O, Canada
19 July 2017
As part of our schooling the first week of this new 2017-2018 year, the students at Sweet Pea Academy have been learning about our Neighbors to the North: Canada. We've done a timeline of the nation's history, completed map work, read library books with lots of cool information (which is what they're doing here), and wrapped up with a few things you'll see later in the post.
Sophia's turn at reading aloud some cool facts about Canada
One of the most fun things we did was find a few Canadian recipes and choose one to make: Sweet Corn Pancakes. All right, to be honest, it won because that's the one for which we already had all the ingredients on hand. Heh. The first ingredient was six egg whites, whipped into shape. Chloë started off that process, which was slow going with just an immersion blender!
Sophia hurt her foot just before the making of the pancakes, so most of her participation consisted of sitting there and pouting. Poor kid - we went to the ER later in the evening and discovered she had quite the fractured pinky toe!
Jack, meanwhile, put a beatin' on those egg yolks.
Chloë was still whipping egg whites, so Jack continued with the dry ingredients. Um, funny story: I'm notorious amongst the members of Team Odette for always leaving an ingredient out of the pumpkin pie each Thanksgiving. Something different each time (but never the pumpkin, at least)! Well... I'm usually not that bad when it comes to cooking, but I was so concerned with helping the two older kids whilst simultaneously concerning myself with Sophie's foot that I forgot to have Jack put in the flour! D'oh!
Wait, why is Chloë cracking more eggs? We already used six... oh, that's right. When she finally finished whipping the whites and I wanted to take a picture, she held the bowl up and dumped out half. the. bowl. in the process! So Finnegan, we begin again.
Corn, obviously went into these Sweet Corn Pancakes... but only half a cup?! That didn't seem right to me, but we stuck with the recipe. Unlike the flour omission, that is.
Chloë finally tired of doing nothing but whipping egg whites, so Jack took a turn for her sake. Okay, maybe for his own, too.
Finally, it was time for the twain to meet. And you thought it would be never.
Chloë did the honors of dumping all the flourless ingredients into the eggy whites. What the heck? Why was it so runny? Maybe because Mom LEFT OUT THE FLOUR. (Yes, it was that big a deal.)
Poor Sophia. Bored, hurting, and left out of the pancake game.
At last, it was time to start heating up the pan and getting some oil going.
But wait, who's this joining us? Sophie, up off her booboo chair, wanting to watch and help with the pancake proceedings? Yay!
"Mama, something don't look quite right." That's not what she actually said, but look at her face. Says it to me!
Well, shall we have a taste? Let's. Jack looked rather dubious.
The pancakes received a big fat, "Meh," from the Odettelettes. Ah, well. We thought about making them again - this time with flour - but the kids decided they didn't even like them enough to try. Boo. Maybe another recipe, another time.
Undaunted by broken toe and sad pancake tastings, Sophia decided to actually add the flour to the remaining pancake batter and try again on her own. We still said meh after trying those and ended up scrapping the whole thing. Well, sometimes you just need to screw up a thing in order to figure out what to do next, right? In this case, what to do next would be to make something else. But for another day, another time... #LessoneLearned
To wrap up our loony adventure, the kids did a few simple but fun Canadian-themed crafts. Look - loon collages! If nothing else, this activity was worthwhile because it was artsy-craftsy and Jack admitted, "Hey, that was actually kind of fun." Not an art kid, that boy.
And there are our Canadian flag-themed paper lanterns, adorning one corner of our living room/school room. I kinda like them there. Don't know how long they'll stay there, but I enjoy them in the meantime!
Next country to come up tomorrow: Brazil. No, no one will be getting waxed.
Fin.