Playing a little catch-up this week....the second installment in our summer learning project!
As I said in my previous post, I scaled back my expectations on this project quite a bit. My kids are too little to go in-depth on a country's history and culture, but figure I CAN give them some basic information about different places in the world, in a way that appeals to them.
The books pictured above were the big hits of the week. I will probably end up buying a copy of The Story of Babaji because the kids have still been requesting it despite it's being back at the library weeks ago. The Road to Mumbai was a nice introduction to different geography and culture in India.
My Daddy is a Pretzel was also a big hit. While the book is not about India specifically, I thought doing some yoga would be a nice way to tie a new activity into our country studies. I also did a quick youtube search for kids' yoga videos and came across this channel: Cosmic Kids Yoga. Yeah, it's kinda goofy, but it was pretty much an ideal rainy afternoon distraction and a great way of enticing the kids to get off the couch and get moving.
Oh, and we also had some fun on Google Maps, using the street view to look at the Taj Mahal. Google Maps and Google Earth are fascinating to my kids; but the good old globe has been helpful too, to show scale and distance.
Introducing the children to Indian food did not really go as planned. "It's too spicy," my midwestern cheese stick and applesauce-loving children complained. In my defense, I'd made some of the least spicy recipes I could find; a samosa recipe from the book Festive Foods: India, and a chickpea and lentil curry I'd cobbled together from a few recipes online. My second feeble attempt involved pre-made samosas from Trader Joe's, as things from a package always seem less suspicious to children, right? They still wouldn't finish it. Oh well... maybe when they're older. Exploring new things doesn't always mean embracing new things & I am totally okay with that.
One last note: as the summer goes on, these "weeks" are lasting longer than a week. :) Between lessons and trips and being sick, and everything else in between, it's taking me longer to get through our projects. My new goal is to visit at least one country on every continent (except Antarctica... sorry, Antarctica.) 6 countries seems like the perfect goal for this summer project.
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