Pilgrim Wrap Up

We spent the week being Pilgrims; doing things the old fashioned way and learning some new ways of doing stuff (or in some instances, attempting to do new things).

On Monday we made a drop spindle from a cd, pencil and paper clip.  I was told by a spinner that you could make this contraption and then spin dryer lint into thread/yarn.  Yeah...well ours kept bunching up, tearing, falling apart etc.  I finally added some shredded cotton balls to give some longer fiber to the lint and that seemed to help a wee bit.  

I taught the girls how to make homemade yeast bread as well.  We attempted this last year, and the girls worked OH.SO.HARD on it, only to find that my yeast was a dud and the bread didn't rise.  So this year I bought fresh yeast, and set them to work.

We also made homemade butter by using heavy whipping cream.  The process is simple, if you'ld like to give it a try.  First set the cream out and let it come to room temperature.  Pour the cream into a glass jar (with a proper fitting lid) and then shake like crazy for 15-20 minutes.  It seems as though nothing is happening and then suddenly POOF a large lump of butter forms and the excess water begins to swish around. 

Books we read:

Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation, by Diane Stanley
Sarah Morton's Day, by Kate Waters
Stories of the Pilgrims, by Margaret B. Pumphrey
A Great and Godly Adventure, by Godfrey Hodgson

Thursday was our monthly homeschool activity day.  In my Native American class we studied the Iroquois.  We studied on the "Three Sisters" (this was the only tribe in the book that I could remotely tie to Thanksgiving!)   We made our own string of wampum beads for trading.  We also completed three more pages in our Native American Dictionary and marked our maps to show the areas that the Iroquois lived in. 

This is our last week of Co-op until January; freeing up that extra day a week is going to help me to push further ahead during the next month.  Monday will be the last day of ballet until January as well (as they go into full rehearsal mode for the Nutcracker).

Head on over to Weird Unscocialized Homeschoolers to read about everyone else's Weekly Wrap Up.