2010 School Year Completed!

Well, we have officially ended our second year of homeschooling! Of course, we never stop learning, and we never take the summer 'off' but we do shift gears and enjoy the warm weather and the unstructured learning that summer brings. We celebrated our last day of the 'school year' by learning about Mexico and throwing an end-of-year fiesta. We read about Mexico in our children's atlas and read a children's book about Frida Kahlo, Frida by Jonah Winter and Ana Juan. It is one my favorite children's books of all time - the artwork is absolutely beautiful and evokes the style of Kahlo. We also looked at some of her paintings online. The kids liked all of the monkeys in her portraits. Of course, no cultural study is complete without some sort of cooking project and Mexico was no exception. The difficulty lay in narrowing down what to make, as Mexican culture offers so very many delicious options. We chose to make empanadas, filling some with ground turkey sauteed with organic taco seasonings (for the meat-eaters) and some with cheese (for the non-meat eaters). We filled the remaining 4 with diced apples and apple butter, and rolled them in cinammon-sugar when they finished baking. I found the empanada dough recipe on allrecipes.com. It was simple, and delicious, though not at all healthy. We ended the day with a pinata! Now that we have put the workbooks and projects on the shelves, I am looking forward to sleeping in, hanging out in p.j's, delving into several art projects that have been postponed for quite some time, cooking mammoth ammounts of cupcakes (explanation to follow), exploring nature and the beach, and discovering the adventures that this summer will bring