Mound Builders

Today we studied the North American mound builders! First, we watched the clips from my planning page, and we read parts of this book:

Then we made our own flour and salt dough:

1.5 cups of flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

Of course, you just have to mix it with your hands. ;)

And we made some mounds! We read how the Mississippians had temples on top of their mounds, so we added one to ours. Y'know, you could homeschool without Squinkies, but why would you?! They really do come in handy!

Then Mary illustrated this week's history sentence while I read her the History Highlight. Those are lots and lots of mounds. ;) The history sentence page is from C3, but I don't remember the file/user name (I pulled it off from there a long time ago).

Today was a nice and easy day. I like these. The rest of our week is packed, but it's a good packed, so no worries.

Happy Mound Builder Day!

UPDATE: (long story ahead)

Okay, so this is the next day (sometimes I write a post and put it in the can for a later day). I really, really wanted to follow Crecia's lead and make a mound cake and let Mary decorate it with green icing. We were going to make three small cakes, one for the Adena, one for the Hopewell, and one for the Mississippians. It was going to be awesome! This morning Mary and I baked (pretty sure this was the first time I've ever really let her do anything in the kitchen - for shame, I know), and we had a wonderful time together! She even called me her best friend, just out of the blue. Oooh, the warm fuzzies!! We put the cake in the oven, and even though I had to improvise on the ingredients, I was sure everything would be hunky-dory. Then she mixed together the green icing while I cleaned up. Everything was going along quite nicely. Then we went to a meeting, and on the way home we stopped at Pet Smart to pick up some aquarium rocks for Week 20's project. While walking through the aisles, Mary spotted this small, plastic aquarium plant, nothing special. Well, she fell in LOVE with this dinky little thing! And this dinky little thing was $8.99! Insane! Well, she had just spent the money that she'd been saving on a Daffy Duck doll, one that just this morning she told her daddy, "I can't live without Anna, Jesus, and Daffy." Cute, right? Well, she was starting to have a melt-down in the store, so we quickly got the rocks and hurried out to the car. Mary lost it. "That's my love plant! I've been saving all my love for it! I want to throw Daffy in the trash and get the plant!" Seriously? She kept this up all the way home. I try to calm her down by quietly explaining that we can't always get what we want, the plant's not in the budget, etc. (and yes, I do sing the Rolling Stones song to her when this happens). However, I really don't have that much room to talk because I just bought $17 worth of aquarium rocks that wasn't in the budget (but she doesn't know this, so no worries). Anyway, we walked in the house, and I immediately tried to distract her by saying how much fun we're going to have decorating our mound cakes. I get the big cake out of the fridge and (wait for it. . .) it's all gooey inside! What?! The situation just went downhill from there. She brought Daffy out of her room and kicked him in the head twice, just to show how much more she liked the love plant back at the pet store. Nice. Meanwhile, I was trying SO hard not to break out in maniacal laughter, because, really, what else can you do but laugh at this. I lost it. I burst out laughing, but I didn't want her to know I thought this was funny, so I pretended to weep instead at her bad behavior. Y'all, it was just off-the-hook hilarious! I wish you could have seen it. Needless to say, I would love to show you cute pictures of our mound cakes, but God had other plans. It's not always sunshine and lollipops over here, but that's okay. I'm trying to laugh  more and lighten up, so this was a good exercise. But, next time we do cakes, I'm going to have vegetable oil in the pantry. ;)

UPDATE to the UPDATE (next day):

We made the mound cakes! 

They're not pretty, but it sure was fun!

Mission accomplished.