Country Study - Switzerland

Food and leisure were our main topics as we spent a week highlighting Switzerland.

After we covered the basic geography facts, we did some reading about the Alps and Alpine skiing.

Even though it's set in the U.S. - obviously not Switzerland - we still had to include an old favorite picture book:

Since Switzerland is famous for its chocolate, we also checked out and read books on where chocolate comes from and a visit to a chocolate factory.

Know what else chocolate-related Switzerland is known for?  Fondue!
We obviously had no choice but to have our own fondue party, just our big boys and me.  (And Tyler got some, too... later.)

 We used this recipe...

 ...and cut up pound cake, strawberries, apple, banana, and marshmallows for dipping.  Yum!

When we started I laid out all the ground rules for courtesy and non-germiness.  I also told them the tradition I had read that if a man lost his bread in the fondue he bought everyone "a drink" and if a woman lost her bread she gave her neighbors a kiss.

Guess who lost his pound cake in the chocolate and decided to go get everyone a glass of water? :)

On Friday we went ahead and completed the week with the original, traditional cheese fondue for supper.  Found another simple, yummy recipe online and had sausage, bread, and veggies for dipping.

Since we read Heidi as a read-aloud within the last year or two we skipped it and Dale read another Johanna Spyri book, A Little Swiss Boy.

And, even though it has very, very, very little to actually do with Switzerland, we used this week as a springboard to get us back moving on our current, very long-lasting, read-aloud, The Swiss Family Robinson.

The only thing we didn't get to that I really wanted to was another culinary venture: Muesli, which as I understand it, is basically the same thing as... granola!  We love homemade granola, but I just didn't get to it.

Overall, a very simple, yet yummy week!