Olympic Celebrations

Years ago I cut out an article about activities to do with your children to embrace and learn about different countries. I remember showing it to Brian and saying: when we have kids we should do that. Then last week I was reading someone else's blog; their family was celebrating a different country participating in the Olympics each day by having a meal common to that country. The light bulb went on, we should combine learning about the countries congruent with the Olympics. So all week we've been on a semi-virtual world adventure.

First stop: Poland. Three of the five of us had Polska Kielbasa with sauerkraut. Flags were made and fun facts were found like how to say hello: "czesc".

Next up was Germany. We had bierocks. Then we pulled out the photo album from my European trip. (So much fun to look back and relive some of those memories.)

Braeden's teacher is fantastic and encouraged him to bring his flags and fun info to share with his classmates each day. So he was excited to hear all about the history and culture; Braxton and Alexis on the other hand were a little less enthused but still participated.

We had Chinese takeout, learned about the Great Wall and the Terra-cotta Army then followed up with some friendly carpet skating races.

On to France. I made crepes with cinnamon apple filling, they turned out delicious! Then another trip down memory lane with photos from Paris: the Eiffel tower, tour de France, Notre Dame and the Lourve.

Our last stop was Italy; we enjoyed homemade pizza and visits to Ancient Rome and the Vatican City. We topped it off with Italian gelato... yum!

This was a fantastic experience. We located the countries on the map, kept tabs on the Olympic medal counts for each, learned new words, experienced new foods and overall had a fun time learning and spending time together. I will say that it was more time consuming than I had originally planned but that's because Braeden took detailed notes to share with his class. We will definitely do this again. Who knows maybe someday we will do a real world adventure.