Potato Chip Day and St. Patrick's, Field Trip Friday

Last week we started our learning a wee bit early starting on Sunday since it was National Potato Chip Day. We ate our favorite flavors and learned how they came to be as we munched. Turns out potato chips have a colorful history of their own. Native American George Crum (Speck) was the cook at a hoity toity lodge in New York and a finicky customer kept sending back the French fried potatoes because of this reason and that and to get back at the customer George decided to make a batch so thin and fry them up so hot that the customer wouldn't be able to eat them with a fork. Instead, though, the customer was elated and they became a staple there where he worked. And the rest is history and I love that I am teaching the kids that everything has a history. We ate green eggs and ham for our St. Patty's breakfast (Z2 was thrilled!), studied the story behind the holiday and did a heap of themed worksheets. Z2 and Z3 decided it was the perfect opportunity to get me to buy Lucky Charms to which I absolutely agreed as they colored their worksheets. Some how they taste even more magically delicious on St. Patrick's Day. I made grasshopper brownies but we had to continue our lessons on Thursday since we gotta sleep sometime. I woke up to a house that had been abused with minty chocolate grasshopper brownies and green food coloring. Thank you Z3 I know it was you because you stepped in the green dye and walked from the kitchen all the way to the bathroom both of which are permanently scarred with green droplets. So after diving head first into the green-house effect my 3 year old made for me we (Z1 and Z2) proceeded to learn about our own Irish heritage and our surname, Bohannon, which they now know means "Decendent of the Victorious One" in it's original Gaelic. Field Trip Friday led us to the Historic Roane County Courthouse. We read about how the state used Kingston and promised to make it the state capital. Z1 couldn't believe they used trickery and she also couldn't believe that Nashville hadn't been the state capital all along. We learned that they kept shifting between Nashville and Knoxville and let Kingston be capital for one whole day and moved it back to Knoxville. I took them to the river park at Southwest Point on the the Clinch river to eat peanut butter sandwiches, granola bars, and meah-meahs (i.e. bananas) as Z3 and Z4 call them and fed the ducks until it was time to go. I managed for only three of the four Z's to get soaked which I thought was pretty good considering. It was beautiful Friday and today it is snowing. So much for global warming. "What's global warming?" Z1 asked. "A whole new lesson on theories," I said, "Kind of like the theory of evolution." "What's evolution?" Z1 asked. "One idiot's idea on why he was so hairy."