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Scotland Field Trip! Kind of…

April 5, 2018 Ticia 13 Comments

Before reading “Clash of Swords” if you were to ask me about Scotland I would have said, “That’s where Braveheart is from, and in the 1600s they helped cause the English Civil War over the Book of Common Prayers. Oh and the Loch Ness Monster.” Oh, and I have large numbers of friends who claim to have Scottish roots and know their clan tartan.  As I’ve been reading Clash of Swords and working through all of the fun materials in the unit study I’ve been learning so much more. It’s been a fun but if geography lessons as we’ve completed our Scotland Unit Study.

Scotland unit study

(Just as I was opening my email to buy Clash of Swords I had an email from them offering me a free copy, so I, of course, said yes, so I got the book and unit study for free, there are affiliate links in here, and opinions are still mine)

Our books for the Scotland Unit Study

A Clash of Swords in Scotland - CASE OF ADVENTURE

I learned from the last time I read a book from Case of Adventure, they’re packed with lots of information, and so I didn’t even look for more books this time. So, we only used Clash of Swords.

Funny thing, since Clash of Swords follows a homeschooling family, there were several times as I read this that I chuckled to myself as I recognized some of the habits they talked about. It’s a nice change since most books are about public school families who work on a different dynamic.

Scotland meal

We had a grand Scottish breakfast, I just used the recipes from the Activity pack. I did not make the Deep Fried Mars bars** or the Scotch egg (only to have my husband be super disappointed about that). Since I got these recipes specifically from the activity pack I’m not going to give measurements.

Also, just this once things went mostly right. Mostly.

Scottish Shortbread

Scottish Shortbread
  • butter
  • caster sugar, in the US this is called superfine, we used normal sugar
  • flour
  • pinch of salt
making scottish shortbread
  1. Mix together flour, salt, and sugar
  2. Cut in the butter, I use a pastry cutter and it works great. It’ll be the consistency of breadcrumbs once it’s all mixed together. Then press it into your nonstick pan. Poke holes in the dough with your fork, and I can’t remember if we pre-cut the dough into biscuits or not.  I was kind of reminded of the Earl Grey Shortbread cookies I’d made before.
  3. Bake at 356F for 15-20 minutes. Once you pull it out sprinkle with the sugar on top. Wait for it to cool down enough you won’t burn yourself eating the yumminess.

Lorne Sausage

Scottish Breakfast

Full disclosure, I expected this to be a miss, but wanted to try it. Instead, I had nothing left.

  • minced beef, we used ground beef
  • bread crumbs
  • chilled water
  • salt, nutmeg, coriander (darn it, I just realized I still had some of this from another recipe and bought more on Monday), black pepper
  1. Mix all the salt, spices and meat in a big bowl. Slowly work in the water.
  2. Remind the kids not to splash the water all over. Then start getting the bread crumbs mixed in.
  3. Pack the mixture into a dish an refrigerate for a day. Just kidding, I missed that part, so I refrigerated it for 20 minutes. Maybe. If I was lucky. Then I pulled it out and sliced it into squares.
  4. Cook for 4-6 minutes on your electric skillet. I need to get a new one of these soon. We may go through them fairly regularly.

We had nothing left of these at the end of breakfast for dinner. This part of our Scotland unit study was a big hit.

Traditional Oatcakes

  • oatmeal
  • melted butter
  • baking soda
  • salt
  • hot water
  1. Mix oatmeal, baking soda, and salt.
  2. Add the butter and hot water. I like this recipe, everything on it I always have in my kitchen. Mix it all together.
  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into shapes. We just cut out squares because it was easy.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes at 360F. Cool and serve with butter or jam.

This did not go over well with my kids. It’s dry and it needs jam or butter to make it taste good and the kids were indifferent to it.

Scotch Broth

Scotch Broth
  • meaty soup bones, I think I added a bit of extra stew meat
  • water
  • pepper, salt
  • carrots, celery, onion (I left out the turnip)
  • pearl barley, only I didn’t have that, so we left that part out. I’m pretty sure this hurt the soup
  1. In a large pot combine the soup bones, stew meat, spices, and water. Simmer for 2 hours. Remove the bones.
  2. Add in the rest of the ingredients and cook until the right texture, 30 minutes maybe? I may have added the other ingredients earlier, but I can’t remember for sure since I didn’t plan to do the chill and skim off the fat step.

This was not a hit. I’ve been trying different soups recently and so they’ve gotten used to broths with a few more spices added in, and it certainly didn’t help that I didn’t have the pearl barley like I thought I did.

** So those deep fried Mars Bars, I was talking with a friend of ours who’s French Canadian and telling him all about our Scottish meal and how I didn’t end up making the deep fried Mars Bars and he said we missed out on the best thing. This led to a long discussion about the difference between chocolate in the Americas and chocolate in Europe. European chocolate tends to be much richer, and he was firmly of the decision we need to trdeep-frieded Mars Bars.

A few weeks later we had a hail storm, and a guy came by to check out roof and as I was talking with him the kids were working on the lapbook, and he saw the “food of Scotland” meal and was quite amused by the variety of ideas and things in there, and also commented that we needed to try Deep Fried Mars bars. It’s quite amusing to me.

Final part of our Scotland Unit Study: lapbook!

I’ve figured out how to make lapbooks work with my kids. I cut out most of it with my paper cutter, and then they cut out the detail work. Rather than print out 3 complete lapbooks, which has a lot of pieces, many of which some of my kids could really care less about, I printed off one Scotland lapbook and let them all pick out what they wanted.

princess and batman scotland lapbook

Princess picked out all of the animal parts, and a few bits and pieces of other stuff. It greatly amused me. Oh, and see the dog statue, that’s Greyfriars’ Bobby, and that bit in the book reminded me of when Mama Smiles wrote about it.

Batman chose all of the cooking stuff, and a few of the landmarks. It really amused me to see all of the different ways they chose.

Superman scotland lapbook

Superman picked out all of the stuff about bagpipes. He’s fascinated by bagpipes and has a lot of fun pretending he’ll learn how to play them, much to the consternation of his brother. He also got a fair amount of the weapons, which is a key part of the book.

Scotland unit study design a tartan

I only have pictures of one of the extra activities, primarily because my kids are starting to get camera shy, and I don’t always remember to get pictures after the fact. These are their coat of arms and their clan tartans.

Some more geography fun

How to teach geography without a curriculum
Switzerland literature unit study
France picture books
Alaska unit study

geography, reviews Around the World in 12 Dishes, Europe, review

Comments

  1. Phyllis at All Things Beautiful says

    April 5, 2018 at 8:25 am

    This sounds like a lot of fun and reminded me of our hands on days which I really miss. Iiss blogging about them, too.
    I learned a lot more about Scotland than I ever knew by this post!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 6, 2018 at 8:36 am

      I miss the much more hands-on days of the kids being younger, it’s so much harder to get a good hands-on activity for older kids.

  2. Kirsty says

    April 5, 2018 at 10:03 am

    I’m in Scotland, and have NEVER eaten a deep fried Mars Bar 🙂 Did try deep fried Pizza in batter a few weeks ago…

    Usually Lorne Sausage here looks red/pink. I don’t know why. We generally just call it Square Sausage.

    If you ever want Scottish info, let me know!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 6, 2018 at 8:35 am

      I wonder what deep fried pizza would taste like. I hadn’t heard of deep fried Mars Bars until we did this study, and it amused the heck out of me to have two different people verify that was a thing. Maybe it’s a tourist thing? Both of the people were only visiting Scotland, so maybe it’s one of those types of things.
      Does it still look red/pink after being cooked? Ours was pink (because raw meat) until we cooked it.
      I will! It’s always cool to get insider info about a location.

    • Kirsty says

      April 9, 2018 at 6:33 am

      I think normal people actually do eat deep fried pizza, because it’s often on chip shop menus (sometimes called ‘pizza crunch’) The Mars Bars – I think it’s more of a gimmick?

      Yes, the sausage does still look red/pink once cooked. If you google “roll & square sausage” you can see some.

      Here’s my verdict on deep fried pizza http://kirstymcallister.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/probably-most-ridiculous-thing-i-have.html

    • Kirsty says

      April 18, 2018 at 10:02 am

      I just checked thje ingredients on the sausage in the church cafe fridge. There’s carmine in it – that expplains the red!

    • Ticia says

      April 21, 2018 at 11:04 pm

      Carmine would do it for sure.

  3. natalie planetsmartypants says

    April 7, 2018 at 1:24 pm

    This looks like so much fun! Love all the recipes.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 8, 2018 at 6:39 pm

      The recipes were a blast to try! I love her book series so much. It’s a great way to go through a country, my one wish is to have an audiobook version because we listen to so many audiobooks. Hmmmm, maybe I should suggest that to her, because seriously my kids eat up audiobooks.

  4. Karyn Collett says

    April 9, 2018 at 3:46 am

    Hi Ticia 🙂

    Thanks for your lovely post!! You are so sweet and such a fun mom. Your family has a way of making a study your own and really bringing it to life. I love reading about all your escapades!! I am so glad you enjoyed the book. I have been wondering about doing audiobooks 🙂 I would love to do that sometime! with love, Karyn

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 11, 2018 at 10:15 am

      We would would finish it so much faster because we listen to audiobooks while we drive around running errands, but me reading a read aloud is much slower because I don’t always remember to fit it in the schedule.

  5. maryanne says

    April 22, 2018 at 5:02 pm

    We have a friend who plays bagpipes. They are fun, but LOUD.

    You definitely need to try making tablet. Sugar and butter. Yum.

    We’re heading back to Scotland this summer with a new crop of students. So exciting!!!

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 22, 2018 at 5:08 pm

      I have to admit, the entire time I was reading the book I was thinking of you and your taking students over there.

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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