The Backlog - Homeschool March 2010

Last year we were using FIAR (Five In A Row) and reading a book called Mrs. Katz and Tush. It was a wonderful book, though a bit sad, about a woman from Poland and a stray cat she takes in. This book led us down a few rabbit trails including learning about life in Poland, as well as making homemade bread. And when making homemade bread, what better time to learn about the science of yeast!

Gotta love Eric's cheesy grin while mixing the dry ingredients

The kids kneading the dough

I wish it had tasted as good it looked. It was a bit.....heavy. :-)

And while all this bread making was going on, we did our experiment of yeast in the bottle (add yeast, a little sugar, warm water, and then top it all off with a balloon.



The kids were really impressed! Gotta love when an experiment goes right!

There's Been A Mistake

The calendar says it's spring, and the crocus in my garden bloomed just days before. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been informed of the date. My poor crocus didn't last much longer after I took this photo. Over half were beaten down by the hail we got one afternoon and the rest were frozen by the snow and 20 degree weather we got after that. I've got tulips coming up as well; hopefully the weather snaps out of it's winter funk soon!

Levi Strauss

When Levi Strauss invented his denim jeans, they became favorites of the working man. They were also a popular choice among the 49'ers as they panned for gold. I'm just curious, though, since these pioneer jeans were subjected to what I consider some grueling labor and abuse, did they end up looking like this after 7 months?




And this is actually a "decent" pair of my son's jeans, as there's still one knee in-tact. Most of his jeans have both knees blown out, and we're not even all the way through the jean-wearing season yet. He's just a 10 year old boy. I know boys can be hard on their clothes, but how much in comparison to someone digging in a mine for gold 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week? Did their jeans get all raggedy looking in such a short time? Is it asking too much for a pair of jeans to make it through one short, 8 month wearing season in-tact?? I think from now on I'm going to start ironing on some patches on the inside of his jeans to see if we can get a little more mileage out of them.