Homeschool - Women's History Month

Olivia finished Volume One of her Math book.  She has become very proficient at adding and subtracting numbers and can count all the way to 100!

Each day of Women's History Month, we used great books to learn about amazing women throughout history.  Our first story was about Anne Frank, the brave young Jewish girl who lived in hiding during the Holocaust.  

We got our bodies moving in the morning with A-Z exercises.  Simon joined in.  They loved doing this!

 We learned about different food groups and designed meals including them.  Olivia practiced classifying foods into their respective groups.

Simon developed an affinity for playing with PlayDoh.

We read the book, "Rosie Revere, Engineer" and used her project book to make our own catapult out of an empty spool, some ribbon, and a plastic spoon.  They really enjoyed shooting cheerios across the room!

One of their favorite activities this month was playing restaurant at their very own restaurant called, "Soup, Salads, and More."  They set up their table, made their own menu, cooked in the kitchen, and served the customers.  One of my absolute favorite parts of homeschooling this year has been watching both of their imaginations blossom.  A year ago, Nolan would have NEVER agreed to dress up in an apron, make a menu, and wait on pretend customers, but he was so, so excited about this.  I'm so proud of them.  The best part for me, aside from watching them play, was getting to sit there and drink my coffee!

We talked about women who have made an impact on the food industry, including Julia Child and Ina Garten.  We also watched episodes of their cooking shows on youtube.

Another favorite was making our very own newspaper, The Timber Heights Times.  We got the idea from an episode of Sesame Street and decide to tie it in with our Women's History unit, making the paper centered around Women Heroes.  Nolan wrote a great article on Harriet Tubman and helped me write our opening article on Women's History Month.  He also wrote a great feature piece on the Lear's Macaw for World Wildlife Day and made an adorable comic of Lucille Ball working at the chocolate factory in her iconic, "I Love Lucy" episode.  Olivia helped me research the weather to write a weather column, as well as an article on jaguars.  Both kids helped to make chocolate chip banana bread for our cooking column and I made a crossword puzzle featuring some of the she-roes we studied.  It turned out beautiful and I'm very proud of them.

Livi has been getting ready for Easter by practicing egg hunts.  She and Nolan have taken turns hiding eggs for each other and finding them. 

The weather has been nice and the snow is gone.  The kids have been spending a lot of time playing outside. So thankful for the early spring!

I felt really proud of my kids in this moment, so I took a couple of pictures to capture what great humans they are.  Olivia volunteered to help me wash dishes and cheerfully and carefully washed all of the breakfast dishes with minimal help.  Meanwhile, Nolan read Simon his favorite truck books without being prompted.  These kind, caring kids warm my heart.

Here is our completed Women Heroes board, displaying all the women we studied this month.  There are obviously many, many more, but we learned the names and stories of so many women who changed the world.  I loved doing this unit with them!

Syrup

 

Despite it being the third year of syrup making out at Timber Haven, this was the first year our family really got to be involved in the process.  With Simon finally able to walk around and the pandemic more under control, it was fun to be able to be out in the woods, helping to harvest the sap from the many maple trees out at the cabin.  

Each tree is tapped with a small metal spout with a large blue plastic bag hanging on it to collect the sap as it runs out.  There were about 170 trees tapped this year.  We had a warm early spring and the sap ran well, sometimes filling the bags in a day, even to the point of overflowing!  The four wheeler and side-by-side were equipped with large tanks and the blue bags were poured into the tanks, using a strainer to ensure no moths, bees, or debris made it into the tanks.  The tanks were then emptied into the large storage tanks by the sugar shack, waiting their turn to be cooked.  The cooking was hard this year - it was extremely dry and windy, making it nerve-wracking to have a fire out in the woods.  Because of this, we cut our season a little short and didn't collect all we could, but still plenty for our family.  In all, about 1,450 gallons of sap were collected, yielding about 33 gallons of tasty Timber Haven syrup.

It was really fun to be out in nature and enjoying the woods.  I love opportunities to work outside and it was fun that our whole family could do it together.  Simon liked "driving" and eating snacks, and the big kids were great helpers.  Miles loved the opportunity to run along side the four wheeler and be part of it.  He is the perfect dog out at the cabin.  I think our whole family is looking forward to next year's syrup season and enjoy the result of our hard work every time we have our pancakes!

Mom's Favorite Oatmeal Pancake Recipe:

1 1/4 cup oatmeal

1 cup yogurt or applesauce

1 cup milk or almond milk

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

Combine oats, yogurt, milk, and vanilla, Stir in dry ingredients.  Add eggs. Cook on griddle. I usually double the batch to feed our family of five. 

Serve with maple syrup, homemade jam, or berries with whipped cream