Culture Fair

This post has been in the making for a long time. Ancient "news".

The three youngest boys joined our church school and other homeschoolers for a culture fair on January 27, 2017. We got the details for the fair about 4 weeks before it was to be. Talk about panic! Two of those weeks were already carved out to work at my parents' house.

How was I going to help Melvin (who is dyslexic) and Christopher to get their reports done? Part of the requirement was a 600 -700 word report from both of them. That meant a lot of my time helping with a writing project bigger than anything they had yet accomplished and not enough of my time to do it.

The deadline for the report was a week before the fair. Most of my time had been spent helping Melvin by reading to him and writing down his thoughts and paraphrases. By Thursday morning Christopher had about 200 words done. As I set out to see how I could help him, I realized he had been copying some of it from the encyclopedia. I said, "Oh, you can't do that!" He burst into inconsolable sobs and declared he didn't want anything to do with the fair.

After talking about how he might still accomplish the task using speech to text accommodations we got him happily on his way again, telling the computer all about Germany. He really waxed eloquent on the history.

Christoper chose Germany because his aunt comes from there.

After contacting the teacher and realizing he didn't even need to see the reports (they would take points off toward the prize if it wasn't finished) I relaxed. Mostly. 

Pakistan, Melvin's country of choice was so foreign to me that I didn't know where to begin to find clothing or how to make the food.

Matthew chose Switzerland and truffles were his "food" choice. How hard is that? Christopher chose sour kraut and sausage. Another easy one. 

Matthew chose Switzerland because he has roots there.
Take notice of the upright display. He built that and it swivels, showing info on both sides.

Pakistan? Oh, what do they eat? Google just about had my mind made up on a chicken dish.Then my memory was jolted- we knew someone who had married a Pakistani. She had died but surely the family could tell me something. And indeed! I called Reuben Yoder and spoke with him awhile. He was full of such helpful advice. Rice and Dahl was a common food in Pakistan he said.

Google to my rescue again, I found an Easy Peasy recipe for rice and dahl.

Reuben told me how I might make clothing so Google helped me there again, once I knew what their clothes were called. I found tutorials for making the Salwar, Kameez and turban.

Melvin chose Pakistan because his finger landed there when he spun the map!

Everything turned out great and we had a fun evening. I will include pictures from all the students. I've blurred the faces of all children but mine for privacy reasons. I missed one girl who had Chile.

Buddhism

Japanese 

A bit of the Japan display & part of the flag of Malaysia

Stephen (in the background) was photographer for the evening

English

Italian

Egyptian

Netherlands (Dutch)

French

Chinese

Iraqi (because his brother is a missionary there)

Mexican

Polish

Chechens

Malaysian

Mr Vernon (right) and Miss Rose (back left) are the brother/sister teacher team at school

Don't you think the children (and their moms & teachers) did just a totally amazing job?

Which is your favorite? (We were supposed to vote.)

Do you realize how much you learn when you have a project like this to do?

School

School has resumed. We are now in our third week and how can that be?! Time goes so swiftly when school begins. I am always amazed. We have kept a light schedule for August because we are still doing canning and outdoor work. Bible, Math, and History are the main subjects at present. We are also finishing up a study of Latin root words we began last year. And, as even during the summer, we keep up with tutoring Melvin with the Barton Reading and Spelling system.

Matthew with some of his etchings

Bible and History are also a continuation from last year, because we didn't finish the books we were in. Come September we begin the new studies in My Father's World "Exploration to 1850". We are finishing up "Rome to the Reformation". We use a lot of "living books" for history and I never knew history was so interesting.

Melvin

For math we are using Kahn Academy. A free online educational site that has a good math program. I was considering CTC Math which I really like but the boys are doing okay with this now so it will save us some money. I will likely continue with Life of Fred math occasionally also.

Stephen and Austin are still helping Thomas on the job but plan to resume their studies in September. Austin uses Tablet Class math and Stephen thinks he wants to do Saxon.

Christopher (& Miss Pepper)

We had planned to take "class photos" somewhere outside but since it was raining we found places inside. Matthew has been etching lots of car logos and tacking them to the wall and ceiling around his loft bed so he choose that spot. Melvin sits by his corner of treasures. Christopher sits with the dog and his birthday tractor. The dog is so black she's hard to see and her one eye shines blue from the flash.

The church school started last week and we joined them for the first day of school breakfast. Laurel Keller left us after teaching two years and Melanie Stoltzfus took her place.

4 boxes like this

One day recently I was needing to go shopping. (We go to Winchester for our "big" shopping.) Somehow there were many things piled up that had to be done NOW. Thomas and I left mid-afternoon to go to town and left the boys with over two bushels of Baby Gold peaches to can. Stephen had a youth activity and the milking needed to be done. So it was up to Austin (15), Matthew (12), Melvin (10) and Christopher (9) to do the peaches. I tried calling home around 8:30 and no one answered. If they weren't finished I wanted to tell them they may just quit. When we finally got home around 9:30 they were finishing up and had just finished eating some burgers they had mixed up and fried. I was so proud of them!

The work of four young boys

The reason they didn't answer the phone is because they had the music turned so high they couldn't hear the phone ringing. I guess they needed something to energize them. One thing I've learned to be very helpful when preserving things is audio books. How does that help? Well, the boys will keep trimming and snapping beans, peeling peaches or whatever is at hand, very steadily and quietly if they have something interesting to listen to.

I took a picture of these jars because when the boys ran out of rings they took them off these first ones they canned to reuse them. They were still warm. Something I wouldn't have done but they didn't know.

It has been very helpful to have another driver around here. Stephen got his driver's license on the first try. He was pretty happy about that because everyone he knew would fail the first time and we thought they just automatically fail the young ones to keep them humble. Austin got his permit after two tries at the test. So he is diligently honing his skills.

I would like to keep a daily record of school activities for my own benefit. Just delete me if you get tired of it.