Even through the summer months, Adley and I continued with her country-learning activities. It gave some variety to our days at home and helped keep Adley out of her brothers' hair. Occasionally, Jaden and Cody would join in on the activities too.
CANADA
We started by discussing Canada's famous maple leaf and decorating the country's flag.
Then, we tried out this fun modified curling game which involved sliding pennies along a laminated playing arena.
Aldey and I labeled our own pennies with stickers so we could tell them apart as we slid our "stones" down the "ice." I learned quite a bit about this unique game! Of course, we had to watch some video clips of real curling too.
Some other fun Canada activities included doing a word search,
completing an I Spy game,
playing tic-tac-toe with Canadian symbols,
and playing Pin the Tail on the Beaver. Jaden and Cody loved jumping in on this one!
Spinning Adley around in circles was one of the best parts! ;)
Another day, Adley and I listened to an online reading of the book Totem Tale. This book is actually set in Alaska but still related well to our Canadian learning. Using some of the images seen in the book, Adley crafted her own totem pole.
We also talked more about the maple leaf and tried some authentic maple syrup...
...and crafted a maple leaf wand.
Adley thought it was fascinating that Canadian police ride horses and are called mounties. This cute little TP roll craft helped Adley create a mountie of her own.
One more activity that Cody and Jaden asked to join was the bingo game played with Canadian symbols. We played several times, and it was perfect review for Adley (and all three kids, really!) to hear some of the terms mentioned over and over. My favorite was teaching the kids all about the loonie and the toonie.
The last craft we did was to make a moose, using outlines of Adley's hands and foot. It came out pretty cute!
Here are some of the Canadian books we read.
GERMANY
Next, I figured it would be important for Adley to learn about her heritage and study Germany. She used watercolor to decorate the country's flag.
Then, we made a couple of these fun-looking alpine hats. Aren't they great?
Then, from the same website that gave us the Canadian mountie template, we found a guy in German lederhosen. So, Adley crafted another cultural TP character. He even came with an accordian to hold!
After this guy was complete, we listend to some German polka music and played a few games of freeze dance while moving our TP character around.
Next, I checked out some fairy tale books from the library so we could read some Brothers Grimm fairy tales. We started with Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel because I found some retelling pictures we could use for the stories. Adley needed a little help getting the pictures in the correct sequence but then could retell the tales fairly well.
Next, Adley completed a little cut & paste pattern activity with Oktoberfest symbols.
Together, we learned about the lebuchenhertz (gingerbread hearts) and fashioned our own out of craft foam and puffy paint. It was a little easier creating this kind into a necklace, rather than the actual gingerbread cookie!
Our biggest feat in our Germany learning was making a German castle. We had read that Germany contained over 20,000 castles, so it was only fitting that we make our own model. I got the pattern for this amazing castle from my neighbor who is a teacher and did this project with her school kids one year. The project involves a ton of cutting and gluing but turns out fantastically! Adley was a big help with the gluing process.
Ta-da!! Here's our completed medieval castle!
Of course, we couldn't just leave the castle a plain, boring white color! Adley worked hard to add some spice to our castle.
Definitely a LOT cooler in color, don't you think? Nice painting work, Adley!
Our food experiment for Germany was pretzel-making. Cody and Adley both enjoyed kneading the dough.
Here are our pretzels before they entered the oven.
They were probably a little too thick to maintain their pretzel-like appearance, but the pretzels still tasted good! We especially liked them with cheese dip.
I had a really difficult time finding many picture books set in Germany in our library. That's why I decided to bring in the fairy tales! The one main picture book we did find, however, was called Flight for Freedom and ended up being an excellent teaching tool. Initially I wasn't sure how much of Germany's conflict-ridden history I wanted to get into with Adley, but this book presented the conflict of East/West Germany and the Berlin Wall in a very kid-friendly way. It focused on the true story of a family from East Germany who build a hot air balloon to escape their way into freedom. It was fascinating!
After reading the book, Adley enlisted her brothers' help to build a model of the Berlin Wall.
Then, Adley demonstrated how Peter Wetzel and his family rode in the balloon to escape into West Germany.
We ended by quickly fast-forwarding time and knocking down the Berlin Wall. Definitely a condensed history lesson!
I'm sure glad my girlie is into all these activities. I'm definitely enjoying learning a lot about these countries too! More adventures to come....
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