Clay Academy

Things are so crazy busy this time of year! It's been 3 weeks since our last post, but I did that on purpose. I think it will be easier to just post each time we finish a country. These past three weeks have been spent studying South America (mainly Brazil) and all the rainforests (mostly the Amazon). It's been a fascinating three weeks and we have thoroughly enjoyed it! We began our trip to South America with another "plane ride". The girls love doing that! I thought they might think it was sort of silly, but they look so forward to it every time we switch countries! They can't wait to get out their passports and get those stamped, too! Actually, everything about this geography curriculum is awesome! We love it so much! Here are a few fun South America highlights. We made Brazilian flutes with straws and feather decorations. These were fun (and loud!)

We made "Carnival costumes" from pillow cases. The girls really got into it!

We cooked a South American meal (empanadas with quinoa and black beans) and the girls LOVED helping with that!

And, of course, eating it and then having our own "Carnival" was lots of fun!

Dancing to some Brazilian samba and bossa nova music!

We did several geography vocabulary cards. Here they are drawing their cards for the word jungle.

In science we learned all about the rainforest. We discussed how plants grow faster because it's more like a greenhouse environment. We made our own mini greenhouse by putting celophane over a cup and planted radish seeds in it. In another cup, we planted the seeds, but left it open. The one with the cover grew much faster! Unfortunately, we don't have the "after" pictures because our dog, Baxter, decided that a greenhouse in a cup would be a good snack.

We drew animals from the rainforest! Here is Kaylin's spider monkey.

Annlee's sloth

Maryella's toucan

We learned about Kapok trees and made some for our lapbooks

We did an experiment with feathers and water, discovering how water birds have oils on their feathers which help them repel water. The girls were amazed and could have squirted water on feathers all day!

We also looked at the feathers under a magnifying glass (Really wished we had had a microscope!) to see their "zippers" in action. You can unzip a feather and zip it back up because it has little barbs and barbules that hold it together.

We also did a fun science experiment with eggs to discover how strong the arch shape is. Four eggs with their small ends cut off supported this huge stack of books! WOW!

We made our lapbooks showing some of what we learned about Brazil and the rainforests. Here is the outside of Maryella's.

The rainforest portion of Annlee's lapbook.

The Brazil portion of Kaylin's.

Studying the rainforest provided a perfect opportunity for our first big field trip of the year. We drove down to the Rainforest Cafe in Orlando for lunch on Friday. It was so amazing to see the girls' faces as they discovered all the things we had been talking about in school. They saw a huge pillar of fruit and immediately knew why those were all there - they grow in the rainforest!

We had fun playing in the giftshop. Maryella pretended to be our jungle guide.

Elianna found a new best friend (although he had to stay with his family in the rainforest!)

The sights and sounds were all amazing. Disney does everything so over the top - it was so cool!

And check out these pictures of Kaylin at the Rainforest Cafe. The first picture is when she was 3 years old and kept her ears covered the whole time she was there. She was hardly able to eat her food. She really did not enjoy it at all.

And then here she is on this trip. She certainly had a much better time, but she still held her ears a lot, lol! At least we got smiles though!

To finish our experience, we had to sample a chocolate dessert! After all, as the girls pointed out, chocolate comes from the rainforest!

Here are a few other pictures from our last three weeks. Maryella working on her reading. This was a game where the mouse could only eat the cheese that she read the words on the back of.

Kaylin and Alex reading a book

Schooling on Halloween! My doctor and two cheerleaders take turns correcting their daily sentences...

Maryella working in her costume. It made school much more exciting that day!

Annlee memorizing her script for the children's Christmas play at church. Not technically school work, but we've got to fit it in sometime!

Maryella feeding her monster the words she reads (this game was from earlier in her curriculum, but we pulled it out again and made new words to go with it because it seemed appropriate for Halloween!)

We've been reading a book about Nate Saint these past three weeks for part of our read-aloud time. The girls have been totally wrapped up in the story and have truly loved hearing it. We all look forward to it. Nate Saint was a missionary in Ecuador in the 40s and 50s who flew airplanes to help transport other missionaries and get help to them when needed. Fascinating man! As part of that, we made paper planes like the ones he flew over the jungles of South America.

We also had our monthly zoo trip this week on Wednesday. The girls are really loving that! I can't go in to take pictures during their classes, but Kaylin reported that she petted a chinchilla and sting rays, Annlee touched an armadillo, and Maryella touched a snake and "10 sting rays". Elianna came with me and Jeff and walked around the zoo for several hours. She loves those "only child" hours that she gets with us, lol. Here are a few pictures of her fun in the zoo. Feeding the lorakeets...

Feeding Luna, the giraffe...

This week finished up not only Canada, but North America as well. We will be moving on to South America when we get back to schooling. Next week, we've got a week long vacation in Alabama to get ready for a special baby shower! That has been planned for awhile, but little did we know just how much we would need that vacation at this point in our school year (God surely knows how to plan our schedules better than we do!) We got a call last Saturday night that Jeff's grandmother wasn't doing very well. Sunday, Jeff preached his sermon and we spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what we should do. Jeff had a few things he needed to do on Monday and some folks to visit, so we went ahead with school at home that day before we headed to Tampa that afternoon. We made Canadian maple cookies that were very delicious! The girls love anything in the kitchen!

We drove down to Tampa that afternoon and got to visit with Jeff's family and his grandmother. The girls got to see her and she smiled when she heard them say they loved her. Jeff got to talk to her and she told him she loved him. I am so grateful the God gave him (and us) that evening with her. The next day and evening, we saw her again, but she was much worse. On Wednesday morning, she passed away peacefully and surrounded by her family. The girls had been upset when we left her Tuesday night, but they took the news of her death fairly calmly Wednesday morning. We had brought our school work with us and I think that helped to distract them. They had lots of questions and we took plenty of time to answer them. They had some very thoughtful questions and I was so proud of the way they handled everything. I love those girls so much! They are such a blessing to us. In between questions and family gatherings, we still found time to get in our school for the week. It was a little different doing it away from home, but we made it work. Instead of everyone having their own desk, we were all at the same table. It was kinda fun! Here are a few pictures from our week at Mema and Papa's house. (Forgive the pictures with no narration, I'm tired tonight and ready for bed after our week)