken?" Here is the surprisingly tasty result.

What you need:
2 cups shredded red cabbage
2 cups diced (cooked) chicken
1 cup diced apple
1 cup red grapes, halved
1 diced jalapeno pepper
1/2 cup organic yogurt
1/4 cup mayonnaise (I made that from scratch too, but you probably don't want that recipe. It wasn't too good on its own)
1 Tbsp lime juice

Combine cabbage, chicken, apple, grapes and jalapeno in a large bowl. Stir in yogurt, mayo, and juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper. I don't think it needed any, but hubby had to add some.

We had this on fresh ground wheat tortillas. It would also be great wrapped in butter lettuce. One day, I would love to figure out how to make a spinach tortilla or something like that.

For dessert, we had tortillas. Brush tortillas with melted butter. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 10-12 minutes.

Banana Muffins

My son has been begging for banana muffins since last week. I made blueberry muffins one day, and he liked them a lot, but said that banana muffins would be even better because of how much he likes bananas. I don't exactly have a recipe for banana muffins, but I was able to adapt my mom's banana bread recipe, with a twist.

4 bananas
2 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
2 cups flour (I use fresh milled soft wheat, but am going to experiment with some different grains next time)
1 tsp baking soda

Mix together liquids first, then add flour and baking soda. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Then I topped with a crumb topping of hemp seed coated with cinnamon and nutmeg. Bake at 350F for about 25 minutes. It made 18 muffins.