Weekly Highlights, ECC, Week 6

Our highlights this week included our trip to the Matthaei botanical gardens and our Mexican fiesta! It was a bit of a crazy week, which has ended even crazier!!!! Poor Zeke has had a very high fever for 2 days. I hope this doesn't go through all of us...although the Zeke quarantine did not go well....I found all the kids up in our bedroom with Zeke playing with Polly pockets and Barbies while he was resting! Micah also found Zeke's half finished cupcake on the table after dinner and proceeded to eat it. Darn!

Anyway, our trip to the botanical garden was amazing. We took advantage of all the "extra" things they had laid out for all the school tours that were going on in the morning. They had cocoa beans, coffee beans, and peppercorns laid out be the respective trees, an aloe plant broken open to observe, a can of pickled cactus to check out, and more that I'm not even remembering, I'm sure. The arid room was great and I had the kids each pick out a plant to illustrate. We will have to revisit this place during our rain forest study! Here are a few pics of our excursion...and it was great having a grandma along to help!




(these are the same plants that we bought Zeke from the greenhouse the other week! We found Abby's plant too!)

We ended our light school week (this was actually our third week of Mexico...and it looks like our entry into Canada will be delayed a few more days due to sickness) with our Mexican Fiesta. We really enjoyed trying some authentic Mexican recipes, and had a good friend over to share with us about growing up in Mexico and his authentic Mexican "surprise" recipe, which was a delicious stew. Our second attempt at a pinata was a success and it took the kids quite a few hits to break it! We had the kids' work over the last couple of weeks on display, and I was grateful to be able to share our educational journey with grandma, grandpa, and aunt Paula.

Welcome to Mexico, amigos!

A sampling of our work

Zeke explaining some things he learned about deserts.


These homemade churros were a hit, and our appetizer instead of dessert! Here's the recipe!



Delicious homemade guacamole!



The adults' turn to eat.



Breaking the pinata.

Have lots more to post on Halloween, Steve's office event, and my now 6-year old's birthday!