Slovakian Food and Manifest Destiny

"Miss H, where's a fun place to go that's within 2 hours of here?"  This was the question posed to me by the 8th grade boy emptying the classroom's garbage cans at the end of the day.  Looking back on it now, I should've said the library.  Sigh.  Hindsight is always 20/20.  Instead, my mind drew a blank.  When he didn't hear any ideas from me, he clarified a bit more, "Like for a field trip."  Ohhh.  Hmm.  Then he added a little more, "And it has to have a good hotel too."  Ha! Like I know fun places to go with good hotels?  I told him I'd think on it and get back to him.  Valley Fair?  The student said it's only open on weekends.  I'm pretty sure I saw a flyer somewhere with school program dates during the week...  Anyway, enough about that.


We're cruising right along in our social studies book.  Man, the 5th graders are like little sponges just waiting to soak up the next thing I tell them.  Today was our last day on Westward expansion.  Manifest Destiny is complete on our classroom United States "map/puzzle" on the wall.  As the United States grew in our textbook, we added each parcel puzzle piece to a space on the wall.  For a long time it was just the Original 13 Colonies and Land from the Treaty of Paris.  Last week we added the Louisiana Purchase.  Today we remembered the Alamo and added land from the Gadsden Purchase, the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, and the Mexican Cession. 


Then we went out for some recess with the 3rd and 4th graders (I think we'll switch stuff around to do the same tomorrow).  We ended our day with a little time to catch up on homework that needed to be turned in.  The two girls wrote down yesterday's math assignment wrong, so they didn't have the last section finished.  Mr. E wanted them to get it done by the end of the day.  One of them was NOT happy to be finishing her math instead of getting to work on her art project. 


Our Slovakian pen pals sent us a letter about their favorite foods.  Most of them mentioned eating yogurt, sheep cheese, and apple pie.  Some even included recipes!  We got two recipes for apple pie and one for pancakes.  Now the 5th graders want to send some of their recipes back.  I think it's a great idea!  They seem pretty excited to write the reply to this letter.  Food will do that to you I guess.  An interesting thing the 5th graders picked up on was the units of measure featured in the recipe.  Instead of cups, they measure everything in grams since everyone besides the US uses the SI system of units.  I should've done some homework ahead of time.  What is the conversion rate of grams to cups?  600g= ~2.5c  Now I want to try one of the recipes!