Welcome to Day 2 of our Rio Olympic Celebration! Our daily board told us it was Africa Day, and our events would be field hockey and soccer.
I put out the file folders full of information on our countries, the books for reading, and the bag for the day. Each continent (except Antarctica, of course) have their own bag, and the boys will be getting one everyday.
We'll also be focusing on a couple of different countries within those continents. We all made one trading card for those countries, and they will count toward our medal total at the end (and we can trade them, obviously, as the name suggests).
So how do I keep track of this all? Well, every day I have my own page to know what we're doing. I tried to match up our events with events taking place that day. It doesn't always work out, but I did my best.
Hayden and I started out the morning reading our country books, while Peyton and Asa were off to run some errands, and Calib slept in.
We also turned on the Olympics. It was on all day, just muted at times so we could focus on other things. But really, that 7 hours of cycling sure was exciting stuff. You wouldn't believe how into it the boys were.
For lunch, I had a couple of recipes for Asa. He made Algerian Carrots, and I thought the sauce for them was kind of bananas.
We paired that with some Chicken Shawarma Sliders, and they were awesome. Four out of Five Waterstrauts enjoyed. I also looked up what fruits were in season in Africa right now, and came up with apples.
Oh, and we ate according to African dining etiquette without any silverware, and bowls to wash our hands.
For the most part, the bags contain items from countries on that continent. But, Africa was hard. And I wasn't about to order legit African beef jerky on Amazon for $25 for like 8 oz. So, I snagged some beef jerky at Publix on BOGO instead. Same with the Naan bread. The peri-peri sauce and the capers were both products of Africa though. And while the bags contain food, this one was a little lacking, so I threw in a soccer ball too. After all, it was soccer day too! Along with the fun stuff, there's also the trading cards, and some info sheets for the bags.
Ordinarily, I'm hoping to do all of our 'school work' before we do the events. However, the weather looked really iffy today, and I've heard we're supposed to get a whole lot of rain over the next few days (I'm really going to have to calibrate the next few days *sigh*), so we'll just fit in the events inbetween the rain, I suppose.
Anyway, when I say soccer was our event, it's not your typical soccer. It's almost never your typical event. Because, I've got a whole lot of different age groups competing here. And, not always the equipment, so I come up with my own coordinating events. Today soccer became soccer croquet. It was easy peasy to put together. I stuck some skewers in the ground, and then put the noodles over top of them. Sometimes you see things on Pinterest, and you're like 'yea, but does that actually work? is it actually that easy? The answer to this one is, yes. Yes, it totally is that easy. Done in two minutes.
Then, everyone had to kick the ball through the arches, and hit the end pole. The person to do it in the least amount of kicks would be the winner.
Asa went first. It took him 15 kicks.
It took Hayden 12 kicks.
Peyton was up next.
It was a nail biter when he got to the end. But, he got it in 11 kicks.
I was up next, and I tied Hayden at 12.
Calib was, um, well, we can't all be good at everything. It took him like 20 kicks. Or something. Probably more. But, we're being generous here. He just did not get that you were supposed to kick the ball lightly, and just kept nailing it across the yard.
Hayden and I did end up going again to break the tie for silver, but Peyton was the clear winner.
Which meant Calib and Asa handed out the medals.
The soccer medalists...
It was starting to sprinkle, and rumor had it that it was going to rain the whole rest of the day. So, I wanted to hurry up and set up field hockey. I set up three baskets as goals. And we were using pool noodles as field hockey sticks. But, we had to improvise on the balls. Originally I had planned to use balloons (it was a Pinterest fail though- our hard-as-it-gets stupid Florida subdivision grass is too spiky, and while the balloons were fine on the concrete patio, they popped as soon as they hit the grass). So instead of colored balloons for the boys, and colored goals for each of them, and all of them going at once- we ended up with this variation. They took their pool noodles, and had to get each ball in a different basket. Fastest time won.
It was a little windy out there, so I reused my skewers to make sure the laundry baskets didn't roll. Fun fact: if you're going to do any of these events, the dollar store is your friend.
Hayden was up first...
then Calib;...
...then Peyton
I went (nobody ever takes my picture!), and then Asa finished up. Originally we weren't going to play, but when we had to do the different variation, the boys decided we should play too.
Asa was our winner in field hockey.
Peyton took home the silver, and Calib took the bronze, so Hayden and I handed out the medals.
Then Cuba and New Zealand had a crazy field hockey match out in the rain.
After all the events, we got to working on our trading cards, and having some snacks.
These are our cards today.
In addition to the continent bags, the boys will also be researching and working on some presentations and reports for their countries. You might remember we did these cool pizza box projects when we had Rome week. They worked out so well, we're reusing the idea. After everyone read their books today, we all worked on mod podging a collage on the front of our pizza boxes.
I think they turned out really cool!
While we were doing all this, and Asa was working, he also managed to make dinner and a dessert. The dessert is malva pudding. And the process to make it was weird. But, Asa just went with it.
For actual dinner, he made an African lemonade (it had ginger in it!), Moroccan chicken with capers and lemon (we substituted the green olives for the capers that were in our bag today), Cameroonian Fried Spinach , and yellow rice. We added some of our Naan bread, and bananas (in season in Africa).
Overall, dinner was a complete hit. There was mixed reviews on the spinach. But everyone at it all. The chicken got five thumbs up (the capers only had about three and a half thumbs up), and that crazy desert was awesome. Everyone loved it. Some of us even had seconds. Oh, and fun fact: we ate it all with our fingers! No silverware here.
We spent the evening watching the Olympics. I apparently didn't take a picture, but Peyton's country (South Korea) did the best today, with one gold and one silver medal. Italy (Calib's country) got a silver and a bronze, and Spain (my country) got a bronze. We added that score to all of our medals..
...and the current leader board looks like this.
And Dipper is the gold medal winning cat, apparently.
In other news, even with all that going on, we did most of a candy bar election video. Which, just... oh man, stay tuned for that blooper reel. And voting. That's happening over the next four weeks too. You know, because I didn't have enough to coordinate.
Tomorrows events: Handball and Archery!
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