We're Back

I decided that I would continue school for the summer.  I decided this when it was raining everyday. Now that it's finally blues skies, I might be a little relaxed on what I want to accomplish.

This week we finished post Civil war, but now I'm going to start an astronaut unit because Maxwell has decided that is what he wants to be when he grows up.

We will also change our schedule.  Science experiments are getting cut out because they are involved, and I would get burnt out if I did them all summer.  DO NOT FRET they will start up again in the fall.  Instead, I'm doing a service club where we do little acts of service for our school.

We talked about segregation this week and how even though slavery was outlawed after the war, that black people were still miss treated.  I think Maxwell is a bit confused though.  I think he thinks that black people used actual black colored toilets and black water fountains and black restaurants, and that white people used actual white colored toilets and water fountains and restaurants.  I couldn't quite get him away from him thinking that somehow it had to do with the color of the object as well as the person.  Oops.  Anyway, we took out Oreos and talked about how great they taste together, and how they don't taste as good when separated...but I think my boys just humored me but secretly thought they tasted great both ways...oops again.

We also talked about George Washington Carver, and how he triumphed over segregation and showed how much worth black people had and intelligent black people could be.  Did you know that he invented over 300 uses for the peanut so people would actually plant it as a crop to renourish soil? And that one of his peanut uses was laundry detergent?  I couldn't help but think of my nephew who is deathly allergic to peanuts while reading this and I just cringed at the thought of clothes covered in peanut oil.

We made homemade peanut butter in Carver's honor.

We had our first ever service club.  The first of many. We went to the store and got all the things we would need to put together hygiene kits for the church to give to disaster victims. We put the kits together and had soap left over.  The kids then took the soap and made sculptures from it and then shaved it and tried to trick people into believing it was coconut or whatever.  This made a huge mess, and so my sister-in-law ended up serving ME by cleaning it up....so much for our first service club...oh well.