Festival!

One of the things I love most about homeschooling is the fact that I'm constantly learning new things. For the first time in my life, I actually understand why we divide and multiply fractions the way we do and not just because that's how Mrs. Goebel taught me to do it when I was in the 6th grade. Then there's the fascinating truth about how hail forms or the process of how to delete the prepositional phrases before attempting to diagram a sentence. But, I especially love the history tidbits- like the fact that John Q. Adams kept an alligator in the White House or that Thomas Jefferson was once gifted an enormous piece of cheese.

As I've mentioned many times before, we are involved with a co-op that focuses on history and the fine arts and we love it. Recently, we finished our first unit of the year and we celebrated with a South America Festival. We had been studying South America and their road to independence for several weeks. So, each class in the co-op took a country to research and share information about. The kids had a scavenger hunt to complete using the information displays. There was lots of "authentic" foods, and we had a speaker who was a former missionary to Brazil. It was a fun evening for all of us. Here are some pictures of our fun:

This is my upper grammar class of 4-6 graders I teach each week.

Lizzy and Alexa, intent on completing their scavenger hunt questions.

Yummy fruits of Bolivia.

My class's display table on Argentina. You gotta love the gaucho my boys made. I think the boots are almost as big as he is!

Hmm, it says here that they eat guinea pig in Colombia!

Abe stayed entertained with large quantities of Smarties distributed a few at a time. Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Lizzie and two of her good friends in front of their Venezuela display

Lily and Isaac with their Lower Grammar class of K-2nd graders, they learned about Ecuador.