Week 34 May 24-28th: Nature Walks and Chicken Anatomy!

 We started the week with a strong day of sit down learning! The boys learned how to make puppets out of toilet paper rolls last week with co-op, and they were excited to sit down and make more for their collection. I read FIVE chapters of Story of the World while they worked!! We got all caught up, which is good as I was expecting to have to crunch to finish it by the end of the year. We read about the abolitionists and the beginning of the end to salvery. The next chapter was about Africa and the Zulu tribes and the battle between them, the English, and the Boers over land. Our third chapter made me cry quite a bit, as we learned about The Trail of Tears and revolt from both the native peoples and the African slaves in America. We shifted to China, talking about the Opium epidemic and China's loss of control over trade. The fifth chapter traveled us back across the ocean to discuss Mexico, the Alamo, Mexican-American war, and finally how the lower half of the states was bought from Mexico. A lot to cover in one day! We continue to be amazed over the human races history of nothing but fighting over land. I have always known how we took land from the native peoples, however I did not know their mindset about how they felt the land belonged to no one. It is interesting to me to ponder how that would look in this day and time with as many people now populate the earth. I suppose with no laws about who can be where it certaintly would, and sadly, end in war and fighting. 

At co-op on Tuesday the boys helped make a fun art mural! They also each made a picture individually.

On Thursday co-op ventured to Jackson Bottom Wetlands. They have a Jr Ranger program, so we all printed off the papers and worked on filling them out as we hiked. We brought it home to finish, and when we do each kid gets a set of collectible animal trading cards! They are pretty excited about that!

Minfigures!! Our new favorite craft is painting these teeny tiny dudes. They are preparing, we start a whole family DnD campaign in about two weeks with my brothers leading it. Avery says it is difficult to paint them because they are so small, and Emmet blows me away with attention to detail and ability to paint them so carefully!

We worked on our writing and math books and Avery did his lesson in 100 Easy Lessons to Reading.

Chicken!! Our turkey got off her eggs and we put them in an incubator, along with one chicken egg she had accidently had added to her nestbox. Our of the 5 eggs, three turkeys hatched, this little chicken, and one dud egg that was never fertilized. 

Gross photo alert!! On Saturday we butchered our 68 Cornish cross meat chickens. Michael helped SO much with the caring of these birds and was super enthusiastic about helping butcher. He helped with EVERY step of processing the birds and had great interested in exploring what was inside a chickens digestive system and dissected the gizzard, stomach, crop, and intestines. 

We also played board games, several of our new ones we just received, and did lots of reading as usual!

Have a great week,

The Dillman's