A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Our Week - With Large Family Illness and Chocolate Making


You wanna make a mom of many quake in her boots?  Mention stomach flu!  We came down with a brief but violent illness this week that hit 6 out of 9 of us starting in the wee hours of Monday morning.  We accomplished nothing Monday, very little Tuesday, but by Wednesday, we were ready to get back to homeschool.


Since we are studying early Central American civilizations this week, we made chocolate!


We learned that cocoa butter, at room temperature, is a rock hard solid, which surprised me.


After you add cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar, you stir for a bit.


After we got all the lumps smoothed out,


we applied the little stick on thermometer to let us know when it cooled to 94* so we could add the next step.


In the meantime, we took out the 2 real cocoa beans and rubbed the shells off and tasted them.  They were bitter.  Eli said they tasted like dirt.  I tried a nibble, and he had a point.  Even Paul and Katie tried a nibble.


Once the chocolate cooled to 94*, we added the crystallized bits and stirred until they were smooth, then we started putting chocolate into the little papers.  We did 6 plain chocolates, then added a couple of drops of peppermint essential oil and stirred it into the rest of our chocolate.


The boys decided it was pretty yummy!


Altogether, we made 16 chocolates.  In hindsight, I should have put less chocolate in each cup, since it was quite a mouthful when solid, and we had extra papers left over when we were done.  You can add nuts or peanut butter or whatever you choose.  I think dried cherries would be amazing.


The boys liked the mint chocolates better than the plain ones.


This was a really fun project.  I'm glad I got this little kit.  It really added something memorable to our study of Aztec culture.


As usual, Eli has more K'nex creations to share.  These are such great engineering toys!  The plane above has wings that tuck back.


And a smaller plane.


Thursday, Jack woke up with a cold, so I sent him back to bed.  Since we do almost all our subjects together, this left Eli at a loss.  I pulled a rabbit out of my hat and produced a pair of motors to go with his K'nex, and he spent the rest of the day designing vehicles and setting up courses for them to navigate.


This was the first one.  You can barely see the blue motor on the right side.


The taller design enabled this one to stay upright when going of the binder "cliff."


Today, we were supposed to make pots.  Now, we made pinch pots last year, but these were to be slab and coil pots, so I thought those would be sufficiently different enough to hold their interest.  Not really.  They weren't into the pots at all.


Eli made a couple tanks and some airplanes.

We finished out our week with with a trip to the park to enjoy the sunshine with friends.  It felt great to get out and breathe the fresh, warm air.  Especially after dealing with sickness most of the week.


Since we're not done with this week's work, we'll start out next week by finishing up Central American history.  Then we'll be on to Slavery and Renaissance Art, which, to me, doesn't seem to go together at all, but what do I know, right?  The following week looks to be more exciting, with the invention of the printing press and King Henry VIII, who my kids are already familiar with.


Only 5.5 more weeks of curriculum left for this school year!  WOO HOO!

Linking up with Home to 4 Kiddos, Faith Hope & Homeschool, The Homeschool Mother's Journal, and:
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16 comments:

  1. Any week there is chocolate involved has to be a good week! What a fun kit! We had the stomach bug hit our house too. It took my husband 3 weeks to recover. Love you wall of bookshelves!!

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    1. Oh my! I wouldn't have dealt well with 3 weeks of illness.

      We have 10 bookcases so far, and we keep running out of shelf space. Sigh. The problems of a homeschooler, lol.

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  2. I had a lot of fun reading about your week! Your title drew me in because we are coming off of illness but ours lasted (through various family members) for more than a month :-( This week was our first 'regular' week back to work! Looks like you guys had a lot of fun with the time you did get in. One of my sons is a Lego maniac and builds unique creations like your son did. Kinex are such a great tool (and toy!!)

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    1. We have big Lego fans here, too. :) I'm glad your family is healthy again! A month is a long time to be off routine.

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  3. Making chocolate would make me quake.

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    1. With the kit, it was really easy. We all learned something.

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  4. Replies
    1. We have a lot of chaos around here, but we also have a lot of fun. :) I love my "job."

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  5. How fun! My kids want to come do school with you all! ;).

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    1. You can assure them that I make the boys do math, too. ;) It's not ALL fun. I just tend not to take pictures of the "eat poop and die" looks I occasionally get from the riff raff. :D

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  6. Park trips and Chocolate? Best week ever! It's so fun when kids can get out of the house daily. It's like having 'recess' time.

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    1. LOL! Except for the sick part, it was a great week. :) Had a rough night last night, so I might blow off today's park plan, but on the other hand, the weather is so nice...

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  7. Sorry you weren't feeling well :-(

    And I love chocolate with peppermint oil. I make brownies that way when I have my essential oils classes :-)

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    1. Yum! I have drizzled mint chocolate over popcorn on occasion. :D But yes, at the start of the week, the peppermint oil was for everybody's bellies, topically.

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  8. I love the tanks and airplanes. If that doesn't say 'boy' I don't know what does!

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    1. LOL! So true! I was just looking through this week's pictures for Our Week, and we've got more Legos and K'nex creations. :) I imagine our days will look very different next year when I'm homeschooling a boy and two GIRLS, instead of this year's 2 boys. ;)

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