Pancake Sunday 10.9

Dulce de Leche Pancakes

 Dulce de leche is a popular treat in Argentina, it's a milk based caramel-like sauce or spread. It's used to sweeten food and candies and can be smeared on toast, muffins and, of course, pancakes. So since we were talking about Argentina this week we made some dulce de leche pancake spread. There are different ways to make dulce de leche but one easy way is to boil a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of water, that takes about 3 hours. I didn't have 3 hours to boil a can so I used a double boiler method, that still took waaaayyy too long.

So I cheated and popped it in the microwave for a few minutes. Guess I should have been more patient because it kept it in the microwave a bit too long and it came out kinda hard. But still tasted yummy!

Have you ever had Brachs Milk Maids? It tasted exactly like those.

It looks like peanut butter

For the pancakes I used a recipe that called for the eggs to be whipped frothy with the sugar, I'm pretty sure I'm asking for an electric hand mixer for Christmas because all this hand whipping is killing my arms! My muscles look great though :p

Frothy eggs

Char mixing all the ingredients

 I think I'll add a new griddle to the list as well, looks like I have hot spots!

So here's the final product! Delicious dulce de leche pancakes. I have to say though, I will not be making the dulce de leche from scratch anymore, it's just too time consuming and much easier to buy it in the store.

Empanadas...sorta...

Empanadas

Empanadas are stuffed pastries that are either baked or fried. In Argentina the dough is typically made with flour, butter and eggs. Argentine empanada filling differs from province to province; beef, chicken, fish, and even fruit. One common filling includes onion, boiled eggs, olives and raisins. 

Here is the Aleacia version of empanadas:

For the filling I browned some ground beef, added diced onions, tomatoes and corn. Seasoned it with taco seasoning and cumin and added a dash of flour to thicken the juices.

While beginning to make the dough for the empanadas, I discovered we didn't have any eggs, I almost called it quits but my husband told me he had bought crescent rolls last time he went shopping. Sooooo, I used crescent roll dough. They aren't the correct shape and they didn't stretch worth a darn so they didn't hold much filling and turned out sloppy but I wasn't really too worried about it. I closed the edges with a fork.

Since the filling is already cooked through you only have to bake them until the dough is done and browned to your desired color. They were really tasty (even though not authentic) they were gone within minutes!

Girls' Pick

amazon.com

On the Pampas by Maria Cristina Brusca
This is a great book to introduce children to the Pampas in Argentina (that's our current stop in the ABC World Tour). The Pampas is a very flat grassland that runs through Argentina and Uruguay for miles. Ranch animals roam the Pampas watched over by Gauchos (cowboys).

ridetheroad.com

On the Pampas tells the story of a little girl who lives in Buenos Aires but visits her grandparents estancia (ranch) every summer. The little girl tells how one summer she visited and learned the ways of the gaucho, doing everything from taking care of horses to learning to lasso and even herding cattle. She learned so much about being a gaucho she earned her own rastra (gaucho belt) and a surprise for next summer!

I'd recommend this book even if you aren't learning about Argentina, it's a great story about working hard, having fun and being rewarded for it.

ABC World Tour {Australia}

Welcome

to 

Australia!

We kicked off our ABC World Tour with a very long stay in Australia. It took awhile to find a groove for getting everything I wanted to get accomplished in each country. Australia was the perfect guinea pig and since it's a huge country/continent there was plenty to learn about and I don't feel bad at all for staying on the topic for so long. I promise from now on, each country will be only a week and I'll have each post up by Monday the following week.

I'm just going to give a brief summary of all the topics we covered with links and the list of books we read.

Facts

When we first started talking about Australia we covered just the basic information:

*It's in the Southern Hemisphere

*It's a continent and a country

*The capital is Canberra

Charlotte located Australia and Canberra on the map every day

After we talked about flying from NC to Australia 

(which would have cost us $2,000 each!)

I stamped Charlotte's passport

(passport DIY)

we were officially in the country!

Here are a few things we discussed:

   *Language: English

Greeting: G'day  

(We watched this video to learn about the accent)

*Currency: Australian Dollar

Rate: Approx. .97AUD=1.00USD

*Flag

*Weather: Southern Hemisphere weather is opposite Northern Hemisphere

Under the book you can see the travel journal we've been writing in everyday

Lexi colored right alongside Char

While discussing Sydney, we found that you can climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's about 200 steps to the top of one of the pylons so the girls went out front and climbed our stairs 20 times to simulate the experience! When we reached the top we could see the Sydney Opera House! 

Food

Talking about food we found that Australians eat a lot of different things than us!

*Kangaroo

*Crocodile

*Emu

*Vegemite

They also eat yummy treats called Lamingtons

which are sponge cake squares dipped in chocolate and rolled in coconut

(we made some!)

Art/Music

We came across a book filled with amazing Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and along with the stories was amazing art.

Aboriginal Dot Painting

They are breathtaking!

So we did our own 

I'm classifying boomerangs as art. 

From shaping them to throwing them is an art form, then they are painted with beautiful designs! 

We made our own boomerang out of cardboard and then practiced throwing it (how to) at our favorite park.

As far as music goes we learned about the digeridoo and watched

this video

and

this video

We also listened to a few Australian folksongs and came across

Slim Dusty's version of Waltzing Matilda (here)

Landmarks

Ayers Rock aka Uluru is a HUGE inselberg (a mountain island) located in Australia's Red Centre. It's sacred to the local people and a huge tourist attraction. I't made out of sandstone and appears to change color at different times of the day and season. It was really neat looking at the different pictures of Uluru, especially the pictures where it appears violet in color.

Animals

I debated putting the Great Barrier Reef under landmarks, but considering it's the largest animal made structure on Earth, I had to put it under animals. The Great Barrier Reef is teeming with life and it's massive!! I never really knew how large it was but when we read that it would stretch from Maine to Florida, it was really put into perspective. I had plans to make different types of coral out of clay but the clay just crumbled on me when it dried. It was sad :( BUT, instead we made these adorable reef fish out of CDs. I also bought the girls a Coral Reef Toob to play with. (Toobs are the most awesome thing in the world)

Here is a great video on the Great Barrier Reef

We read a lot (A LOT!) of books about Australia's unique animals. It is said that the animals are so different due to the prolonged isolation that Australia has experience. Check out this video we watched of a laughing kookaburra, we saw one in person at the national zoo and it was laughing for us, but every time I got out the video camera it stopped, then it would laugh again at me when I put it away. The laugh is quite infectious, kookaburras make me giggle. Of course we talked about platypuses, koalas, kangaroos, wombats, bilbies, echidnas, emus, the list goes on and on! We visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, it was fun seeing all the animals they have and they even have a platypus webcam on their site!

Books/Movies

We watched:

*Crocodile Dundee: as a general about Australia movie

*Finding Nemo: about the Great Barrier Reef

*Australia: We didn't watch this one but I would recommend it, it's about cattle driving in a time before World War II, it's pretty interesting (but looooong)

We read:

*Atlas ~ Malcom Watson

*National Geographic World Atlas for Young Explorers

*Children's Amazing Places Encyclopedia ~ Robert Hamilton

*Australia ~ Ann Heinrichs

*Wild Shores of Australia ~ Ron Fisher

*National Geographic Book of Mammals 

*National Geographic: A Fragile Empire ~ Jennifer S. Holland

*Down Under ~ Tessa Paul

*Rainbow Bird ~ Eric Madden

* Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo ~ Alison Lester

*Big Rain Coming ~ Katrina Germein

*Waking Up Down Under ~ Carol Votaw

*Stories from the Billabong ~ James Vance Marshall

*Toad Overload ~ Patricia Seibert

* Life in a Coral Reef ~ Wendy Pfeffer

*Coral Reefs ~ Sylvia A. Earle

*Coral Reef: A city that never sleeps ~ M. Cerullo

*Fish ~ Eyewitness Books

*A Wombat's World ~ Caroline Arnold

*Australian and New Zealand Food and Drink ~ Christine Osborne

*Platypus ~ Joan Short

~ A Platypus's World ~ Caroline Arnold

Girls' Pick

Yep, we're still in Australia! And thanks to some supplemental curriculum I stumbled upon we'll be staying for one more week.  Spending three weeks in a continent hardly seems like enough time, Australia has so much to offer! 

Here are the picks for this week:

 Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo by Alison Lester

This book is amazing! I love it! What a great way to introduce children to Arnhem Land, which is in Northern Australia and is home to many different indigenous tribes and language groups. The book specifically focuses on Gunbalanya where Kunwinjku is the main language that is spoken.

amazon.com

The book is about a boy (Ernie) who is leaving his friends to live in Arnhem Land where is parents are working at a hospital. What makes this book so great is that its written as if Ernie is writing a letter to each of his friends for each of the Arnhem land seasons, there are six seasons! For each season there are different activities that each of Ernie's new friends are doing such as fishing, learning traditional Dreamtime stories, and playing sports.

amazon.com

Another great thing about this book is that there is a short section at the beginning of the book explaining a bit about Arnhem Land, and the pronunciations of the seasons. At the back of the book there is a small glossary with terms that may not be familiar to the reader. It's a very easy read and beautifully illustrated. I can't wait to read more books by Alison Lester!

amazon.com

Waking Up Down Under by Carol Votaw

Another book that I've fallen in love with! This is an adorable book about 12 different Australian animal babies waking up in the morning. When the babies that wake in the morning go to sleep at night the story transitions right into the nocturnal babies waking up. So there are always babies awake in Australia! The sweet rhyming words 

Wake up, little emu, nibble in the sun. Your feathers may not fly, but oh, how you can run!

 and the delightful illustrations of the baby animals by Susan Banta make this book a must read!!!

amazon.com

Lamingtons

Since we're visiting Australia this week we decided to try some Australian treats.

We made lamingtons which are sponge cake cubes covered in chocolate icing and rolled in coconut.

They are so good.

I found the recipe here on allrecipes.com

Greasing the baking pan

Creaming the butter, sugar and vanilla.
Charlotte said, "Mmmm, it smells so good Mommy!"

I hesitated with letting Char crack the eggs but had to remember that practice makes perfect. I'm so glad I let her do it, she was so proud of herself.

The recipe called for unsweetened coconut but all we could find was sweetened

We left some sponge cake plain, some just with chocolate and some the traditional way with coconut.

These were fantastically delicious little cakes! I think I like Australia! 

;)

Girls' Pick

amazon.com

Stories from the Billabong by James Vance Marshall and Francis Firebrace. 

This week we've landed in Australia so we're reading Aboriginal folktales retold from the Yorta-Yorta tribe, one of many Aboriginal tribes in Australia.

amazon.com

All of the illustrations are by Francis Firebrace who is an Aboriginal artist and storyteller.

This book is a wonderful collection of folktales, there are ten stories including stories about creation, why frogs croak, and how the crocodile got its scales.

amazon.com

There is a glossary at the back of the book with the definitions of common Australian words, a page about Aboriginal Australians, and pictures of Aboriginal symbols and what they mean.

This book is a wonderful way to introduce the Aboriginal culture to children. The pictures are vibrant and authentic, and the stories are simply written and easy to understand. We've thoroughly been enjoying reading all about Australia!

Make Something Monday: Passport

This week we're starting our school year with an ABC world tour. When you travel out of country you need a passport so I made one! With only a few scrapbooking supplies I was able to create a pretend passport that looks pretty similar to a real passport. Very simple, all done and ready to be filled with stamps/stickers from the countries that we visit!

Template for this page found here

Pretend passport next to a real passport