Frontier Living

September 23, 2007

Today is the first day of fall. I just love fall. I enjoy the colors of the changing leaves, the home cooked meals and the cooler days. Here in California it is a rare treat to see the changing of the leaves. It is not unusual to see yellow or green leaves here in fall. Red and orange ones happen when Christmas time is upon us. Hopefully, we will have cooler days and we may see them earlier this year.

Our family is enjoying the Frontier unit. There is just so many crafts and ideas to do with this one. The possibilities are endless. This week we learned how the people who lived during this time of the year ate. How did they store and prepare their food. The kids had fun shaking cream into butter. Baba was surprised to see little chunks of butter inside his jar. It was so cute to watch him shake his jar because he would get his whole body involved into it. We also tried to dry out apples. I had Coco prepare the apples by washing them and squeezing lemons to use for the apples. We don't have an apple peeler at home. I was it. I peeled the apples they ate all the discarded peelings and broken apple rings. We dried two patches of them. One was dried the old fashion way by hanging them to dry next to a window and the other dried in a dehydrator. The kids noticed two things that the apples in the dehydrator took less time and the apples hung up shrank and curled up. Both were a treat to eat and would love for me to make more real soon!!! The kids also got to make johnny cake or as some people called it "journey cake". Even with butter and honey on the cake they didn't care for it too much. They asked why they called it cake when it didn't look or taste like cake. To drink we made a drink called "switchel". It tastes like a flat ginger ale. It was very sweet. Too sweet for my taste buds. Here is a sample meal eaten on a journey...

On Tuesday the kids worked on their display boards for the end unit party. They had a lot of fun and creativity with this one. I gave them a large piece of cardboard. They need to make a landscape for their log, sod houses and covered wagon. They made dolls out of wooden pegs found at the craft store. Here are some pictures to share.....




These pictures don't capture all the creativity that the kids put into these boards. By the time they were done they added shavings from their rabbits to use for the animals. Luckily we had a bunch of plastic farm animals. They were very resourceful. Coco even drew a mud pen for her pigs to play in and a pond for her ducks. I love moments like this when the kids use their creative juices to explore and create.

God bless you with a great week. I look forward to sharing more photos and project ideas with you next time.