Country Studies - Norway, Sweden, Finland

This was a light week in our country studies.

Partially because there is not nearly as much easily accessible information about these countries as about some of the others we have studied.  Partially because it was a week full of other 'extras' for us.

We read in our geography reference books a little about each country: it's location, language spoken, type of government, etc.

Our biggest focus was on authors and stories from Norway, Sweden, and Finland.  We also covered one artist.

Written by Beverly Lewis, this is a Christmas story about a Swedish girl learning the blessing of giving.

Biography of Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish author of the Pippi Longstocking series.
Dale has already read several Pippi books, so we didn't add any of those on this week, but he did read one from another series of hers, the Emil series.



Traditional Swedish story, told/translated by Astrid Lindgren.

We read two more tomten books.  These were by Viktor Rydberg.  I think he was Swedish.  Maybe Finnish?

Dale is still working on this one, about a shipwrecked seaman in Norway who meets Leif Erickson and joins him on a journey.

We studied artist Carl Larsson with these two books of paintings:

We ended the week with a meal of Swedish meatballs, using a recipe from:

Gotta love using the American Girl series with my houseful of boys. :)

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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!

Country Studies - Germany

For our week in Germany we learned mostly about:

- Composers
   We spent much of the week listening to Bach & Beethoven (whose biographies we have read in the past) and a little bit of Wagner.  Dale also read a second Bach biography:

- Fairy tales
We particularly enjoyed these storybook versions of Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin, with beautiful illustrations!

- World War II
  Dale and I put together from various reference books we have on hand and from the library a very basic history of WWII, including who Adolf Hitler was and just a shadow of what he believed.

- The Berlin Wall
  Dale and I were both especially interested in the Berlin wall.  Its fall has been one of the major world events in my lifetime and I knew so little about it!  We enjoyed researching it more together, including watching a short youtube clip of Ronald Reagan's famous speech. 

Also for Germany week we...

- Discussed landforms, major cities, and the capital.  Also visited our favorite Time for Kids site.

- Found it interesting to discover and/or remember that Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Schumacher are both Germans.

- Did a little bit of reading from this website:
Germany for Kids

 - Celebrated Oktoberfest, complete with food, music, and games!  That event was fun enough to merit its own post you can read here.

Oktoberfest!

Week 4 of our country studies found us in Germany, and we decided to cap the week off with an Oktoberfest celebration.

It only takes a bit of research to learn that the yearly festival held in Munich is very much an extremely large beer party.

Needless to say, our Oktoberfest was modeled more off a German kid's birthday party than a true Oktoberfest.  :)

Celebrating Germany week in our Cowboy hat.

We began with our "feast" as Alan called it:

Brats, sauerkraut, warm German potato salad.  (And baked beans.  Because we're just American like that - note the cowboy hat above.)

To drink: apple soda!  (And sweet tea.  Because we're just American like that.)

We started our meal with this quirky German Polka from youtube.  Viewer beware, the suggested videos in the margin and after the video ends are quite questionable, but the music itself lent the perfect celebratory festive atmosphere to out little party!  We listened several times throughout the meal, just to keep things peppy.  ;)

We followed our feast with... games!

First up: Topfschlagen. Or, in English: Hit the Pot.  We put a small candy prize in a pot, ignored the advice to give a wooden spoon (opted for plastic, and was later glad I listed to my mother-sense on that one), and blindfolded the boys one by one.

The object is for the blindfolded child to swing his spoon across the floor until he finds the pot.

The game continues until every child has had a turn finding the pot.

The boys liked this game best, I think.  They all wanted to play again and again!

Alan especially enjoyed it.  He was the reason I was glad I had gone with a plastic spoon, as he very much enjoyed whacking floor, feet, ankles, chair legs, and the pot once he found it.  He took "Hit the Pot" quite literally and seriously!

Topfschlagen was followed with a few rounds of Ein, Zwei, Drei...Halt!

Better known 'round these parts at Red Light, Green Light.  

Again, we know how to dress for in international party: 
please note Dale's Texas shirt.
 It ain't lederhosen, I'll tell you that.  
(And for the record, Alan's shirt has a a camo "USA" blazing 
across the front.)

This works better as an outdoor game, but we adapted for in the house and really, counting in German and shouting "Halt" with a fun accent served our purpose quite well!

As it was getting late and dessert had just come out of the oven, we only played one round of our last game, but I have a strong suspicion we'll be playing "Sardinen" again.  Or, in English: Sardines.  I've played this game before but didn't know it was German.  

Much like hide and seek, but only 1 person hides.  The group then scatters to find the hider.  When a player finds the hider, instead of 'outing' them, they quickly and quietly join them in the hiding place, until many players are packed in... like sardines! 

Detailed directions for our games and several more can be found here and here.

Mimi and Gramps had joined us for our Oktoberfest celebration, so the boys were delighted to seek, find, and squeeze into hiding with Mimi for our one round of Sardinen.

Then it was on to dessert!  I learned this week that Black Forest Cake is from Germany, and instantly knew that would be our Oktoberfest dessert.

I found a super-easy 4-ingredient dump-cake version that turned out ugly as slop but terribly yummy warm and topped with cool whip! 

A fun time had by all, no doubt, and many thanks to Mimi & Gramps for taking all the pictures and  lending their presence to add to the festiveness!

Country Studies - France

Moving northward from Spain we enjoyed a week-long look at France.

As is becoming routine, we began with a look through the Time for Kids sight for a brief tour, history, language sampling, quiz, and "day-in-the-life".

The paragraph at the bottom of this Geography for Kids page is helpful for a brief history of the country.

We studied one composer: Debussy, and did a lot of listening to one of his works:


We did a lot of reading about Monet,, and enjoyed two online slideshows of his paintings.

We then, of course, created our own Monet-inspired paintings!

(Directions for this project can be found at Practical Pages.)

Breakfast one morning was traditional French fare of cocoa (we opted for mugs instead of bowls), and baguettes with honey:

In our library basket for France week:
The Invention of Hugo Cabret

(...followed by the movie, which only garnered so-so reviews from Dale and Greg)

Journey Into War - a group of kids traveling across France during World War II.

Art for Children, Renoir

The Cat Who Walked Across France

Madeline

Madeline's Rescue

Mirette on the Highwire

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