Making Gum

Gum, natural gum, as you may know, comes from the sap of the chicle tree in the rainforest. It's a really cool process we learned all about. We read all about it here before we got started. It's really neat if you've never read about it, I highly recommend it! Anyway, we ordered a kit from Glee Gum and had a blast!!! We made peppermint and cherry (the peppermint was our favorite). The kids LOVED the process, and now we understand where gum comes from (though a lot of the gum we buy now is man-made). One of the ways we can help preserve the rainforests is by buying gum like Glee Gum, since the chicle tree only grows there.

Melting the chicle.

The powdered sugar to mix in the chicle

Mixing

Rolling it flat

The finished product!! Delicious!

Oops!

Obviously, I have been a huge slacker. I hate it when people don't update their blogs, and lo and behold, I have become one of them. If it's any consolation, I write awesome entries in my head all the time while I brush my teeth. If only I would take the time to put my genius in "print"!!!!

I'm going to see what I can do to slowly get updated here. I'll probably just pick up where we are now....it would be a log to fill you in completely on the last ten months in our household.

For homeschool this year, we have been studying animals using Winterpromise's Animals and their Worlds, and having a good amount of fun with it. We studied the Savannah, the Rainforest (and we even made our own gum with chicle from the chicle tree), the desert, and are currently working on the woods. We are using Rightstart C for math for Mickade. Lillian is learning to read really well, and recently has begun to be able to read some Dr. Seuss books. :) Lulu is just along for the ride. I'm hoping to make a trip to Busch Gardens soon to see all the animals from Africa. It will be really cool for the kids to see the animals they have studied in person.

We will be leaving Key West this summer for the Portsmouth, VA area, actually maybe sooner. We are kind of done with tiny Key West, as beautiful as it may be. We are ready for some more activity, and a lot more living space. 5 people, a dog, and a cat in 1050 sqft of living space is growing old. Really old. I will really miss having a dock out back though!!!