Earth Trip: Russia

Wow what a busy week we've had! As well as squeezing in 3 play dates we also finished up our trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, where we have spent the past three weeks.

Another flag was added to our passports.

We started off our trip by reading the next instalment of the story and finding out what our next missions were. Here are a few of the other things we did during our three week "trip".

As usual we sampled the local food, which this time took the form of Russian Honey Cake. The boys made this together which worked really well. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the finished cake as I completely forgot to take any before we scoffed it.

We found Russia on the globe and map, talked about it being the biggest country and how it spans two continents. Next time I think we will review this daily so that it sticks.

We read about life in Russia from the Children Like Me book.

We filled in our country information sheet and discovered how to say many things in Russian including "hello" We also discovered this wasn't easy! This led to a discussion on how the Russian alphabet is different from ours. We also found how to write our names in Russian here

We did our map work sheet and learned where and what the Russian Steppes were, and where we could find Lake Baikal and the Trans Siberian Railway.

We used Google Maps to explore St Petersburg and Google Art View to visit some of the sites of the Hermitage Museum, which is part of the Winter Palace.

We had a look at three palaces, including the Winter Palace, and all their splendour and then had a go at designing our own palace type structure using dried spaghetti stuck together with marshmallows. This was a lot of fun but very sticky! Can't find the photos though annoyingly.

We looked at lots of photos on the National Geographic site and printed some off to add to our travel scrapbook.

We read about Baba Yaga

Also read about Yuri Gagarin from our library books and did a quiz about him and the space race.

We learned about Sergei Prokofiev by listening to Classics For Kids We then read the story of Peter and the Wolf and listened to a recording of it from here. I found various worksheets on the internet to accompany it.

We talked about the Russian flag and how it has changed, then made one using Hama beads. We also looked at Russian currency

We looked at Animals from Russia and made a book about them

We finished up by doing a general knowledge quiz on Russia.

Isaac doing a maths division activity

Earth Trip : Norway

A friend and I got chatting at the end of last year and decided our boys needed more geography in their educational diet. We talked about various things we could do, but how to make it fun and appealing to a 6yo and and 8yo who are Lego/Star Wars obsessed?

Well she came up with the idea of having a story where a boy is trying to win a trip to the moon, but before he can go he has to do a tour of the Earth and complete several missions en-route!

So we started our first mission 2 weeks ago, to Bergen in Norway.

Here are some of the things we covered:

Made a passport

Located Norway on the Globe and the World map and marked our starting point.

We read about Scandinavian Sami people from the Children Like Me book.

Talked about fjords and had a look at some photos. We put these in our travel scrapbook

Did some map work locating different points.

Did a country fact sheet finding out what languages are used, currency, population size etc.

Learnt how to say "hello" in both Norwegian and Sami

We read about 'Lefse' a kind of Norwegian pancake and made some and ate them for lunch, yummy! We then put the recipe and photos in our World Recipe Book.

We read a book on orcas and did a quiz to see how much we had learnt. We also did some simple experiments about buoyency.

For another little science project we made a 'floating killer whale' using magnets. You can't tell from the photo but the whale is fixed to the bottom of the box using thread. You then place a strong magnet on top of the box, which attracts the paper clip, making the whale appear to float.

We made the Norwegian flag in HAMA beads.

We read several books on Vikings, THIS was a particular favourite. One of the things we read about was how the Vikings preserved their meat and fish using salt. We found out the Vikings got their salt from boiling up sea water, so we got our own "sea water" and boiled it up on the hob until all the water had evaporated.

We then did a simple Viking craft from here

We finished up the week by doing a Viking skills task which was all about weighing and estimation.

We've had lots of fun with this, on to Russia next!

Winter Festivals

We are having fun following Bella Dia's Christmas Book and Activity Advent. There are loads of people sharing great Christmas/Festival ideas around blogland at the moment. I've been keeping a note in my google reader "shared items" of some and eventually hope to fill a notebook so that come next year i will have everything at my fingertips and will be etreeeemly organised....yeah right.

We've also started the Christmas baking...






..by making mincemeat...



...and mince pies...but mysteriously there don't seem to be any left photos of them.

We've been doing some Spring type activities the past week. We made some Spring Cookies using the cookie cutters I got from Lakeland.

I relaxed my normal rules (tyrant that i am) and let them go mad decorating the finished biscuits - colour and all! They had *so* much fun and I felt rather guilty when i realised that this is the first baking session like this that I have included Isaac in (Normally I wait until he's napping).

As you can see from his face (just- forgot the flash!) he had the best time.

The finished biscuits

I also made some Hot Cross Buns, never tried before, they were yummy but the Chiddlers didn't agree so Mick and I ate them all.

We've been spending a LOT of time in the garden sowing seeds and tiding things up. It's looking a lot better and lovely to be enjoying it again as last year the builders took it over so we didn't get much use out of it.

Emily made her own Lenten garden from the All Year Round book

It's surprisingly awkward to photograph and do it justice but she did a good job!