Learning about the World
One way of beginning to learn about the world in which we life is to know someone who travels and is able to come home with photos, postcards, literature of the places visited. Obviously family holidays add to the understanding of different cultures too. P travels quite a bit for his work and has visited a number of countries over the past couple of years. We have a good size poster of the world on our study wall and we "track the Daddy" by placing a thumbnail photo of him, together with a drawing of the flag relating to the country he is presently visiting on a map of the world. We also have a "Flag Book", as B is very interested in all kinds of flags, where the children again draw a flag of the country and write snippets of information (population, currency, climate, etc.) inside.
We found a lovely book in the library named Usborne Book of Puzzle Journeys where three children explore the world. Each page contained details of a different country and there was a puzzle to complete before moving to the next page. After we had read this I devised a few questions with photographs from the countries mentioned in the book. The children had to answer the questions by finding the correct photograph and name the country or area. After this K wrote a story about the three children finding treasure in the USA and B wrote a postcard home from Holland.
A good website for unusual information on countries is:- http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com/explore/nations.html
The Commonwealth of Nations
We were asked to do a couple of sessions for the local HE group during the early part of 2006 and having studied the various calendars for important events, thought it would be nice for us all the look more closely at the members of the Commonwealth. Commonwealth Day, celebrated each year, fell on 13th March this year plus the Commonwealth Games took place this year in Melbourne, Australia (it is held every four years).
Finding information via the web on the topic of the Commonwealth of Nations was rather easy, but I found the sites not very child friendly. We eventually sourced a simple version of how the Commonwealth of Nations evolved from my father's Odhams Encyclopaedia for Children (which is quite old and unfortunately it does not show a publishing date). Sourcing suitable crafts and cooking ideas proved a little harder, but, thanks to family members and the wonderful internet (and library), I got there in the end. All the hard work paid off as it appeared the two sessions were a success and I know for sure that K and B had learnt a fair bit of information on the subect; not only the member countries and their flags but also about the great diversity of the different places around the world.
There are 53 member states of the Commonwealth and we chose just a small number of countries to represent in a variety of activities. We also found a lovely list of Commonwealth members with their country flags, as well as details of how and why the Commonwealth was formed as additional information for the group members (see links below). The kids and I put on a simple puppet show with snippets of information like climate, currency, traditions and population for seven countries of the Commonwealth. K and B each helped to make the puppets and made them perform to the group while I read the information which K and B had helped to collect using the internet and a Children's Atlas.
Malta 
We chose two Lenten desserts from Malta called Kwarezimal to represent this country. As we were covering this topic close to Easter and during Lent, this seemed a good recipe to try as it is a traditional Maltese Lenten Sweet. We omitted the honey on some of the mini cakes to make this recipe suitable for the vegan families who had came along to the session. We also had to make sure people were aware that nuts were in this recipe as nut allergies can be particularly nasty.
Ingredients: (version 1)
400g Ground Almonds *
150g Self raising flour *
150g Castor sugar *
2 tablespoons rose water
2 tablespoons Cocoa *
Water
Honey
Extra chopped almonds to decorate
Ingredients: (version 2)
200g Blanched Almonds, lightely toasted and crushed *
200g Plain Flour, sifted *
250g Caster sugar *
1 teaspoon cinnamon *
Grated rind of 1 lemon, 1 orange and 1 tangerine *
Orange flower water
Water
Honey
Extra chopped almonds to decorate
We decided to do some colourful Aboriginal art to represent Australia. The Aboriginal people used bright colours and strong patterns in their creative art to tell stories, myths, rituals, sorcery and magic where the artist describes their "Dreaming" of creation, beliefs and their spirituality.
We used the Crayola web site (once you've joined the site search for "Aborignal Originals") link as a guide for this work, using dark paper with outlines of a geko, turtle or dragon fly to decorate with a variety of craft materials, crayons or chalks to make stunning pictures.
B's turtle using glitter glue and chalks.
Africa 
On another creative theme we chose African Sand Paper Art to represent the African rock drawings known as Petroglyphs. A Petroglyph (from the Greek word "petros" meaning "stone" and "glyphein" meaning "to carve") is an image created on natural rock surfaces by some form of carving.
Using the link below as our guide, we used rough sandpaper and crayons to tell our own story. To help the children we showed them pictures of how images would have been carved in the past.
Commonwealth Flags 
B has shown such an interest in all types of flags, from countries to organisations, that it felt right to include an activity to study the flags of the member countries of the Commonwealth. We found a wonderful section on the Enchanted Learning website that discussed how the colours used in flags represent the values of that country, etc. The children had a look at this, together with the array of 53 flags of the Commonwealth and designed their own flags to represent their own feelings. This activity proved interesting for the older children, and is one that I intend to do again with K and B when we have more time to really look into this idea and design a family flag.
People of the Commonwealth 
The little puppet show that we put on the the group was quite a success and the children enjoyed looking at the puppets and asking questions about the countries we'd talked about. With this in mind, we decided to let the children make their own puppets at the following session, whether they chose to represent a Commonwealth country was up to them, but quite a few added a flag to their puppet. The children used plastic spoons, forks or knives as the body and head, then used a variety of materials, wool, pipecleaners (anything really) to dress their puppet and give it some character. K and B enjoyed playing with their puppets whilst water the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, and they were able to name most of the countries by their flags as they entered the vast arena.
Additional links:-
http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/commonwealth.htm (report regarding the background history of the Commonwealth of Nations)
http://www.youngcommonwealth.org/cw_text_only_version/home.html (young persons website)
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page341.asp (origins of the Commonwealth)
http://www.irenescorner.com (courtesy link with regard to flag graphics displayed)
Madagascar
Spurred on by the fact the children kept watching the cartoon film "Madagascar", it seemed a good opportunity to study this island country (off the Southeast coast of Africa), a little closer. The children made an information sheet of interesting facts.
During our Henri Rousseau sessions with the HE group we discovered that Rousseau's paintings were the inspiration behind the beautiful scenery used for Madagascar the film. We learnt about the Baobab tree - that it has no leaves on its branches for 9 months of the year and looks very much like an upside down tree with the roots sticking up in the air! The Baobab can grow extremely tall and wide (up to 30 feet in diametre) over a long period of time. The lower branches, being spongey, can store lots of water. If the cartoon animals in the film had known this, they wouldn't have had to put up with drinking sea water! We painted out own Madagascar scene as we felt it may look today with it's Baobab trees and wonderful creatures, which we made as 3D images.
We found out about the famous lemurs of this area (there are about 32 different types) and used graphs to work out how far lemurs can jump (around 25 foot) compared to humans. The children measured in centimetres their single step, broad jump and long jump and plotted the information on a graph. Lemurs (scientific name "Lemur Catta") means "ghost" in Malagasy.
We also discovered that Madagascar is home to many other unusual creatures, B found out about the Giraffe-necked Weevil and K the Mesite bird. The Foosa is also another animal that featured in the film, we played an online game to "track the Foosa".
We had fun experiencing the Malagasy language using an interactive website to hear the correct pronounciation of common words.
"hello" - Manahoana ("ma-na-wo-nay")
"goodbye" - Veloma ("vay-loo-may")
Finally, we learnt that dinosaur bones had been discovered in Madagascar in 1989, after reading about it here we had a brief look at dinosaurs and tried played "what do you image is inside?" (this egg). I won't spoil your fun (but you've probably guessed what would have been inside anyway) but we read the brief descriptions from other children and K and B had a think what could possibly be inside an egg this size. We had two cardboard Easter Egg containers left over from celebrations and decorated these to resemble a bird/animal egg and the children decided what would have been inside and researched their thoughts.
K thought a baby crocodile which is about 8 inches long at birth and breaks through the egg (which is about the size of a goose egg) with their egg tooth. Nests are built on the water's edge and young crocodiles eat water insects and shell fish. Crocodiles can be found in Madagascar.
Good guess, although the egg in the original question was much larger than a goose egg!
B thought the egg could host a baby gorilla! Although he quickly found out that gorillas do not grow inside eggs, just in a tummy! When the young gorilla is born, it clings to its mother's hair and stays with its mother for about two or three years. Gorillas eat a vegetarian diet.
Although B got the egg bit wrong, the rest of the information he found out was very interesting, I didn't realise gorillas are vegetarian!
work (May '06)
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