bountiful bread

Dearest Darlings,

Before I start this insightful post, I must call something to your attention. I received many questions on my last several posts and I am delighted to answer them. The conundrum of the matter is that some of you are very difficult to reach. If you would like to be more accessible, and indirectly avoiding of myself being labeled snooty for not answering questions, go to your Blogger profile, edit profile, and under privacy click that sweet little box that says "show my email address."  If you click this magic button, I shall answer your questions and email you every five minutes from there on out ;)

Now shifiting from the very unrelated introduction to the actual intent of this post....thank you for your attention.

 One of my favorite things about homeschooling is doing unit studies. We pick a subject and explore it for a week or so and try to incorporate it into our whole school regimen.
I love Amanda Bennett unit studies and have used many of her downloads in the past. I used her Bountiful Bread study as a guide book for this study.

Here's a look at some of the things we did:

We made several kinds of bread; quick and rising. We made bread in a bag, mushing up all the ingredients together. The kids we amazed at how the bread rose while we went on a quick field trip. They loved their warm bread with handmade butter...soooo good!

We did an experiment to see how yeast works. The bag with warm water, yeast, and sugar just kept getting biggggger! The boys wanted to let it keep going to see if it would explode. I did not want to take that chance, so I ended the science project.

Being the week before Easter, we read a lot about Passover, the parts of the Sedar meal, the importance of manna to the Isrealites, and Jesus' last supper with His disciples. We made unleavened bread to make it all come to life a bit.

We practiced fractions while making bread, surveyed friends and family about their favorite sandwiches for a math project, learned new vocabulary words, watched videos about bakeries around the world, and made some beautiful folder books to show off all their work.

To tie it all together, teacher came up with the brilliant plan to visit a bakery on the last day of the study. A new one just opened close to our house. We went in unannounced and asked if there was any way we could see the kitchen. They were so extremely cool about it. They took us back there and showed us the giant mixers, the ovens, the bread slicer. There was a lady making Tiramisu and a guy making a TON of bread. It was pretty cool.

Afterwards, I told the kids they could each choose one thing from the showcase. Jack's first choice was a chocolate torte...the whole thing. I rephrased my offer to being "one small thing from the showcase." They each chose something different and yummy. Then we bought a loaf to go with our soup for dinner.

I love homeschooling. Like I really do.

My kids drive me nuts, of course. But I love this time I have with them. I feel so blessed to be able to teach them like this. My six-week plan has a couple other fun unit studies included...yeah for school right??! :)

xo,
{alicia}