sourdough starter – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

It’s December and that means Christmas school in the homeschool world! Some people drop their entire regular curriculum and supplement with all Christmas themed special unit studies; I have done this in the past, but Wyatt is in second grade now, and I am not feeling like that is the best choice for him at this time. So, I am adapting our regular curriculum around the holidays. I wasn’t going to include Social Studies this month, but I decided to take one state and just run with it for the whole month. That state – Alaska! I guess the biggest state in our country deserves an entire month, don’t you think? And, it so easy to adapt it to our needs. We still have our The Good and The Beautiful math and language arts everyday, but for everything else we are sliding into Christmas school.

Where to start… let’s start with science as this was where I really focused the bulk of our Christmas themed studies. In our regular curriculum of Blossom and Root we are actually on conifers and evergreens, so I didn’t have to do much there. But then we are putting the rest of the weeks on pause until January to study a few more wintry botanicals.

This week we looked at studied cranberries in addition to learning about conifers. (I honestly had no idea that not all evergreens are conifers!) I tied it into Alaska with the help of The Museum of the North’s website. I find so much cool stuff on museum websites! I have a few different lessons that I printed from The Museum of the North, but the first one we did was the Berries and Animals lesson and collage. We talked about how important berries are to the animals that eat them, and tried to think of alternatives for what they would eat if they couldn’t find the berries. Then Wyatt used the template of animals and berries to make a collage.

This month I also wanted to add a baking component to our school – I have some different kitchen projects planned, but for our first one I had Wyatt make his very own sourdough starter. We read The Sourdough Man, which is an Alaskan folktale based on the gingerbread man. Sourdough Annie is doing well so far, and in a few days we will turn it into our little Sourdough man cookie (biscuits?). We also talked about how sourdough has a long history in Alaska, and how some strains have been around for 200 years!

We also read the book Berry Song, which is one of my very favorite picture books that I have read all year. We read it in August, and I liked it so much that I added it to our curriculum. Here is the book description:

On an island at the edge of a wide, wild sea, a girl and her grandmother gather gifts from the earth. Salmon from the stream, herring eggs from the ocean, and in the forest, a world of berries.

Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry.

Huckleberry, Snowberry, Strawberry, Crowberry.

Through the seasons, they sing to the land as the land sings to them. Brimming with joy and gratitude, in every step of their journey, they forge a deeper kinship with both the earth and the generations that came before, joining in the song that connects us all. Michaela Goade’s luminous rendering of water and forest, berries and jams glows with her love of the land and offers an invitation to readers to deepen their own relationship with the earth.

We also started a berry book, which I found on the Museum of the North website as well. We are going to continue working on it this week. And art – we are a bit behind! I plan on doing two art projects this week and since this is a bit more relaxed month with everything kind of flowing over and through the weeks that will be ok.

What We Used:

This section contains Amazon Affiliate links. In addition to the curriculum I am creating for him, we also use curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, The Waldock Way, and Blossom and Root for phonics, reading, science, and social studies.

The Littlest Evergreen || Christmas Farm || The Sourdough Man || L is for Last Frontier

If you are interested in The Sourdough Man but can’t find it, I did find a YouTube video of someone reading it.

The Museum of the North

Sourdough Starter recipe

Ok, so it’s not really obligatory to post about sourdough these days. But I have to admit, we are on the bandwagon! I actually started my mother back in February, before everything got crazy, and shared its progeny with Chrissy, my sister-in-law.

And my mother is really a father… lol. Yukon Cornelius the grand patriarch of many sourdough starters. I really just maintained him, keeping him fed and happy and didn’t use him for a long time. I did split him off into two starters – one for Chrissy in February, and another for my friend Gabe in March, respectively named Baby Yukon and Jack, after Jack London. I guess I like masculine sourdough names.

Chrissy was gangbusters with Baby Yukon, making all sorts of delicious looking baked goods that I was not able to eat as we are all in shelter-in-place. I could only ogle them through photos. Bagels, banana bread, cookies, breads, pancakes… she seems to have a magic touch. (Chrissy is also very talented at making soap and shampoo bars too!)

They looked so good and inspiring, that Billy and I impulse bought a Kitchen-Aid mixer. We have wanted one for years and never gave in, until now. It took a pandemic and some good looking bagels to commit and we are so happy we did! I am not a big spender so it was a tough one for me, but I feel like it was a smart purchase since I feel it will get a lot of use and will last for a long time. So I was ok with it, even though you don’t need one to bake sourdough. We ordered it online from Target then did pick-up so that we weren’t making any delivery people work harder than they needed to, and Billy masked and gloved up and ran in. And it’s been a valuable asset for us through this time, enabling us to make bread and also as a distraction. Plus, Wyatt has really gotten into baking too! He loves baking with us!

Gabe took his and ran with it too, making bread and pretzels – and getting his girls involved as well! I am jealous of his pretzel making skills, as I tried to make pretzels too and mine didn’t turn out at all! Like the dough was just not right. Gabe also had lots of little Jack progeny as well, and for that I was grateful, since I accidentally killed Yukon Cornelius and was able to get a new starter. Just traveling through that sourdough family tree. I named my new one Yukon Jack, a combo of their two names, and then also made another starter from him, just in case we had another unfortunate incident. His name is Mountie Jack.. I guess I have become a Heartie. Then we split Mountie because my mom wanted a starter, and I named her starter Elizabeth. We will have to wait and see what my mom makes!

Since I was abysmal at actually making something with our sourdough, Billy took that job over for a bit, although I am considering making sourdough crumpets and sourdough pancakes this weekend. Billy is still finding his footing, and while they taste amazing and have the perfect texture, the tops keep getting burned. I think we have the oven rack maybe too high, so next time we will drop it. Or he will rather. Lol. But it toasts up perfectly, and toast is one of my favorite things to eat.