Hawaii Homeschool and a Little Bread

Apologies in advance.  This is a little heavy on the homeschool, but there is a delicious treat in the end...

     We're on our way to Hawai'i again soon.  Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.  Hate me because I'm going to Hawai'i without you again.  But don't worry, I've got a way for you to have a little taste of Hawai'i's bounty in your own kitchen.  I have been avoiding sugar for about a month because I read a bunch of Internet junk about probiotics and gut flora and sugar monsters.  It's been a pretty fun experiment, actually.  So I endeavored to make a cake that 1) featured Hawaiian food, 2) didn't fail like my Internet-famous last experiment, and 3) didn't have any sugar in it.  What resulted was a great bread, not really a cake, but totally snarfable with a little butter.  Honey optional.

     But first, for all my homeschool Mamas out there, I revamped our Hawaiian unit because I found such great resources about Kauai, the island we're visiting this year. 

     I based our studies around a workbook I found on Amazon called Holoholo i Kauai.  There are lots of pages with interesting facts, but I found two of the pages required you to know the fables of how certain geographical features came to be, and I didn't know how the stories went!  There are many different tales apparently about each feature, but they all have similar basis.  One story is about how NouNou mountain came to be.  It looks like a giant lying on his back.  I found this nicely illustrated version on Amazon: The Sleeping Giant.  I also found several stories online, which lined up a little better with what went with the workbook version.  The other story in the workbook is about the Spouting Horn blowhole.  Teller of Tales, Stories from Kauai was a great resource for this study with three stories, one about the blowhole and two about the Menehune (another page in the workbook).  Again, the story in the workbook doesn't quite line up with the story from the book so I supplemented with online material.  I used the discrepancies to illustrate oral tradition and storytelling embellishment but we talked about how the stories had many similarities, too.

Two-week Kauai Study Unit for 5-8 year olds

Day 1: Read Legend of the Sleeping Giant, HawaiiWeb and GoHawaii and do p. 2 of Holoholo i Kauai
Day 2: Learn Hawaiian State Symbols and do Holoholo p. 3
Day 3: Read Yesterday's Rain, Holoholo page 4
Day 4: Watch Crash Course in World History #27 on You Tube and do p. 12
Day 5: Study Wailua River and do p. 19
Day 6: Read Teller of Tales, Stories from Kauai stories The Ale Koko Fishpond p 248 and The Ditch the Menehunes built p 97 and do p 13
Day 7: Learn about Wimea Canyon and do p. 16
Day 8: Hawiian Word Book pg 28-29 do pg 9 and 14
Day 9: Read Teller of Tales, Stories from Kauai p 208 HawaiiWeb and GoHawaii and do p. 10
Day 10: Review landmarks discussed and show on a map.  Holoholo means an aimless walk for pleasure.  Walk your fingers around the map to all the places you have learned about!

Supplementals:
Amazon Videos about Kauai (Free for Prime Members)
Passport to Adventure: Kauai Hawaii's Garden
Travel with Kids Hawaii: The Island of Kauai

Music:
Putamayo Kids Hawai'ian Playground

We also watched Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark since large portions of them were filmed on Kauai, but I must say, Raiders is a little much for my two.

There is so, so, so much more to see and learn about Kauai!  I've got lots more landmarks listed on my Kauai Pinterest Board.  I hope we can see at least half of them!

If you want to see my other units on Maui, and the Big Island, they are not as detailed, but available for all to see.  Don't forget to check out your library to see how many of these resources you can find there!

And now... finally... the Bread...

Kauaian Coffee Bread
3 C flour
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 C sour cream or plain yogurt
3 eggs, separated
5 T melted and cooled coconut oil + more for greasing
2 pureed bananas (1 C)1/2 C cooled Kauai coffee (available at Trader Joe's)
1 C minced dried pineapple (no sugar)
1/2 C chopped macadamia nuts
1 T lemon zest (optional)
1/4 C coconut chips (no sugar)


     Preheat oven to 350°.  Grease two loaf pans with coconut oil and dust lightly with flour.  In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Stir in oil, egg yolks, sour cream or yogurt, bananas and coffee.  Stir in nuts, pineapple, and zest. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Slowly fold egg whites into batter.  Divide evenly between the pans and sprinkle the tops with coconut chips.  Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick removes cleanly.  If the chips get too brown, cover with some foil.  Let cool briefly, then run a knife around the bread and turn out onto a cooling rack.

 

Notes:

You can also make this batter into muffins.  I think each half would make 10-12, so you aught to get about 24 total.  Bake for 15 minutes.

Review:

My kids actually love this.  It's kinda crazy.  It's not super sweet so I didn't think they'd go for it.  My youngest won't touch a regular muffin with a 10 foot pole (go figure, right?) and he begged me for these.