Fun in Mexico

We managed to have a fun week studying Mexico even though both boys were sick all week.

We read this cute book about a little girl learning to make tortillas with her Grandma. It is written in both English and Spanish:

Then we made our own Mexican treat - Churritos! Yum! And easy too. We cut flour tortillas into quarters, fried them one side at a time in hot oil and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. Mmmmm...

We read this true story about Paracutin, a volcano "plowed up" by a farmer in Mexico:

And this wonderful Five in a Row title about a little girl and her tall-tale-telling Grandpa:

We read about Omar in Children Just Like Me:

And lots of interesting information in these two:

Countries of The World: Mexico by Leslie Jermyn (Gareth Stevens Publishing) and

The above book did have some Day of the Dead stuff and Aztec gods that we didn't care for. I gave Little Man a brief explanation and Z-Man and I talked more in detail about what God says about contacting the dead and other practices in Deuteronomy 18:9. Countries of the World: Mexico talked about human sacrifices in the Aztec and Mayan civilizations and we read what God told Israel about that too. Z-Man and I read some pretty exciting stories in

Missionary Stories with the Millers (Miller Family (Harvest House)).

We read about the discovery in Mexico of the over-wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly. I was so pleased that we found this book:

Monarch Butterflies: Mysterious Travelers

What a great story! A Canadian professor and his wife started tagging butterflies in 1937. Children all over North America reported on tagged butterflies and it appeared they were headed to Mexico. The professor wrote to Mexican newspapers, asking for help. An American who was traveling with his dog wrote back and offered to help. After marrying a Mexican woman, they searched for nearly a year before they finally found it - millions of butterflies high in the mountains! The professor and his wife traveled down with a National Geographic photographer, who then authored this book! This one is a winner!

AND, Nova has a special on Monarch migration that is airing on PBS this Tuesday at 8:00 PM EST. Great timing!

Little Man enjoyed this one:

And to round out our study, we did some fun projects. First we colored butterfly lifecycle pages, which you can find here (scroll all the way down.)

Then we talked about the symmetry of butterflies. With an outline shape of a butterfly, I had the boys fold then in half and put colored glitter glue on only one half. Then we folded the halves together and pressed down: voila! Perfect symmetry.

And finally, we colored some butterflies and attached them to pipe cleaner rings to make finger puppets. Little Man was still partial to the Blue Morphos of the rainforest from last week.

All in all, it was a fun week, in spite of sickness. And it should here be noted that both boys managed to rally themselves sufficiently to play the Wii. They're little troopers, they are.