"Mom, I ate my class work!"

I've been meaning to post this, as the following happened last week, a really good week between the challenges we've had.

I finally felt better myself, and kicked whatever I had and we really dived into the lessons. Last week in history we studied the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Philistines, and started the Babylonians. One of the things we learned about was their food staples, culture, etc. Flat bread was one of the common foods. Simply talking about the bread helped tie in the crops they grew, culture, specialized labor, feast/famine (as in the story of Joseph in Egypt) and became a great hands on cross curricular project.

We first read up on the Hebrew people, the Jewish faith and ties to our faith, and read about the other groups as well (Phoenicians - where it was fun to talk about $$ too - and the other groups mentioned). Then, in an activity from Story of the World that connected history to math to science to life skills to reading - we made flat bread. Lovely did all the measuring out (math!) herself, mixed it herself, made it herself following directions (skills, reading), and while she did we talked about the cultures who needed this staple (social studies), the different ways of making it (we did the stove and the oven), talked about the science behind heat and baking or cooking the bread in an oven or the pan and the differences, made hypothesis about what would happen (science), she then cleaned up her cooking mess (life skills).

It was really fun, and really tasty!!! I think our favorite bread came from the pan (not that they used pans lol, but we could compare heat uses), but we loved the oven made bread (and some we cooked longer and made crackers!). Lovely then ate her bread with honey (a previous connection back to her bee study).

They turned out flat - but they could have been bigger and more flat with more attention to the flattening part....but Lovely did a good job on her own! Above she shared her bread with friends next door! It seemed to get great reviews. Forget the dog eating your homework - I found the kids eating the classwork - and that was the best part!!