Week 6

We finished our two week study of Mexico and Central America this week by learning more about the desert ecosystem and by doing more Mexican crafts.

We made Tissue Paper Flowers to decorate for our fiesta. I'm not sure that we did them correctly, but they were good enough for us.


We also made a Bean Bracelet and Sand Art (more Native American than Mexican).

Gabriel's sun.

Christopher made his sand art in the shape of the Washington, DC Metro tracks, complete with the colors of the different Metro lines. He has been very interested in all things DC Metro subway ever since our vacation to DC in April. We have MANY maps and lists of the Metro lines and stations made by Christopher all over the place. Some of the big ones take over our floors while he works on them. Should we ever go to DC again, we won't need a map of the stations because Christopher has them all memorized!

Matthew's sand art is in the shape of Jupiter.

We also made a pinata for our fiesta but it didn't work out. We set it outside to dry and the balloon ended up deflating and the newspaper all fell apart. We used an idea from another homeschooler's blog for a simple pinata.

We also made Clay Sun Faces. Again, this didn't work very well. Most of them fell apart when the kids handled them, but it was still fun for the kids to do.

Finally, we had our Mexican Fiesta to celebrate what we learned in the past two weeks. We waited until Sunday because Chris was TDY to Key West from Thursday until Sunday afternoon. Our menu consisted of chips with guacamole, chicken and cheese quesadillas, chicken flautas, beans, rice, and Mexican corn. The kids did great with trying everything but I did make things that I thought they'd actually like. The guacamole wasn't a hit with the boys, but Chris, Leah and I love it.

After dinner, the boys had fun breaking open the pinata. Poor Chase (our dog) ran in front of Gabe at the last minute and got hit! Luckily it was Gabe with the bat and the bat was a foamy material.

Another fun thing that happened this week was Christopher received a letter from the President! He wrote to President Obama in May as an assignment for school, so this has been long awaited.