Homeschool Highlights: Our Moorish Feast

We have been slowly working our way through Story of the World 2, and we recently read chapter 12 about the moors. I am a little embarrassed to admit that despite all the Shakespeare I read in college I never knew what a moor was until I read this chapter. (For those who are still not in-the-know, moors were Muslims living in Spain.) Chapter 12 talks about the medieval Muslim invasion of Spain. And we culminated our week of learning with an awesome Moorish feast.

The kids and Cameron had a great time dressing up, No promises about the authenticity of these costumes--the important thing is that everyone had fun.

We started out by making the Spanish chicken and rice suggested in the Story of the World activity guide.

Did you know that the Moors were responsible for importing oranges into Spain and planting orange groves in their kingdoms throughout southern Spain? Yep, it's true. So we added sliced oranges to our feast.

Cameron stopped by a little Mediterranean market for some fun things to add. He got a Mediterranean nut mix

and some Labni. (Labni, as we discovered, are soft cheese balls with very strong flavor. They're technically from Lebanon, not Spain. We liked them best smeared on crackers to spread out all that powerful flavor.)

We finished our feast with some Turkish Delight that Cameron picked up for us. Yum!

Homeschool is delicious!

One Strand at a Time

Emma has reached an age where she views hairbrushes as an invitation. She doesn't have much hair, and she doesn't usually keep hair clips in for very long, but she loves to brush her own hair or anyone else's.

With two older sisters it's not hard to find a stray hairbrush left out somewhere. Recently, she picked one up and started brushing my hair. After brushing part of it smooth for a few minutes, she paused, looked at my hair, tried to separate it into two or three sections, then looked at it some more. It seemed as if she were trying to figure out how to braid it. Over time she has seen me do dozens (perhaps hundreds) of braids on her sisters; but her toddler memory, dexterity, and experience just weren't up to the task. After a few moments she let the hair fall and went to do something else.

I marveled as I thought of all the braids she has seen installed through the years--times when I wasn't aware that she was watching or taking note. I thought of what else she has noticed in her short two years when I wasn't thinking about my audience. It's a somewhat chilling thought for a parent to consider all the things children might learn that we don't want them to.

Parenting is a little like braiding hair. Every day we weave in a few new strands for our children. Sometimes we encounter a tangle or two to work through. Sometimes we may unwittingly create or incorporate some of these tangles and our children have to deal with the consequences later. But a braid is worked at strand by strand, and so is parenting. If we weave in strands of love, kindness, patience, compassion, faith, and gratitude, we will end up with a nicer end product than if we weave in too many snarls of haste, shortsightedness, unkindness, or short tempers.

Weave...

weave...

weave.

In the end, we are grateful for the Master Weaver who can smooth our cares and heal our snarls.
                                                       
As for me, I want to weave in as much love as I can.

Homeschool Highlights: Water Cycle

We are studying earth science this fall and having a great time of it. We spent a week learning about the water cycle. For starters, we read this book--Did a Dinosaur Drink This Water?
                                    
It was a fun and simple explanation that worked nicely for our young age group.

Then we moved into the kitchen for our little demonstration. I gathered salt, a small pan, some measuring spoons and cups, a metal pie tin, and some tongs.

I dissolved a tablespoon of salt into a cup of water and started heating it on high. While that was doing its thing I let the kids hypothesize about what would happen to the salt when the water evaporated.

Once the water came to a nice rolling boil I used the tongs to hold the pie tin a couple inches above the pan so some rain (or condensation) could form on the bottom of the pie tin. I also pointed out the steam in the air and talked about the water vapor.

We all admired the condensation that gathered on the pie tin after a couple minutes. Then we waited for the water to all evaporate--a process of maybe ten or so minutes total. When it got down to the bottom the salt was popping out of the pan like popcorn and some awesome salt crystals formed in the pan.

At this point I was oohing and aahing and admiring the salt crystals when Jake said, "Mom, why are you so excited?"

Me: "Because this is so cool!"

Yep, science is fun.