Where Did Our Food Originate?

I stumbled onto this fantastic infographic showing where many of our foods first originated, and tracked it back to a scholarly article, Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide, published by The Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences).

(Click on the image to view full size)

The graphic and the article itself are published under a Creative Commons license, meaning it can be shared freely as long as the authors and original source are credited.

This could be used for so many ways in the homeschool — for geography, social studies, biology, math…

• See what part of the world each component of lunch or dinner first came from.
• See which common foods your family eats are not on the map and see if you can find out where they originally came from.
• See which of the foods can now be grown in your area and which ones need a different climate.
• See what part of the world has your favorite foods.
• See what similarities you can find in foods from each region.
• Categorize the foods into groups (fruits, grains, root vegetables, greens, etc.) and see if you can find patterns for the regions.
• Which region has the most foods listed?
• What percentage of the foods on the map are eaten at least once a month at your house?

The authors of the paper are:

Colin K. Khoury, Harold A. Achicanoy, Anne D. Bjorkman, Carlos Navarro-Racines, Luigi Guarino, Ximena Flores-Palacios, Johannes M. M. Engels, John H. Wiersema, Hannes Dempewolf, Steven Sotelo, Julian Ramírez-Villegas, Nora P. Castañeda-Álvarez, Cary Fowler, Andy Jarvis, Loren H. Rieseberg, Paul C. Struik

 .

Clearly they did a lot of work to assemble this.  Check out the paper itself for more graphics and a lot more information.

 

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Our Favorite Educational Apps (Part One)

I have to admit, it is so much easier to homeschool today than ever before.  Not only do we have literally millions of pages of free resources, information and support online thanks to the internet, but we have educational apps that we can get for next to nothing (or nothing at all) so kids can learn while playing — anywhere they are.

Our kids got Kindles for Christmas a couple of years ago when they went on sale for $35 each on Black Friday.  We also have an iPad that I bought used for a great price and some of the kids have iPods they bought with saved up allowances.  So they have a plethora of ways to use apps and things to use them on.

I figured I would start compiling lists of our family’s favorites, with about 5 each time.  I think most of them are available for either Apple or Android devices, but some may be for one or the other. Some are free, and those that aren’t generally have a free trial version.

Here are some of our favorite educational apps.

• Dragonbox:  We’ve loved this algebra-based game since it was first released, and now they’ve added to their arsenal with a more advanced game and a science version.  This is the priciest app we’ve purchased (around $5 to $8 for different games) but I consider it worth it since the kids enjoy it so much and honestly understand the concepts related to algebra and such through using it. (Elementary and Middle School)
• Rocket Math:  Alex loved this game since he was a preschooler and now Fiona loves it, too.  Kids design their own rockets but must do math to earn the money to get the parts to fly it.  There are different kinds of math and it’s fun to play. I believe there’s a short, free version but we paid .99 for the full version.  (Preschool, Elementary)
• PBS Kids:  Fiona likes to watch her favorite PBS children’s shows on my iPad using the app.  She likes to come into my room while I’m working online and bring the iPad so she can lie on the bed and keep me company while watching it.  I believe it comes with games, too, but she mainly uses it to view programs.  Honestly, I don’t consider it terribly educational but she enjoys it and it does teach some basic concepts and character traits. It is free.  (Preschool, Early Elementary)
• Stack the States:  All of our kids love this little geography game, even the teenagers.  They learn U.S. geography and go back to play again and again.  We also have Stack the Countries, which got Rhia on a kick to memorize all of the capitols of the world a couple of years ago.  There are free versions but it’s well worth the dollar or so for the full version. (Elementary, Middle School)
• Kindle:  We have the Kindle app on all of our devices and it is such a help for homeschooling.  All of the kids have downloaded free e-books — everything from educational picture books to chapter books to Shakespeare and more.  Daryl is now subscribed to the Kindle Unlimited reading program (affiliate link) so the kids are, too (they’re connected to his Amazon account), so now they can read over a million books and magazines for free on their devices.  (Speaking of which, I created a Homeschooling with Kindle Unlimited Facebook page for other homeschoolers who use KU, where I post books that are free to read in the program.)

There’s a start, and I’ll try to add more lists in the next couple of weeks!  I know there are so many that the kids really enjoy.

Now I have to cuddle a little girl who’s fighting off the flu, make up another batch of elderberry syrup, and get ready for the daily construction stampede.

What are your family’s favorite apps, if you use them?  Please add them in the comments!

10 Ways We’ve Learned and Played Lately

We’re 2 weeks into 2017 and hanging in there.  I had a birthday a week ago and Rhia has a birthday next week.  She’s turning 17 (how did that happen?) and I won’t tell you what age I turned.  😉

(Yes, our kitchen ceiling is completely covered with the children’s art!)

We had some more sadness, as my grandmother died right before the new year.  She was 93 and impatient to move on to her next adventure, but that doesn’t make it easier.  I am very glad that we made so many trips to Ohio for the kids to really get to know her, especially this year (3 trips in 6 months).

That doesn’t mean homeschooling was happening, though.  Or magical moments.  Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to lately.

1. Daryl has been doing “Teach Your Monster to Read” with Fiona just about every day.  She is beginning to get the hang of how phonics and words work, and she enjoys it.
2. I got out an old science kit that I found at a thrift store years back, dusted it off, and started doing science experiments with Alex.  It contains a hand-held scope and lots of gadgets and chemicals.  We did things like examined different cloths under the scope, compared types of salt under magnification (black lava salt just looks dirty!) and did some simple experiments.  We’re going to try to finally start putting it to regular use.
3. Daryl is acting in a winter play.  He has the lead in a community theater production in Worthington.  It’s a comedy and he plays a detective.  Rhia goes with him to rehearsals and all of the kids help him run his lines.
4. Toria is working on getting our family Etsy store running.  She has some beautiful glass fox pendants that I got her for her birthday as a start to her own business (I purchased a large assortment wholesale for her to sell).  We are planning to sell a variety of things out of a family store.  Rhia creates elaborate zentangle-like artwork that she’d like to list and I have been creating magical homeschool sort of printables (such as colorful cards of hands-on ways to do all different subjects).  It has been a fun learning experience for all of us so far. Toria is taking pictures this week and then we should be able to finish creating the storefront.
5. Rhia has been writing songs.  She is very talented on the guitar and writes amazing songs.  She wrote one last week that is quite feminist, and wrote another for a friend who needed cheering up.  She also has been learning how to cover other songs on the guitar.  Daryl and I heard a song I really liked during “Listen to Your Folks” on campus radio last week (Painting Houses) and she and Daryl learned to play it and performed it for me.
6. I wrote a Kindle book.  I decided that it was time to start writing about the things that I am passionate about again, and that I finally needed to learn how to write Kindle books and give it a try.  There’s a steep learning curve but I got my first book written.  It is part of a series I’d like to write under the umbrella of “A Magical Homeschool.”  This one is A Magical Homeschool:  Nature Studies (52 Wonderful ways to use nature studies for science, math, art and more).  I am working on the cover today.
7. Rhia is learning Spanish.  She has started doing Duolingo and has progressed quite far already.  Toria has been using Duolingo to master German for years, and Daryl does the free language app daily in German, French, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish.
8. Jack has been running D&D games for Alex.  This role playing game involves creating a world, drawing out maps, storytelling and running the game to create the adventure as the players go along.  Players roll dice to determine the outcome of decisions, battles, etc. and use miniatures to represent the players and the world.
9. Alex, Fiona and I played a US states geography board game.  It involves drawing cards of states that you need to travel to and then answering questions about the states to move across the board and try to reach your state.  Once you visit all four of the states you’ve drawn (driving across the country in your car token), you win. A friend lent it to us and Alex really enjoys it.  Fiona doesn’t have to answer the questions.  We just let her roll the dice and travel across the country, and she is still picking up geography from the states she “visits.”
10. Daryl and the kids have been shooting winter footage for a movie.  Daryl has a friend making a movie down south and she needs to incorporate footage of winter memories for the characters, who are supposed to be in Montana.  They have been shooting footage of snowy scenes and of the kids running in the snow and so on.  Daryl, Toria, Jack and Rhia have all shot footage, and Alex and Rhia have been in some of the scenes.

Of course, we’re doing all the usual homeschool stuff too — reading books, playing games, texting, blogging, using educational apps and shows, nature studies, cooking, chores, math pages and so on.

And now, I’m off to work on that cover and pretend I’m going to get housework done.

Okay, really try to at least get a little housework done….

Have a magical week!

40,000 Years of London’s History—Made Entirely of Paper

Here’s a great short video to teach a lot of history in a short time.  National Geographic has produced this wonderful three minute video that covers some of the major events of British history.

National Geographic says:

Thousands of artifacts have been unearthed as a result of the construction of the new Crossrail transportation system in London. These paper animations will take you on a journey through the city’s history—from the Stone Age to the present day.

 

Pretty neat!

Snow Days

We’ve been snowed in for two days with a winter blizzard that’s led to closed highways and canceled plans.  While I’ll be awfully tired of this business in a month or two, I kind of like this part of Minnesota winters for now.

We’re forced to slow down, stay home and do cozy things like read, play games and bake.  I take long baths and browse seed catalogs to plan my spring and summer gardens.  I use up apples, pears, berries and pumpkin puree that we put up last summer and fall in homemade muffins and gluten free mix and match snack cakes.  We watch silly British math shows.  The kids have tickle fights and show each other funny videos.

We picked up this geography game for 99 cents at a thrift store and finally got around to playing it yesterday. It was quite old and exceptionally well made, and luckily every piece was still there. It led to quite a lot of great learning about geography and history for Jack,  Victoria and even me.

This morning, I set the little ones up with a giant bin of snow and ice cube trays of colored water.  They had so much fun mixing colors and experimenting with making tunnels with water.

Later, Victoria did marshmallow homeschool with Jack, Fiona and Alex while they warmed up with hot cocoa after shoveling the driveway.  She asked them questions related to math, social studies and spelling for them to earn marshmallows (examples for Jack: What’s the difference between a slave and an indentured servant?  If 4x + 4 = 20, what is x?).  She googled questions for various grades in order to come up with good questions.  My kids always love doing marshmallow or chocolate chip homeschool.  Afterwards, Jack asked me to do more algebra with him (no treats involved).

Hopefully, we’ll be able to dig our way out in the next day or so.  If not, I can live with a longer break from the outside world.  We have plenty of groceries, a warm house and a nearly endless supply of games, books, shows, Pinterest crafts and other goodies that I’ve been meaning to get to for far too long now (which led to last February’s Use it Up challenge).  🙂

Stay warm!

Beanie Baby Biology Class

Here’s a fun way to learn about animals in all kinds of ways.

We’ve started a collection of animal beanie babies for the younger kids and it’s turned into such a fun and educational collection.

We get them at thrift stores for about .50 each on average. They make just about every species you can think of.

We have a robin, moose, fox, beetle, rhino, loon, starfish, zebra, aardvark, dragonfly, squirrel, goldfish, seal, lobster, elephant, butterfly, gecko, snake, blue jay, flamingo, giraffe, poodle, ladybug, fox, wolf, black bear, raccoon, koala , octopus and lots more.

We keep them in a large basket in the living room and just about every day we find a new way to make an educational game out of them.

For instance, I’ve asked the little ones if they can sort by whether they live on land or water, the ones who lay eggs from the ones who give birth, by birds and bugs and mammals and so on.

Or sort by how many legs they have, whether they have scales or fur or feathers, whether they hibernate, whether they’re carnivores or omnivores or herbivores, or whether they can be found in our part of the world……

There are so many ways to use them.  I’m thinking we could even work language arts and such in (sort by syllables in their names or whether they start with vowels) and social studies (sort by continents).  You get the idea!

Fiona (four) loves to line them up and make up her own games with them too. And since they are pretty small, they don’t take up much room.

They also work for bean bag games and are fun to toss back into the basket to clean up.  🙂

All five of the kids now look at every thrift store we visit to see if there are any new ones to add to our collection.  Even I have fun looking for fun new species to add!

 

Back to Blogging…

I think I finally have things moved over here from our old site and am even getting some widgets and things added.  I’m going to try to get back into regular blogging now that the dust has settled. Here’s a bit of an update on things here, in as few words as possible….

1.  Rehearsals for the Wilder Pageant are starting soon, and most of our family is once again in it.  Daryl is the mayor and Reverend Alden again, Jack and Alex play boys in the mayor’s family, Victoria is back in it and is Mrs. Hansen (the Ingalls Family buys their sod house from Mr. and Mrs. Hansen) and little Fiona is in it for the first time ever, at age three!  I’m so excited for another family member to be taking part.  My little Annalee (aka Rhiannon Lee, who now goes by Rhia) was four years old when she started, so many years ago.  🙂  Fiona is playing Lucy Bedal.  It should be great fun.

2.  We just got back from another trip to St. Augustine.  This was our second time renting a condo on the beach in the oldest city in America.  We love it there, and we can stay in that beautiful two-bedroom Florida condo for less than we could stay for a week in a motel in Sioux Falls, thanks to visiting off-season (May is when kids are still in school and past winter months when people pay more to visit) and knowing how to get good rates.  I will always happily do without satellite TV and x-boxes, shop at thrift stores, cook from scratch and otherwise pinch pennies to be able to afford for travel to be part of our family life.

A little pirate art fun at a family event in St. Augustine

3.  We’re back to foraging now that the weather is nice.  Daryl and the older girls harvested easily 50 pounds of wild asparagus over the past month, along with loads and loads of ramps (a delicacy that bring as much as $15 a pound in some parts of the country) and some stinging nettles (they taste like spinach when cooked and are incredibly high in some nutrients — and no, they don’t sting you once they’re wilted, dried, blended or boiled!).  Asparagus season is winding down but lots of other goodies are coming into their own, including cattails next in our sights (they’re delicious with butter and salt).  Also coming soon or still going strong:  mulberries, raspberries, purslane, lamb’s quarters, dandelions (dandelion honey is a favorite here), milkweed pods (absolutely delicious battered and fried when they are still small) and loads more.  You can check out my Wild Edibles board on Pinterest if you want to start foraging with your kids.  I can’t recommend it enough for everything from nature studies to life skills to just a source of delicious (organic) foods you can’t get anywhere else.  This started out as a homeschool summer project for us three years ago and now wild foods are a substantial part of our “groceries” for half the year. Otherwise, a hundred other things are going on, as always….  I’ll try to start popping in to share more and also go back to sharing lots of fun resources I come across. It’s nice to be back!

Free Fun U.S. States Game!

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational has created an awesome free printable card game that helps kids learn all about the geography and history of the states.

Battle of the States is played a little bit like “War” but by comparing numbers and dates related to the states such as population, number of counties, electoral votes and year of statehood.

One nice thing about it is that it is slightly skewed in favor of younger players, since they start the game and pick the category to compare first.  The player who has the higher number in that category gets both cards and gets to choose the next category.  The player with the most cards at the end wins.

I’m hoping to try the game with at least a few of my kiddos once I find enough cardstock to print them out.  I seem to have been raided by small crafters lately.  😉

 

50 Things We Learned About in the Badlands

We’re back from a fabulous four days in the Badlands of South Dakota.

This was the first time the kids and I had ever been there, though Daryl was there years ago.

It was absolutely magical!  Not only is the landscape breathtaking, but it’s rife with educational opportunities and it’s all sorts of fun to climb and explore.

It will definitely be a regular vacation stop for us.

We all agreed that May seemed to be the perfect month to visit, too.  The weather was warm but not hot, the landscape was green and filled with the start of wildflowers, there weren’t many people yet, and hotel rates were cheaper since it was before Memorial Day.

Thank goodness we homeschool and can go on adventures all year, instead of waiting until school is out and the rates are highest.  🙂

There were so many magical experiences…. watching thousands of prairie dogs running around and chirping at us, seeing our first burrowing owls (read “Hoot” to fall in love with these darling birds), having bighorn sheep crossing in front of us on the road, driving past grazing buffalo (no fences!) in the park, seeing spectacular views, climbing landscapes that felt like the surface of Mars…

And there were so many educational aspects too…. touring the Minuteman Missile museum (SD was once filled with missiles during the Cold War and you can still tour one site!), earning ranger badges at the parks, getting up close to animals we’d only seen in zoos like pronghorn antelopes that just lay in the grass as we drove by, learning how the Badlands were formed, seeing fossils preserved under glass at the site from animals that lived there millions of years ago, learning the Native American history of the area, stopping at educational sites along the way and so much more.

Here are 50 fun subjects we learned about on our quick trip!

1. burrowing owls
2. prairie dogs
3. bighorn sheep
4. bull snakes
5. The Cold War
6. Minuteman missiles
7. The Great Inland Sea
8. black-footed ferrets
9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
10. short, medium and tall grass prairies
11. Wall Drug
12. molting
13. animal sounds (miss Fiona learned many!)
14. new words (Fiona again — including vulture, buffalo and goat)
15. Dr. Seuss and how his books were written to help children deal with fears of the Cold War and to diffuse politics
16. Lewis and Clark
17. long boats
18. The Corn Palace
19. pronghorn antelopes
20. two-layered animal coats
21. erosion
22. soils, sand and dirt (components, how they’re made, etc.)
23. fossils
24. Native American names and how they’re given
25. the meaning of Badlands
26. outlaw history
27. wagon trains
28. The Wall Wildlife Museum
29. baby prairie animals (Fiona)
30. baby forest animals (Fiona)
31. ghost towns (we explored one, Okaton)
32. mesas
33. buttes
34. Pine Ridge Reservation
35. vulture courtship
36. Greek myths (on tape for the drive)
37. baseball cards
38. Lovecraft/Cthulhu (Victoria’s reading for the trip)
39. Mt. Rushmore (we didn’t visit but we learned about it)
40. vocabulary through Bananagrams at the hotel  🙂
41. river bluffs and landscapes
42. glaciers
43. prehistoric animals
44. magpies
45. coyotes
46. South Dakota geography and news
47. distance (we drove across the Missouri River and found out it was exactly a mile even though it seemed small)
48. paleontologists
49. change, time and impermanence (Jack had a bit of an existential crisis at ten about how “someday this will all be gone” and we talked about how much it had changed and the vast amount of time it had all been there.)
50. “Prairie Dogs Have Plague!”

It was a pretty magical trip!

Ancient Continent Found Under the Indian Ocean

Have you heard this exciting news?

National Geographic reports:

Evidence of a drowned “microcontinent” has been found in sand grains from the beaches of a small Indian Ocean island, scientists say.

A well-known tourist destination, Mauritius (map) is located about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) off the coast of Africa, east of Madagascar. Scientists think the tiny island formed some nine million years ago from cooling lava spewed by undersea volcanoes.

But recently, researchers have found sand grains on Mauritius that contain fragments of the mineral zircon that are far older than the island, between 660 million and about 2 billion years old.

In a new study, detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists concluded that the older minerals once belonged to a now vanished landmass, tiny bits of which were dragged up to the surface during the formation of Mauritius. (Also see “World’s Oldest Rocks Suggest Early Earth Was Habitable.”)

The BBC says:

Researchers have found evidence for a landmass that would have existed between 2,000 and 85 million years ago…

…Until about 750 million years ago, the Earth’s landmass was gathered into a vast single continent called Rodinia.

And although they are now separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, India was once located next to Madagascar.

Once land started to drift towards their current positions, Mauritia was no more

Now researchers believe they have found evidence of a sliver of continent – known as a microcontinent – that was once tucked between the two.

Fascinating stuff!