Ancient People, Ancient Food

On Tuesday, as I mentioned we would, we took a look at the food pyramid after talking about what the first people on earth probably ate. I printed blank food pyramids for Mane, and she's been keeping track of what she eats.

Then, over the last few days we've done some reading from these books:
Food by Piero Ventura


What We Eat: A First Look at Food by Sara Lynn & Diane James


It's Disgusting and We Ate It by James Solheim


We especially recommend It's Disgusting and We Ate It. This book takes a look at what people have eaten over time, and what people still eat in various places throughout the world. Mane says, "It was a really funny book." We learned that a pound of roasted spiders has many times more protein than a pound of beef!

Today, I read Mane the first two chapter of Ancient Agriculture: From Foraging to Farming by Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods.



This has been a fascinating read so far. Mane just finished telling Vespera how people used to store meat under water before there was electricity for freezers, and some modern scientists did an experiment to see how well this method kept meat compared to freezers. They found that the meat kept just fine in autumn, winter, and spring. In the summer it got a little funky, but it was still safe to eat.

In the world of reading & math...

Mane & I have been using the magnetic letters on her portable magnet board to work on phonics concepts from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. This works better for her than working directly from the book. We're somewhere around lesson 65 (not going to go look right now). I anticipate moving through these a little more quickly now, as she understands many of the upcoming phonics rules already. She continues to read early readers from the library for practice. Yesterday she read Spots by Marcia Leonard, which is an early reader by "Real Kids Readers."

Today was the beginning of math lesson 20. I think she's going to need to sleep on this one, but she's still moving along well.

I'm still reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe aloud to Mane, as she requested in December. And we continue to "have a meeting the the calendar" most days to talk about days, weeks, months, and ordinal numbers.