God Created...Mountain Ranges

While we have are studying North America the girls have been getting used to what kinds of information you can find on what kinds of maps. This week the girls used play dough, moms really rough drawing of North America, and a physical map to make the mountain ranges in North America.

The girls had such fun and actually chose to take the play dough off when they were done and draw some pictures that were representative of the countries on their map such as, a tree to represent all the forests in Canada, a sombrero in Mexico, a whale in the ocean, etc.

Well, all vacations must come to an end and we have been dutifully working on our regular school things for the last 2 weeks.

Last week Peanut began learning about "greater than" and "less than". We are using Abeka Math this year for her (after trying both Saxon and Singapore last year). Abeka seems like a great fit for her. Alas, she has not had the easiest time memorizing her math facts and I will admit it is a stress for me. She suffers with "math-itis" just like her mom does. When we get ready to work on math facts her poor eyes glaze over and she is absolutely terrified. While the facts give her problems, the actual process seems to come pretty easily to her.

Abeka describes the "greater than" and "less than" symbols as little bird beaks eating their food. Since Peanut is such an animal lover, she immediately took to the idea of using a bird to describe this math concept. As a matter a fact, I had to take a picture of the drawing that she made. If you look carefully you will see that the largest bird is "momma bird and momma bird is taking the number 52 (which is the food momma) and dropping it down to baby bird." The next picture which her arm is covering actually showed the 52 in the baby bird's beak. "Then the 52 goes into its throat, see it here momma? Then the food moves to its belly!" Thank heaven she didn't show me what happens after it moves to its belly!

We ended our week (and our study of Mexico) with a fiesta! We had been studying Mexico for 2 weeks and to end it the girls made tissue paper flowers and decorated the dining room. Mom tried her hand at making homemade tortillas (which turned out really good!) The leftover tortillas got re-heated in the pan and sprinkled with some cinnamon and sugar. Top it off with freshly harvested honey and mmmmmmm! We also broke out the crystal punch bowl that has never been used and filled it with Hawaiian Punch and fresh strawberries and grapes. Thanks Rene who insisted we use Maraschino Cherries as well! The girls had much fun preparing the fiesta for daddy!

Ahhh, the Water....

Is there any better way to spend a day than relaxing at the beach with your kids? We completely enjoyed the day we spent in the Chesapeake Bay. We saw Jellyfish, lots of shells and sea glass.

Here, the kids caught a jelly fish in a bucket and were checking it out.

Playing with the sand....

And of course, building sandcastles....

Sea life up close (although it is dead)...Sweet Baby and I were amazed at all the jellyfish that were washed up on shore.

Did you know the top of a jellyfish is rather firm?

Our Visit to Yorktown

Our final historical place to visit was Yorktown. I will admit that by the time that day rolled around we were all tired and the kids were cranky (ok, mom was cranky too) so we chose not to tour the battlefields. We went to the small village they had, visited the museum and the outdoor camp of the soldiers.

We learned about the types of crops the colonists had at this time like tobacco and flax. Sissy was asked to separate the flax "threads". I had no idea that linen was made from these plants!

Peanut enjoyed the soldiers camp the most. She especially liked the Officer's tent. She discovered a large map of the area and different tools used to read the map and was caught examining it several times.

Here the girls are trying on the punishment for a soldier who was being insubordinate! They thought the idea of having to wear a sign around your neck as punishment was funny!

Since everyone was getting tired and cranky, the last couple days of our trip came at a perfect time! We drove about and hour south and stayed at a camping cabin at First Landings State Park. Our friends had been camping there their entire stay so we were able to enjoy 2 days of just lounging around and playing in the Chesapeake Bay. I'll share those photos soon!

Actual Jamestown Site Visit

After visiting the re-created Jamestown settlement, we decided to head down the road a bit and visit the actual archaeological site where they have discovered the actual settlement. We were lucky enough to share our vacation with family friends who also home school (the same family we were at Disney with last year). The actual Jamestown site is a National Park so one of the sons of our friends let the girls know that they would be able to do activities to become "Junior Rangers". WHAT AN AWESOME PROGRAM! It wasn't easy either! The kids had to complete a certain number of activities/worksheets regarding information that could be obtained in the museum, through a guided tour or even in the art that lined the walls of the visitor center. Both Peanut and Sissy completed their goals (Peanut did receive a bit of help though!).

Our visit to the actual site of the Jamestown settlement was amazing and very emotional (for the adults at least. Here is shot of one of the first church buildings on "American" soil. To think that some of the earliest settlers sat in the rough benches to honor and praise the same Father that our family reflects on each Sunday was amazing.

The site of these crosses (laid in the area of the actual cemetery of the earliest colonists) was a sobering one. To stop and think that these were real people who traveled over 4 months to our country. Real men, sons and husbands - many of whom lost lives while here was quite emotional. Often times we think of the early people as just "characters" and forget that they were real living, breathing people who had dreams and hopes just like us.

Powhatan Indian Village

I think the girls favorite part of our trip to Virginia was visiting the Powhatan Indian Village at Jamestown. The wig wams (there was a different name for them, but honestly I cannot recall the actual name of the dwelling) were amazing! They looked so real and we were able to go inside and look around. We saw various furs, baskets, beds, etc inside and it was amazing to think of these people whose children slept on the dirt ground and they were happy this way because it was all they knew.

While the older girls and dad were sitting and listening to our tour guide give some information, Sweet Baby noticed an "Indian" off on the side of the village all by herself working. She very quietly wandered over her way and asked her what she was doing. She was actually cleaning the back of a very fresh deer hide. It still had blood on it! It was a really sweet thing to see her explaining to Sweet Baby what she was doing and it made me think of Indian ma-ma's teaching their Indian babies how to do tasks that were "normal", like skinning various animals and stretching their hides to dry. Again, another great experience at Jamestown!

Here Peanut and Sweet Baby are busy "trying" to grind corn. It literally took both of them to lift the smasher (such a technical word!).

After exploring Jamestown the girls all gathered for a picture....a great day, but it wasn't over! I'll share some photos of the actual site where they have discovered the fort through the archaeological site just down the road from the recreated site.

Oh the History at Jamestown

I have always been very interested in early American History, even as a child. I remember I had a friend who came over a few times to play and we would make pilgrim hats out of paper and play pilgrims. Our visit to Jamestown last week was fabulous (albeit a bit warm, but what am I complaining about right? It's been 52 degrees in Michigan this week!) Jamestown was the 2nd historical place we visited on our trip. This was the place that is a recreation of the actual fort which has been discovered just down the beach at an archaeological dig (we visited that later in the day).

We were lucky enough to take advantage of all that "Home School Days" were providing, which included a 2 hour guided tour of Jamestown. The first stop was out to see the route that the English settlers took to get here. It fit perfectly with our studies of maps this year. The girls seemed very interested in seeing the map and the voyage itself.

After looking at the map and talking about how long it took the settlers to reach what would be the colonies (just over 4 months!), the girls were shown various implements the sailors would use while sailing. Here Peanut is looking at a compass which floated in a box so that the compass could spin allowing it to follow north.

After discussing how the sailors were able to know where they were going and follow their maps, we were able to board the 3 recreated ships that were sitting in the harbor. WONDERFUL ships that really gave us a feel for what it must have been like to have 100 men stuck in the ship for all those months!

After visiting the fort itself we were escorted to the Powhatan Indian Village that was outside the fort. The girls were able to see how the Indians made canoe's out of a tree. I always assumed they chopped the insides right out, not true. They actually slowly burned the insides out and used very large shells as tools to scrape out the burned log. The girls LOVED being able to scrape the log out and felt like they really helped in making this canoe.

And of course, when you work hard, it is nice to enjoy your reward....

I'll share some more Indian village pictures tomorrow. I think that Peanut really enjoyed Jamestown the most. Today for English we began talking about Word Webs and rough drafts and she needed to write about something we have experienced together. She chose to write about the trip to the Indian Village at Jamestown!