Weekly Wrap Up – Colonial Virginia

My kids have such varying interests!  Baseball, ballet, and pigs…yes pigs.  On Saturday, we helped our 4-H Cloverbuds group do a fundraiser.  “Guess the weight of Cindy Lou!”   Cindy Lou is a large (620 pounds to be exact) chunk of pig flesh!   We were at the fundraiser for 5 hours and we all had so much fun.  Cindy Lou was also accompanied by Sweatpea and Brownie (goats) and Caffeine (calf).  Photos would go great right about here, no?   No….because I purposely didn’t take the camera so I could enjoy the day and not worry about taking photos the entire time.  So imagine if you will a 620 pound pig…insert that mental image here.

Although there is still a plethora of information left to cover on Virginia, I decided we’d wrap it up the “official” study this week.  We’ll still be hitting some field trips along the way as time and funds allow.   This week, we focused specifically on colonial life, especially in Jamestown and Williamsburg.

Books we used:
Colonial Life In America; by Troll Associates
Explore Colonial Jamestown; by Elaine Landau
1607 A New Look At Jamestown; by Karen E. Lange
Jamestowne Struggle for Survival; by Marcia Sewall
A Williamsburg Household; by Joan Anderson

Movies we watched:
Felicity (An American Girl Movie)
1607: A Nation Takes Root

The “official Virginia meal” from our Eat Your Way Through the USA book was none other than Virginia ham.  England's’ Queen Victoria liked Virginia hams so well that she had a standing order of 6 per week.  I doubt seriously she could have eaten that much…the salt alone would have killed her!

Anyway, the menu called for ham, turnip greens and a pea-picking cake.   I’m sorry, but this Virginia family doesn’t do turnip greens..shudder.   I found it interesting that what my family has called “Arnold Felcher Cake” was the same recipe for the “Pea-Picking Cake”.   So we had ham, potatoes and cake…and it was good!

In case you are wondering about the cake, here’s the recipe, give it a try!

1 yellow cake mix
1 11oz. can mandarin oranges in juice
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil

Beat all ingredients until well blended.  Pour batter into 3 greased and floured round cake pans.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  Cool completely!

Topping:
1 20oz. can crushed pineapple in juice
1 16oz tub Cool Whip
1 3.4ox box vanilla pudding

Combine pineapple and pudding mix.   Fold in whipped topping.  Spread between layers of cake and on top.  Store in the fridge!

Science:  We spent the week studying cloud formations, categorizing clouds and tracking the weather.  (The weather tracking will be a 2 week event.)

Latin:  We completed Lesson 7.  This lesson focused on common nouns of things around the house (liber, stylus, mensa, sella)…anyone venture a guess as to what those are?   We added pages to our Latin Pictionary’s as well.

Language Arts:  We breezed through Lesson 11 in All About Spelling.  In First Language Lessons, we started working on a new poem “Days of the Week”, and focused on see/saw/have seen.  Both girls worked on letters to their pen pals as well.  I also added the Dolch word list into Lindsey’s daily work. 

Math:  Egads.  Does that give you a clue? 

Awana:  Olivia earned her SkyStormer Rank emblem this week.  Lindsey recited Psalm 147:5 and 1 Corinthians 15:3.  She's only 2 scriptures away from her HangGlider Rank emblem.

Ballet and Tap:   Both classes are moving ahead splendidly.  I found it very entertaining that they both tap danced through the grocery store this week.  This will be our last free Saturday for a while, as the Nutcracker practices go into full swing next week.

On a side note, both girls are invited to birthday parties on Saturday.  Separate parties, on opposite ends of the county.   The good news is they are both “drop off” parties.  The bad news is I don’t really know either family well enough to be completely happy with that option. 

Oh yeah, and this week my phone rang, and on the other end was a little boy’s voice “Hello, may I please speak with Lindsey?”.  GAAAHH!!  She is FIVE!!  Boys should NOT BE CALLING HER!!   Who authorized all of this growing up stuff???

Now that you are chuckling, scurry over to the Weekly Wrap Up and see how everyone else handled their week.