With Adley in school two days a week now, our country learning adventures have slowed down a bit. Adley's still excited about the activities, though, so we squeeze them in whenever we can! Here are the first two countries we "journeyed to" at the start of the school year.
AUSTRALIA
We kicked off our learning about the country "down under" by looking at its flag. We talked briefly about the constellation of the Southern Cross.
Australia is well-known for all of its unique animals, so we played an animal graphing game next. Some of the animals on this die were ones Adley had never heard of (echidna, dingo, etc), so we practiced saying the animal names out loud each time she rolled.
We've done rolling/graphing games like this before, so Adley started off right away color-coding her graph.
Our next activity was making a boomerang-- a paper one that supposedly truly worked! I had the HARDEST time following several of the directions for this folding project, so it was mainly a boomerang that I folded and then handed off to Adley. I finally got it right on my third or fourth attempt. Whew!
Adley's role in the boomerang creation was decorating it with aboriginal symbols. She did a great job with this!
Adley was proud of her decorated boomerang but couldn't really get the hang of how to throw it. Cody, however, was excited about trying and actually got the boomerang to return to him. I was impressed that this paper creation could somewhat work!
One of the recipes we tried was anzac biscuits. These sweet treats date back to WWI when army wives were looking for ways to send goodies to their husbands overseas. The recipe doesn't contain eggs, so the cookies, named after the Australian and New Zealand army corps, shipped well. Adley's verdict? Only so-so.
Grammy and Papa had visited Australia a number of years ago, so Adley and I spent a morning at their house, learning about Australia from these real world travelers! Grammy showed Adley some fun photos, mainly of animals, from their vacation.
I brought over some craft supplies for a couple Australia activities. Adley watched a youtube video with some silly songs about the platypus and then made her own paper bag platypus.
While Adley was occupied with something else (I think watching the platypus video again), Grammy surprised Adley by cutting out paper eggs and laying them under the platypus. Adley was thrilled to see that her platypus had laid eggs!
Then, Adley made a model of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Grammy showed Adley where she and Papa had walked along this bridge.
Grammy and Papa shared some books with Adley about wombats.
After our Australian activities were complete, Grammy and Papa served us lunch. We ended the meal by trying out some Australian lamingtons that I had made. These cake pieces rolled in chocolate and coconut earned two thumbs up from Adley!
We loved learning about Australia from Grammy and Papa. Isn't it cute that they wore their Australia shirts for the occasion?
Another day, Adley did some animal dot painting. She was especially patient with her first animal, the kangaroo.
Since the paint was out anyway, we used it to decorate some aboriginal clapping sticks.
Adley used the sticks to join in on some tribal clapping rhythms.
Adley made a little kangaroo pouch to go around her neck, colored a little joey to stick inside, and practiced hopping around the house.
You can't really learn about Australia without talking about the iconic Sydney Opera House. What an amazing structure!
Our last activity was learning about coral reefs. After reading a few library books about this wonder of creation, Adley made a sponge painting of a coral reef.
As you can see, much of our literature about Australia was related to its animals. We read some really cute animal books! One non-animal book, however, was a wordless picture book called Mirror. It was set up as a side-by-side story of two boys, one living in Australia and the other in Morocco. Since we had recently done activities from Morocco, it was a great time to read this book!
RUSSIA
Next up.... Russia! Making a set of matryoshka dolls was our first activity. These origami nesting dolls were easy to make and turned out so cute! Adley asked me to draw in the designs and let her just color the dolls.
Then, we cut out a bunch of matryoshka dolls and played some pattern games.
Since Russia is known for ballet, we made some snowflake ballerinas. While doing this activity, Adley watched some performances and then just listened to songs from the Nutcracker Ballet.
When done, Adley taped these pretty ballerinas to the door of her room and left them there for quite some time!
We made two Russian recipes-- Russian oladi (pancakes) wrapped with fruit,
and Russian tea cakes!
Another day we made the Russian flag (easy-peasy)...
...and learned a Russian polka dance (quite fun!).
We also watched a video of some guys doing a Russian squat dance-- so amazing!
Then, we made some Faberge eggs...
...and a model of St. Basil's Cathedral.
Such a cool-looking craft!
Last, we read a book about the Russian artist Kandinsky and made a version of his famous Squares with Concentric Circles.
Here are the Russian picture books we read. We love our wonderful library system that has so many cultural books like these available for us!
Another two countries added to Adley's travel book!
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