Daniel's Duck

Here are pictures of the kids carving soap for Daniel's Duck, Abby's Five in a Row book this week.

Besides the lessons in the FIAR manual, we also read The Cabin Faced West and Molasses Man by Kathy L. May. We made molasses cookies (see post below) as our cooking project to go with this book.

On Saturday, we'll probably begin They Were Strong and Good. Looking forward to that one!

Abby has participated in our Westward Ho! unit study, along with Carrie and Thomas. This week we've learned about alkali, saleratus, buffalo, South Pass, Independence Rock, and Wyoming. We finished our book about explorers and finished Pioneer Girl. We started reading some short stories about courageous pioneer women in Daughters of Destiny by Noelle Wheeler.

We're to South Pass on our virtual journey to Oregon. Only one more week left in our unit study and lots to do yet!

Daniel's Duck

Abby made cookies for Daniel's Duck and you can read about it here on my daughters' blog.

By the way, the cheese was great! It was the consistency of cream cheese and we added a little salt and dill weed. I think we'll make some more next time we have company......

Here's the recipe:

Line a bowl with a double layer of cheesecloth. (I found cheesecloth in the craft dept. at Walmart for less than $2.00) Pour in 2 cups of plain yogurt. Lift up the corners of the cheesecloth to make a bag. Tie bag closed with string. Hang the bag of yogurt from a kitchen cabinet. It should be positioned so that drips from the yogurt will fall into the bowl. Let the yogurt drip for at least 24 hours. The longer you leave it, the drier the cheese will be. Place the cheese in a clean, dry bowl. Mix in a pinch of salt and some dried herbs, such as basil or dill. Spread on crackers or bread and enjoy.

School at Our House

If you are following what we're doing for Westward Ho!:

This week we've traveled all the way across Nebraska. We've learned about Jim Bridger, rattlesnakes, rifles, blacksmiths, Chimney Rock, and Native Americans. Thomas has almost finished reading Flaming Arrows and I've been reading Pioneer Girl by Andrea Warren for our read aloud time.

The book we're using to learn about explorers is Famous Pioneers by Franklin Folsom. It has short chapters and interesting stories.

Tomorrow we're planning to make cheese!

For Abby's FIAR, we've started Daniel's Duck. We're planning to make molasses cookies tomorrow and we're reading The Cabin Faced West. She had fun yesterday holding up a card with quotation marks on it every time there was dialog in the story.

Here's a picture of Thomas making his Chimney Rock minit book.