I know what you did. . . . last year

 This topic is a little bit outdated, but as I was cleaning up in the school room last week, I came across some notes from last fall that I didn't want to "lose".  Fortunately, when I sat down at the computer tonight, I discovered that I had already recorded them in a draft blog post, which made completing this tonight much more likely!  I consider our blog as a bit of a digital scrapbook.  I hope you will enjoy seeing (finally) some more of what we did last year!

Plantains, brazil nuts, cassava chips, quinoa, Argentinia Malbec wine and other South American yummies.                  

Fried plantains in the center.  Quinoa salad top left.

 

 

One thing we tried to do regularly during our World Studies last fall was to assign each student a topic for which they had to finish the sentences:
TOPIC was/is
TOPIC has/had
TOPIC can/could

Sometimes the topic was a person or animal, sometimes it was the country itself, or sometimes it was as specific as "The Eiffel Tower" or "blue cheese". 

Evan's favorite part of studying South America was learning about Simon Bolivar, so he was assigned that topic.

Simon Bolivar WAS a great leader.
Simon Bolivar HAD vowed never to rest until South America was free from Spanish rule.
Simon Bolivar COULD be called the George Washington of South America.
   *Bolivar has resurfaced this summer.  For our weather unit, we are finishing up a book on the 1900 Galvestion Hurricane, so we've read about people taking shelter in the Bolivar Lighthouse.*

The macaw Halloween costume made a reappearance

Two-toed sloth and blue morpho butterfly

 Cole's favorite parts of this unit were making the rainforest vine that decorated our kitchen and watching Earthflight.  Earthflight is a British nature documentary that shows a flight from the view of the wings of birds across six continents, showing some of the world's greatest natural spectacles from a bird's-eye view.  Episode four features South America and is actually replaying locally on KLRU on September 21. 2014.

Macaws and bromeliads

Xavier's favorite part of this unit was "learning about the rainforest and watching the Kratts' Creatures" episode on the Rainforest.  Thanks to Aunt Becky, we have a wonderful collection of Zooboomafoo and Kratt's Creatures DVDs covering many of the areas we studied.  These were consistently Xavier's favorite part of any unit.