Family Gone Global

#10 China

2011-03-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

I've come to the realization that it really doesn't make sense to say that we are exploring a new country each week now. It is more like one or two a month. Not that it's a big deal, I just have to change the titles of my posts :-)

So, actually, I wanted to choose China this time, because it was approaching the Chinese New Year. However, we decided it was best to just let MonkeyD choose a country on her own. When I asked MonkeyD to choose a country, I handed her the stack of Dover sticker paper doll books.  As I read the names of the countries on each one she got excited when I got to "China".  "Oh! I want to do China because I want to watch Mulan!" she said. Sooo...we started out with our book, Mei-Mei from China. :-)

I thought that we would get to attend some local events at the library in conjunction with the New Year holiday, but the one event was canceled and the other event didn't fit into our schedule.

We took the easy way out with Chinese meals by ordering take-out from a local restaurant. MonkeyD was excited to use her chopsticks that we got her back when we were learning about Japan. I'm also happy to say that, although Grandma was hesitant, she tried every dish that we got and made the comment that it didn't taste like the Chinese food she had remembered. I guess a bad experience can make you reluctant to try it again, but I'm glad she gave it another chance.

MonkeyD and Lil Pistol both decorated dragons by coloring and attaching streamers to tagboard that I had cut in the shape of dragon faces. They danced their dragons around while we listened to some music from China on an internet radio site. There are a lot to choose from at http://www.multilingualbooks.com/online-radio-chinese.html.

We did watch Disney's Mulan one evening, at MonkeyD's request. We also watched Play & Learn Chinese Vol. 7 with Mei Mei and Play & Learn Chinese Vol. 3 with Mei Mei. We chose these volumes simply because they were the ones available at the library. MonkeyD enjoyed both videos. I could hear her trying to repeat the phrases from the lesson. In addition to those videos, we watched Arthur: Big Brother Binky. In this episode of Arthur, Binky and his parents take a trip to China to adopt his little sister. The last movie that we watched was Ni Hao, Kai-Lan: Kai-Lan's Great Trip to China. MonkeyD was familiar with Kai-Lan because we also got the book, Kai-lan's Great Trip to China and she played on the Kai-Lan website, http://www.nickjr.com/ni-hao-kai-lan/.

Our book list was really long for China!

Kindergarten Day USA and China by Trish Marx and Ellen B Senisi was a great book for showing MonkeyD some simple similarities and differences between a school day for children in the USA and China.

MonkeyD and I really enjoyed The Silk Princess by Charles Santore. Of course, as MonkeyD keeps repeating, she "LOVES mermaids, princesses and fairies!" so any book on one of these subject matters has a good chance of entertaining her. This is based on a Chinese legend about the discovery of silk. The illustrations are beautiful and incorporate ancient Chinese architecture, dress and flora. There is even a dragon, so what more could MonkeyD need? :-)

Another legend that we read more than once was The Long-Haired Girl by Doreen Rappaport. In this story, a woman attempts to save her community from the effects of a drought. She chooses to risk her life by angering the god of thunder who doesn't want her to tell anyone of his secret water spring.

The Shell Woman & The King by Laurence Yep is one of the folktales that we read only once. In my opinion, some parts were a little too dark for a four year old. It is about a woman who can transform herself into a shell. She is captured by an evil king and inorder to escape she must trick him. In one part she cuts off the arm of a ghost and there is an illustraction of a creepy bloody arm being cut off.

We enjoyed Rabbit's Gift by George Shannon. This is a fable from China. It's a simple tale about a rabbit that begins a chain reaction of kindness during a snowstorm by sharing his turnip with another animal.
MonkeyD also chose to read Lon Po Po by Ed Young several times. This is "A red-riding hood story from China". In my opinion, the illustrations were pretty scary! It is about a wolf that tries to trick three children. The children figure him out and have to trick him instead. It ends with the death of the wolf.

I, Doko by Ed Young was an unusual fable because it was told from the perspective of a basket. The basket carries a child and the child grows up and then the basket is almost used to carry an old man to the temple steps so that he can be taken care of by the priests.

MonkeyD enjoyed Red Thread, another story by Ed Young. But I was uncomfortable with some parts of the story - as far as being appropriate for a four year old. In this story, a man goes to a matchmaker to find out who he will marry. He doesn't like the prediction that he receives and attempts to have the girl (his predicted future bride) murdered. It turns out that he does unknowingly marry that girl. When he realizes that it is her, he tells her about his attempt to have her murdered, and the girl doesn't seem to be upset. In fact, the story goes, "After this, the couple grew closer."

The Warlord's Kites by Virginia Walton Pilegard takes place in ancient China. An invading army is about to attack and three children in the palace devise a plan to send the invading army away. It was a fun story that encouraged MonkeyD to use some problem solving skills to figure out what was happening in the story.

We read Doctor Me Di Cin by Roberto Pumini. In this story, a doctor is called in to heal a prince. The solution is to get him to go outside for some fresh air.

Always Come Home to Me by Belle Yang is a story about a young brother and sister who love their pet doves and risk getting into trouble with their parents to try to get their doves back when the doves are given away.

MonkeyD particularly enjoyed Lin Yi's Lantern by Brenda Wiliams and Benjamin Lacombe. It's a story about a little boy who must get some things from the market for his mother. He really wants to get a special red lantern, but he puts his mother's and uncle's needs ahead of his. In the end he is rewarded. The story and images give us an in introduction to the market life in China and the tradition of the Moon Festival. Later, when we were visiting a local museum, MonkeyD was excited to point out a display of miniature figures marching along with red lanterns.

Ms. Frizzle's adventures in Imperial China by Joanna Colewas a fun book from the creators of The Magic School Bus series. The first time that we tried to read it, MonkeyD couldn't concentrate on it. But the second and third times that we looked at it we made it all the way through. :-) It is about a teacher and a couple of her students that are transported back in time to Imperial China. Through their adventure there we are introduced to many Chinese inventions and emblems.

The Chinese New Year by Nancy Mahan Gjording is a beginning reading level book. It had photographs and simple sentences about things that are used to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

We also read a few stories about Chinese immigrants in the United States and about some children that were adopted by American families from China. All of these books exposed us to some part of Chinese culture by including Chinese names, words or traditions. These included: Hannah is My Name by Belle Yang, My Mei Mei by Ed Young, Every Year On Your Birthday by Rose Lewis,

Week 9: Brazil!

2011-03-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

Our family has had a long break from our global travels because we've been so busy. We have a new member in our family now! We will respectfully refer to the new little brother as Mr. President. He was born in late December. Adjusting to having a newborn in the house had made our lives a little crazy for a while. Fortunately, Grandma came to stay with us and has been wonderful in helping us continue to enrich our lives with global experiences.
For Christmas, MonkeyD received several Dover sticker paper doll books from a good friend of ours. Each book has a paper doll from a certain country and related repositionable sticker outfits and accessories. I asked MonkeyD to choose from those books to decide which country we would learn about next and she chose Camina From Brazil. She really loves playing with the stickers in the books and changing the dolls outfits.

This website, http://www.easyfunschool.com/article1080.html, had a lot of helpful links for finding out more about Brazil.

Grandma has been doing the cooking for our family lately. She did an awesome job with the Brazilian recipes that The Big Bad Dad had found. One night we had beef strogonoff. It was delicious. I was wondering, is strogonoff really a Brazilian dish? According to the author of Maria's Cookbook (where this recipe came from), "everyone in Brazil loves the dish and has their favorite recipe." Coincidentally, when I mentioned to a friend of mine that we had beef stroganoff while learning about Brazil, she said that she had a friend from Brazil that was always making stroganoff. Since my girls are not big on eating meat, they pushed the beef aside.They did like the sauce with the rice though.

Another dish Grandma made was chicken pie (Torta de frango). The grown-ups liked this dish, but the kids didn't care for it. She also made pork chops (bisteca de porco frita), rice and beans.

The Big Bad Dad made avocado smoothies (vitaba) for us one morning. We had never had avocado with sugar, we usually think of eating avocados with salty chips in guacamole. Everyone except MonkeyD liked this smoothie. The Big Bad Dad also made us fried bananas (banana frita) which we all loved.

With a new baby in the house, I haven't necessarily been the one that gets to do storytime with the girls. So, I'm asking MonkeyD to help me summarize which books she enjoyed and what they are about. The books in the "I liked it" pile are:

Cassio's Day by Maria de Fatima Campos. This was the first book we read, to introduce ourselves to Brazil. It follows a little boy named Cassio through his day in his Brazilian village. We discussed what was similar about his day and MonkeyD's day by talking about what we recognized in the photos.
Count Your Way through Brazil by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson. This book has a summary of some aspects of Brazil such as, the language, popular sports, and animals. Some of the discussion in the book is above MonkeyD's interest level though.

We read a couple of books about the jungle and rainforests. These were not specific to Brazil, so some of the animals in them are not actually in Brazil's rainforests.
Jungle Animals by Jinny Johnson and Nicki Palin. This is a somewhat interactive book because it has questions on a flap that opens to reveal the answers.
A Rain Forest ABC by Amanda Doering. This book has a beautiful photograph and a short sentence on each page.

The folktales that MonkeyD liked included:
The Dancing Turtle by Pleasant DeSpain. This is about a turtle that gets caught to be made into soup, but she manages to trick some children into letting her out of the cage.

The Great Snake by Sean Taylor. This is a book with a collection of stories from the Amazon. The stories are quite long, but MonkeyD didn't seem to mind.

MonkeyD and Lil Pistol love to have dance parties in their bedroom, so they really enjoyed the CD that we listened to, Brazilian Playground by Putumayo Kids. They used it for several dance performances and parties. Since the songs selected for this CD were so perfect for my kids, I think that I will look into other products by Putumayo Kids. They have several CDs on their website.

At the end of our focus on Brazil, MonkeyD and I attended a small (free!) performance of Brazilian music at our local library. I wish that I could have brought Lil Pistol too because she would have enjoyed it, but she needed her nap at that time. MonkeyD enjoyed the music and danced a little to it. She told me it sounded like the music that they have been playing in their bedroom :-)

Week 8: New Zealand!

2010-11-30T20:27:00.001-08:00

Our weeks are very loosely defined. Sometimes they start and end 7 days apart, other times they are only 4 days long or extend a few extra days.

This week we didn't get started on things right away and were busy with preparations for going out of town for Thanksgiving, so we were not quite as involved as some previous weeks.

When we mentioned choosing a country, MonkeyD ran to look at the globe again. It's nice to see that she is enjoying that part of our project. I think her choices are made based on the way the country is represented on the globe. We have a small gem-stone globe, sort of like the ones here: http://www.1worldglobes.com/1WorldGlobes/GemstoneGlobes/gt150gmb.html. Regardless of the reason, the choice was New Zealand.

We flipped through the pages of National Geographic's New Zealand by Barbara Jackson, just to look at pictures.

The only folktale that I found at our library for MonkeyD's level was Punga The Goddess of Ugly by Deborah Nourse Lattimore. MonkeyD and I both really enjoyed this story and we referred to it several times when topics came up that had been mentioned in the book. It's about two Maori girls that must learn to properly perform the haka dance. MonkeyD had fun demonstrating her version of a haka for her dad, my mom and me.

We looked up youtube videos of people performing the haka. Two of the videos that we enjoyed were http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BoNmpvkavo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7pMvn5_3Vw&feature=related Both of these videos were a little bit scary for MonkeyD though.

We made a lunch based on the recipe and suggestions given in The Kids' Multicultural Cookbook by Deanna F Cook. We had Paraoa Parai (Maori Bread). Before we ate I gave both of the girls mokos on their chins using an eyebrow pencil. We would have included a kiwi parfait too, but kiwis were too difficult to find in the grocery stores. Perhaps this was because of the time of year or something.

Week 7: Iran!

2010-11-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

MonkeyD spun the globe and picked Iran to be our focus country this week.

We watched the DVD The Little Travelers Iran towards the end of the week, but I wish that we had used it as an introduction to the country. This is the first video we have watched from this series, but I will be sure to look for their other videos in the future. It's a 40 minute tour of Iran, narrated by two little girls. They have a very interesting blog as well, http://thelittletravelers.typepad.com/.

I tried to take the easy route to trying out some Middle Eastern food by buying some hummus. (I know, I know! Why buy hummus when its simple to make fresh, yadda yadda...but I have actually attempted making fresh hummus in the past and managed to fail miserably, so I decided to buy the canned version that happened to be in the International Foods aisle at the grocery store). It was pretty tasty. But more spicy than I expected. MonkeyD tried a little bite and pointed out that it was too spicy for her. Lil' Pistol shocked me by eating more than one helping with her little crackers. Then all of the sudden she started crying and wiping at her mouth. I guess the spice got to her! The Big Bad Dad pointed out the words "HOT! SPICY!" to me on the can when I told him the story. Oops! Sorry kids!

Baghlava

Fortunately, The Big Bad Dad was in the cooking mood over the weekend, so we sampled a few different dishes. The first was Baghlava. We got the recipe from the book Cooking the Middle Eastern Way by Alison Behnke. We have used the cookbooks in this series for a couple of countries now and I highly recommend them. They give a brief introduction to the country or geographical area at the beginning of the book. Then they give a menu example and corresponding recipes for each meal of the day. The last section of the book describes a few holidays or festivals and some typical recipes for those occasions.

We brought our Baghlava to a party and it went over very well. Lil' Pistol had helped me shell the pistachios and MonkeyD had helped The Big Bad Dad with some of the measuring, mixing, layering ingredients and buttering the layers. She had also gone with him to the international foods store that we just discovered in our community, World Harvest Foods (The Big Bad Dad said this is one of his new favorite stores!). Strangely, MonkeyD refused to sample the Baghlava. Lil' Pistol followed her big sister's example, probably thinking that her big sister was onto some evil plot of the grown-ups to trick them into eating something bad. But, the next day, when Lil' Pistol thought she was being sneaky, she sampled some of the Baghlava and must have liked it because she kept "sneaking" some more.

Kookoo-e Gol-e Kalem

The next day we tried out Kookoo-e Gol-e Kalem. This was a vegetarian cauliflower dish. Unfortunately, this dish didn't taste as good to us as it smelled. The fun part of this meal was that we ate on the floor, like we saw them do in the Little Travelers video. MonkeyD thinks it is so much fun to eat on a blanket on the floor! She was in the greatest mood as she set the dishes out for us and directed us each to our place. We tried to find a traditional Iranian music channel to listen to on Pandora, but I don't think we got the right one. It was fun way to eat, but definitely a messy experience with Lil' Pistol dropping sticky rice all over the place.

Chelow kabab with chicken

Another meal that we had was Chelow kabab. I think that all of us thought this rice dish was delicious.

Persian pistachio nougat

The last homemade Persian treat that we had was Persian pistachio nougat.

We finished off our Iranian culinary experience with some sherbet. This may have been a bit of a stretch, but I had read that the idea for the sherbet that we eat here originated in Iran with a sweetened fruit juice, http://www.answers.com/topic/sherbet .

We concluded our introduction to Iran week with a little field trip to a local imported rug gallery, Eastern Rug Gallery. We asked to have the rugs from Iran pointed out to us. We were also shown rugs from other areas of the world. MonkeyD showed me which ones she liked and we talked a little bit about the different colors and patterns in them.

The books that we read this week were:

The Rich Man and the Parrot retold by Suzan Nadimi - We enjoyed this colorfully illustrated retelling of a tale by Rumi.
The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie DePaola - This was a fun story about the beautiful Persian carpets. It piqued our interest in Perisan rugs and added to our trip to the imported rug gallery.
The Earth Shook by Donna Jo Napoli - I wasn't too excited about this story - for our purposes. It was a little too dark to read to my not-quite-four-year-old. If only there were time to read every book alone before reading it to the kids. It's about a little girl whose home is destroyed by an earthquake. When she wakes up the people are all gone but she meets some animals. Each animal threatens her. In the end, she makes peace with all the animals though.
Count Your Way Through Iran by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson - I thought this book would be a great, simple introduction to some things from Iran (like the tar instrument, some animals found in the Caspian Sea, and the Towers of Silence). However, MonkeyD didn't give the book a chance.

On Amazon.com we listened to (and MonkeyD danced to) some music clips from a CD that I had tried to get at the library but was unfortunately not available, Rough Guide to Music of Iran.

We didn't make a craft this week, but I did find this website, http://www.ehow.com/list_6712810_persian-crafts-kids.html, with some suggestions of crafts. This website, http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/iran.html, is a list of helpful links for learning about Iran too.

Week 6: Hungary!

2010-11-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

This week we chose a country to learn about by having MonkeyD flip through the pages of Children Just Like Me by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley. This book shows photographs of children, their families, their homes, pets, etc from many countries around the world. MonkeyD chose a picture of a girl holding a flute and said that she wanted to learn about the country that this girl, Monika, was from. So we spent the week learning about Hungary.

Unfortunately, the recipes that we tried out this week didn't go over that well with our kids. The first recipe that we tried was for rakott burgonya, a casserole with layers of smoked sausage, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. I realized part way through making this dish that I could have had MonkeyD more involved in this There was a lot that she could have done to help with the layering of ingredients, but I was rushing to get the dish done while Lil' Pistol napped. I think that the dish might have gone over better with the kids, but they don't like hard-boiled eggs, and something was wrong with our oven that evening so things didn't heat evenly.

Another evening we had Hungarian Stuffed Peppers. I liked that I could use my crock pot for this recipe. I thought it was pretty tasty. MonkeyD ate some of hers, after I let her add ketchup and mustard :-) Lil' Pistol may have had one bite, I'm not sure. She really doesn't like trying new foods!

A third evening The Big Bad Dad made Hungarian Goulash. You can't really spend a week learning about Hungary without at least having the word goulash pop into your head, right? It was a yummy beef stew for The Big Bad Dad and I, but MonkeyD made faces before even trying it and then finally giving in and telling us she would eat six bites. Lil' Pistol wouldn't even give it a try :-(

Since Hungarian recipes are known for their use of paprika, I tried simply adding a little paprika to our green beans. I put some on the side of MonkeyD's plate and told her to try it and see if she liked it. She actually ate the paprika alone, saying, "mmm Yum!" and then when it was almost gone she said she didn't like it. So, I don't exactly know what to make of that ;-)

I know that the strudel recipe that I had picked out would have been a big winner with all of us, but I ran out of ambition to make it :-( I'm sure that we'll have it sometime soon though, since I bought the dough to make it already!

A wonderful friend of mine is married to someone from Hungary and when I asked her for suggestions for this week she mentioned that vitamin C was discovered by a Hungarian, and she suggested drinking a glass of orange juice in honor of that fact. So, although the main dishes that we prepared didn't go over well, we had no problem getting MonkeyD to drink a few glasses of orange juice. She wondered aloud, how could orange juice have vitamins in it and be good for me when my tongue thinks it tastes so good!? She also shared her knowledge of vitamin C in orange juice with her little sister.

My friend also passed on the trivia that the first (noiseless) match was invented by the Hungarian János Irinyi. So, I pointed this little fact out as I lit a candle during dinner.

We're looking forward to receiving a postcard from these friends when they visit Hungary next week. She said that the stamps from Hungary are collected around Europe.

We borrowed a couple of CDs from our library of music by well-known Hungarian composers. We listened to Bartok - Lili Kraus' piano music and Solti Mephisto Magic. Mephisto Magic had music by Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, Leo Weiner and Zoltan Kodaly. I mentioned that the composers were from Hungary and then we just listened to the music in the background as we went about our playing. Naturally, both girls were inspired to do some dancing too. And, I couldn't help but show MonkeyD the Hungarian Rhapsody - Tom and Jerry clip (though I don't usually let her watch Tom and Jerry because of the violence).

MonkeyD and I tried watching Liszt's Rhapsody. She isn't quite old enough for this movie though. She would have preferred a cartoon, I'm sure! But, at the very first scene she asked me if that was Hungary. I said yes, but clarified that that is what it looked like years ago. She wanted to know what it looks like today and speculated that it probably has lots of tall buildings now. So, I think that she was observing the backgrounds of the movie, the music, and the costumes. She didn't understand why some people were being mean to the young boy in the movie or why he was trying to lighten his skin by washing it, and that gave us a short conversation about how there are many different skin colors.

The books that we read this week were:

Climbing Rosa by Shelley Fowles.

Two Greedy Bears by Mirra Ginsburg

Little Rooster's Diamond Button retold by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Little Golden Lamb retold by Ellin Greene

The Brand New Kid by Katie Couric

All of these stories were requested to be read more than once throughout the week. The first four books were based on folk tales from Hungary. The last book, I found in a search for Hungarian children's books. It's about a class that has a new kid in it. The story never actually says that the new student is from Hungary, but since the summary of the book on the library's website said it was about a new student from Hungary, I introduced it that way to MonkeyD. It's helpful in starting a conversation about accepting people that look different from us and being kind and inclusive to new students at school.

I read that embroidery is an important part of Hungarian culture, so this seemed like a great time to introduce MonkeyD to embroidery. We looked at some images of Hungarian embroidery on the computer, then I drew a simple flower picture (based on an image we had seen) onto a scrap of fabric. I used colored pencils to draw the picture and then let MonkeyD choose the embroidery floss that she wanted to use for each part of the project. After 3 or 4 stitches she was remembering which side of the fabric she needed to put her needle through. The difficulty she was having was pulling the thread too far and pulling the needle off. We fixed that by tying the needle onto the thread :-) She seemed to really enjoy this project and it gave her some satisfaction to know she was doing it on her own. She proudly showed The Big Bad Dad and requested to work on it again.

Week 5: England!

2010-11-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

This week I asked MonkeyD which country she wanted to learn about. I didn't actually expect an answer, but sometimes it's fun asking a question to see what a three year old's answer will be. She surprised me and instantly responded, "London." She had just watched the new Tinkerbell movie and Tinkerbell's trip to London was fresh in her mind :-) So, we embarked upon our exploration of the England.

I thought that learning about England would be overwhelming because of a surplus in information available. But, I didn't actually find that to be the case. Most of my Google searches for "English culture", "England customs", etc., gave me results geared towards people in foreign countries that are trying to learn the English language.

MonkeyD has been enjoying roaming about the BBC's children's website, The BBC's CBeebies, playing games and watching their video clips for several months now. Without directly meaning to, I think that this website gives her a British experience through the cartoon characters' accents and some of the words that they use that we don't normally use.

We also explored http://projectbritain.com/, a guide to Britich life, customs and culture.

Our librarians were very helpful and the books that we brought home with us included:

The Inside-Outside Book of London by Roxie Munro - which doesn't tell a story, but is just illustrations of some of the famous places of London.
Madeline in London by Ludwig Bemelmans - Madeline journeys to London to visit her friend. The illustrations depict some of the things that we had been talking about for London such as the palace guards, tea time, London Bridge, double decker buses and the British flag.
The Secret Staircase and Autumn Story by Jill Barklem. These stories seem a little long for MonkeyD's age, but she surprised me by staying interested in them and requesting them more than once. They are part of a series about some mice that live in a hedgerow in England. As written on the book jacket, the author's "interest in natural history and traditional rural customs and crafts has spilled over into these chronicles of hedgerow life."
Dodsworth in London by Tim Egan. This was one of my favorites of the books that we read this week as far as introducing things from London. It's about Dodsworth, a mole, who takes a trip to London who mixes up his duck with the royal duck of England. Several facts about London's landmarks are mentioned and illustrated throughout the short story.
Paddington Bear and Paddington Bear in the Garden by Michael Bond. These books didn't particularly mention anything about English culture, but it was a good time to introduce MonkeyD to the classic Paddington books. This week was her first introduction to Madeline books too!

The movies that we watched were Mary Poppins, 101 Dalmations II Patch's London Adventure and Mickey's Seeing the World.

We didn't get very crafty this week, but MonkeyD and Grandma did put together the Bobby from DLTK's website.

We planned a few of our meals and snacks based on suggestions in Cooking the English Way by Barbara Hill. We followed this cookbook's recipes for our English breakfast of mushrooms on toast (except we had it as lunch!), for our Hearty Autumn Hot Pot dinner, and for the scones we made for an afternoon tea. At our afternoon tea we had English breakfast tea, but also a fruity raspberry pomegranate tea, as I thought that might be more appealing to MonkeyD. We also had some Cadbury Digestives with our tea. Fresh from the oven scones with jam and butter went over very well at our house!

One evening we had shepherd's pie for dinner. Ours may not have been a very traditional English style though. We were in the Halloween mood and followed the Kraft recipe for Scary Skillet Shepherd's Pie. We only followed the recipe loosely, using what we had on hand, but whether traditional or not, it was yummy!

We also had a fish and chips dinner - the simplest version. This meal went over very well. I just bought frozen fish sticks and french fries...I mean chips! We all enjoyed our chips with salt and vinegar.

Week 4: Germany!

2010-10-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

This week we decided to indulge ourselves in some German culture. If I had been planning ahead, I probably would have chosen to do Germany at the end of September or beginning of October to coordinate with some community events celebrating Oktoberfest or Unity Day. But we had plenty of fun this week anyways!

There were quite a few helpful websites that I used as I looked for preschooler-friendly German culture activities. On http://www.travelforkids.com/Funtodo/Germany/germany.htm I found a list of some book and CD suggestions. From this website's suggestions, I decided to get the Mr. Bach Comes to Call CD. From the descriptions that I had read of the CD I was anticipating MonkeyD sitting and listening to the narration and music. The storyline didn't hold her attention at all though, so we used the music as background music while we colored. We haven't done any books on CD before, so maybe my kids are just used to having a visual when they're listening to something.

http://ukgermanconnection.org/ is a fun website set up to connect school children from Germany and England. I thought that MonkeyD and I would have more fun exploring it together than we did though. She just didn't seem interested in the language games and quizzes. I did find this fun craft idea there though, http://www.ukgermanconnection.org/kids/?location_id=1325. It's for making a schultüte. I explained to MonkeyD that this is a gift given to children on their first day of school and it's generally filled with small treats and school supplies. At the end of the week I gave both of the girls a small schultüte. I made and filled them with a fall/Halloween theme, but reminded MonkeyD of their real use in Germany.

There were also some fun links on this page, http://www.aupairinamerica.com/resources/kids/culture_corner/germany.asp, that was put together by Au Pair in America.

MonkeyD listened to the story of the Brementown Musicians on http://brementownmusicians.com/story_enter and we tried playing the game on that site also.

We put together a little toy man wearing his traditional lederhose from the free pattern on http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/germany/mlederhosen.htm. MonkeyD tried to make a castle for him to live in with her blocks since we had seen pictures of German castles.

There were some interesting short videos to watch on the BBC's website. We watched Frau Holle, Pancake day in Germany, and A birthday out in a country park. I see now that there are more to choose from if you do a search for German and filter by "primary".

MonkeyD recently started playing soccer through our local parks and recreation department, so we were sure to point out to her that soccer is a very popular sport in Germany. And we had fun playing soccer together at the park on one of our family days.

The German cuisine that we tried out included Black Forest Cake, schweineschnitzel, weinkraut, spaetzle with butter, schoko mac, lebkuchen (cookies), and apfelpfannekuchen (apple pancakes). MonkeyD helped out where she could with the cooking. The first three recipes were the responsibility of The Big Bad Dad, since he is the real chef in our family. Of all the recipes, the only things that the girls were not big fans of were the weinkraut and the spaetzle.

The recipe for lebkuchen (cookies) that we used was from the book The Usborne Internet-Linked Children's World Cookbook. This is a great cookbook for trying recipes from around the world. In addition to a recipe, they have short paragraphs, photographs and internet links about the country that the recipe came from. It explained that lebkuchen are traditionally Christmas cookies. I explained the traditional use, but since we're getting close to Halloween, we used our Halloween cookie cutters for our cookies.

For our apfelpfannekuchen, I just used our regular Bisquick pancake recipe and added apples. I did find another great kids' cookbook called, The Kids' Multicultural Cookbook by Deanna F. Cook, with a recipe that we could have used. This cookbook also has recipes from countries around the world and it includes fun illustrations and some fun facts about each country. We tried our pancakes with applesauce, as we read that suggestion in the book and it was also mentioned in the short video we watched on the BBC's website. I might be adding these two cookbooks to our Christmas wishlist since we can only keep them from the library for just so long :-)

Before we read any stories we looked through the pictures of a book about Germany that I picked out from the juvenile non-fiction section of our library. MonkeyD prefers not to read those books though. The rest of our booklist this week was fairy tales and folk tales that were retold from the Brother's Grimm.

The Bremen Town Musicians and Other Animal Tales From Grimm retold by Doris orgel. MonkeyD seemed to really enjoy this book, I thought that the illustrations were well done. It includes six short tales, and MonkeyD insisted on hearing all of them in one sitting!
Iron Hans retold by Stephen Mitchell.
One Gift Deserves Another adapted by Joanne Oppenheim.
The Ragamuffins adapted by Bernadette Watts.
The Brothers Grimm The Brave Little Tailor by Eve Tharlet.
We read several versions of Little Red Riding Hood. The versions that we read were: Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm, Little Red Riding Hood by William Wegman, and Little Red Riding Hood by Candice Ransom. I thought it was kind of funny, we haven't gone to many of the storytimes held at our library because of the age difference in our girls and trying to pick a program that will be appropriate for both of them is difficult. Anyways, I decided to bring the girls to the preschool storytime on Wednesday because I saw that they were doing fairytales this month. And, what a nice surprise, the fairytale they were reading this week was Little Red Riding Hood. After reading the story together, they had a craft set up. The craft was decorating a little picnic basket made out of a paper bag and coloring and cutting out some pictures of food for the basket. Afterwards, we got to keep a copy of the book.

Week 3: Russia! (Short side-trip to Tanzania and Kenya)

2010-10-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

This week MonkeyD pointed at Russia on our map when choosing our new culture to explore. So, as is becoming my ritual, I spent Sunday evening on the computer looking for ideas to learn about Russia.

On Monday I was sick, but my wonderful husband stayed home and took over our Russian experience for the day. Since he is, without a doubt, the better chef in our family, he indulged us in a few Russian meals. He started us out in the morning with a brunch of deruny - potato pancakes. MonkeyD was not completely impressed with the deruny, but Lil' Pistol couldn't eat enough of them. The previous night, The Big Bad Dad had made and frozen a large batch of pelmini, so we had those for dinner. With this dish, MonkeyD ate and ate, (how could she not? she got to use her favorite condiment, ketchup!). Lil' Pistol was not interested in dinner though. I think that the pelmini was the perfect hot food for me that day. In the evening, The Big Bad Dad, assisted by his mini-chefs, made a delicious Russian apple pie.

One evening we made Babushka dolls out of a paper towel roll. I cut the roll into pieces of decreasing size and rolled some of them tighter so that they could fit inside one another. Then, MonkeyD decorated them and played with them for a while. I had also come across this website, http://mssscrafts.com/crafts/matryushka/, that has a template to use for making Babushka Dolls.

We had a long booklist of Russian folktales. The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey, Bit by Bit by Steve Sanfield, Clever Katya retold by Mary Hoffman, Baboushka retold by Arthur Scholey, Baba Yaga retold by Eric A. Kimmel, Bearhead by Eric A Kimmel, and The Firebird retold by Demi. We looked at and discussed the pictures in the book Looking at Russia by Jillian Powell - although we didn't actually read it together. We also enjoyed the stories of Max Moves to Moscow by Winifred Riser, and Castle on Hester Street by Linda Heller. The first is about a dog who moves to Moscow. For this book we paid attention to the cathedrals in the illustrations and made note of the long winter season. The second is about a husband and wife that moved to the New York from Russia many years ago.

We watched three dvds this week. The first two, The Firebird and The Fool and the Flying Ship are based on traditional folktales that we had also read. We watched the versions created by Rabbit Ears Storybook Collection. The third dvd we watched was Little Pim the Panda: Russian. This is a language learning program. We watched the "Eating and Drinking" video, which is the first of the three videos in their Russian collection.

On Wednesday we made a side trip in to northern Tanzania and Kenya as we visited a nearby museum, The Spurlock Museum,. In their Around the World Wednesdays art program for kids, the girls each made a Maasai necklace and earrings using paper plates and beads. They were shown, allowed to touch and even try on an actual Maasai beaded wedding necklace and earring. This was our first visit to Spurlock Museum, but we will be visiting again and touring the exhibits since we hadn't given ourselves enough time to do that during this trip.

Week 2: Greenland!

2010-10-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night MonkeyD looked at the map and chose our next country to be Greenland. I don't know much about Greenland myself, so I thought this could prove to be difficult. I spent some time at the computer researching Greenland and looking up books available at our local library.

Two of the websites that I found to be user friendly and helpful for research were Greenland.com and Go North!

The Enchanted Learning website had an Inuit wooden mask to paint online, MonkeyD spent a while playing around with that. I also found a website with lots of great pictures to print out for free, First-School. From their selection, I printed out pictures of several of the animals that could be found in Greenland (not the penguins or the albatross! :-)) and gave them to MonkeyD to paint with her water colors. I also printed out the picture of the letter I with an igloo and the letter I with an icicle, but she wasn't interested in doing anything with those. She isn't into coloring with crayons or markers much, but I thought she would like painting. She was done after only painting three of the pictures, but I was happy because in addition to seeing some of the animals that are in Greenland she presented an opportunity for me to tell her about camouflage. After painting each animal she asked me if it was the color that it usually is in Greenland. So then we got to talk about their colors and that in the case of the ermine that she painted brown, that would be the color that he would be in the summer. But in the winter his coat would be white to help him camouflage with the snow.

I found a website to print out flags of the countries that we've learned about so far at Coloring Castle. These printables were fun because they had a color key to help with coloring in the right colors. MonkeyD wasn't too interested in coloring these though, as I mentioned she isn't into crayons and markers much. Lil' Pistol got ahold of the flag coloring pages and added her best scribbles though :-)

One of the books at we borrowed from the library was Crafts for Kids Who Are Wild About Polar Life by Kathy Ross. This book had a lot of fun ideas for crafts to make about animals in the arctic (and antarctic) regions. Based on the ease of the crafts and the materials that we had available (and the amount of time before Lil' Pistol would wake up), MonkeyD and I made an arctic tern one day and a walrus mask another day.

Another day I let MonkeyD play with a couple trays worth of ice cubes on a cookie sheet. She was making igloos. We had trouble getting the cubes to stack, but that didn't hinder her creativity. She played with them on and off until they were completely melted.

We read many books this week. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like I found any books on MonkeyD's level that were directly about the (current) lifestyles of the people in Greenland. However, I do feel think that through her curiosity and attention to the wonderful illustrations in these books, she probably got a feel for some parts of the culture. For example, several of the books showed the characters wearing their mukluks or mentioned them. The book, I is for Inuksuk explained what an Inuksuk was (a stone tower used as a guide) and then there were illustrations of Inuksuk in The Three Snow Bears, so we were able to point these out and remember what they were. The animals that we had talked about in our painting activities were in several of the books so it was rewarding to be able to say that she had painted a picture of that animal or done a craft about it. Many of the stories had pictures of sleds pulled by teams of dogs so we talked about that being a way to get around in the snow. Some of the books also incorporated pictures of the Aurora borealis, so although it wasn't mentioned in the story, we talked about it. In addition to some stories, we also read quite a few books that were just about the polar animals. Here is our book list:

Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse,

Kumak's Fish by Michael Bania,

The Big Fuzzy by Caroline Castle,

The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett (a fun Goldilocks and the Three Bears type of story),

The Brave Little Seal by Rudyard Kipling,

Baby Polar Bear by Aubrey Lang,

What a Viking! by Mick Manning & Brita Granstrom (didn't really mention Greenland much, but I pointed out that at one time Vikings had been in Greenland),

I is for Inuksuk by Mary Wallace,

Alego by Ningeokuluk Teevee (written in Inuktitut and English, introduces many Inuktitut words),

Over in the Arctic Where the Cold Winds Blow by Marianne Berkes, and

Way Up in the Arctic by Jennifer Ward (these last two were very cute and written to the rhythm of "Over In the Meadow", so they can be sung to a familiar tune).

I thought that Polar Lands by Margaret Hynes would have been a good book for MonkeyD, but we never got around to looking at it. Maybe if she was a little older she would have liked it. It has large colorful pictures of animals from the arctic and antarctic as well as short paragraphs about how animals adapt, what they eat and other facts about the polar regions.

We also talked about the tundra and watched a relevant short clip on PBS EekoWorld. This video clip re-emphasized some things we had read in our stories including that in the winter it is dark all day long and in the summer it is light all day long. The following week I happened to come across a DVD at the library about polar animals, National Geographic's Really Wild Animals Polar Prowl. I added this to our Greenland activities.

A couple of books suggested doing some sort of paper snowflake craft. I just couldn't bring myself to make any snowflakes since it was early fall here though. Also, we didn't try out any Greenlandic recipes. I had trouble finding any traditional recipes that used ingredients I could find at our local grocery stores. I read a few suggestions to try out some Danish recipes, since there is quite a lot of Danish cuisine in Greenland. But, we didn't go that route, for whatever reason.

During this week I started wondering if what I'm doing - as far as trying to teach MonkeyD about other cultures - is making any sense to her. Sometimes I get caught up in thinking that she should be learning facts, like "this is the capital...this is where it is located...these are some of the words spoken there...this is what the weather is like there...etc." Then I realized, well, I am exposing her to new things - things beyond the normal peanut butter and jelly sandwich routine of our lives. She is learning that there are many different ways of life around the world. That's my original and ultimate goal anyways. Then, while she was playing with her ice cubes, she had a toy dinosaur peek between the cubes and she laughed and said, "He sees some plants growing outside but he is surprised because not much grows in Greenland." And I realized she is listening and taking things in. I told her that in the summer a few things can grow, but not a lot. She said, "Yeah. He just sees two plants." So maybe she is getting some little 'facts' out of it too :-)

Week 1: Japan!

2010-10-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

This week we started up our adventure around the world. I made the decision to learn about Japan this week based on a very important fact. I was craving sushi :-) So, Sunday night, after the girls were in bed, I sat at the computer and searched our local library's database of books. I made my list of books I wanted to check out and requested copies of the movies that had been suggested in the article How Every Child Can Grow Up Global.

After our play date at the park and a quick lunch on Monday morning we headed to the library armed with our book list. It's certainly not easy searching for books while keeping an eye on a three year old and trying to keep an 18 month old happy in her stroller. I was glad that I had a list, so I didn't need to spend time using the computer at the library to find books. We are very lucky to have a very wonderful library with an excellent children's section that has a supply of puzzles and toys in addition to kid-friendly racks of books. MonkeyD played and chose books on her own while I tried to find the ones that I had looked up. A friend of ours happened to be hanging out with her daughter at the library that day and when I told her we were looking for books about Japan she recommended and located a board book for us about sushi. Lil' Pistol doesn't have much of an interest in books yet, aside from opening and closing them, but it was nice to have one her size and sturdy! She would have appreciated books with pictures of dogs, ducks or Elmo.

Monday night we had dinner with friends at a local restaurant that has Monday night sushi specials. We brought along our First Book of Sushi board book and MonkeyD pointed out the sushi roll that she wanted to try to the waiter. The waiter liked our sushi book too :-). When her roll arrived I was proud of her as she took a bite without hesitating, but she decided she didn't like it. That's ok, we told her that it's good that she tried something new. She mostly liked the pot-stickers and trying out her chop sticks. Lil' Pistol enjoyed one of the sushi rolls and both girls ate lots of edamame, which they are familiar with since we eat it at home frequently. MonkeyD insisted that they were magic beans.

MonkeyD loves having books read to her, so during her sister's nap and before bedtime we usually read quite a few books. I had picked out a few non-fiction books that I thought would hold her interest, but I was wrong! She and I glanced through some of the pictures in those books and we made note of the map of Japan. We observed that it is made up of lots of islands (which, since she is only 3, I emphasized that that means there is water all around Japan). We also talked about the mountains there and in particular Mount Fuji. These were easy things to remember about Japan because they appear in most of the books and movies that we looked at, so we could re-emphasize it. Some of that discussion must have sunk into MonkeyD because I heard her talking about Fuji Yama while she was playing.

I do recommend one of the non-fiction books that we read though. My Japan, by Etsuko Watanabe was interactive enough that it captured MonkeyD's attention. Each page had a picture of a room in a Japanese home or school and the facing page had larger pictures of things found in that room. So we talked about each of those items, whether or not it was like something that we have, and then found it in the larger picture. A few of the pages at the end of the book describe some of the holidays observed in Japan. There are directions for some simple paper crafts included as well. We made a paper lantern, a streamer and a paper chain together.

We read quite a few Japanese folktales. We ones we enjoyed the most were, The Crane Wife, by Sumiko Yagawa, The Bamboo Cutter & the Moon Maiden by Teresa Peirce Williston, Jojofu by Michael P. Waite, The Loyal Cat by Lensey Namioka and also a story called Kamishibai Man by Allen say. Some of the folktales are slightly darker than the stories that we are used to, but maybe it only seemed like that because I hadn't heard the stories before.

We also borrowed two movies from the library, My Neighbor Totoroand Ponyo. We loved both of these movies. We watched My Neighbor Totoro first, during Lil' Pistol's naptime and another day we watched Ponyo as a special stay-up-later-than-little-sister-eating-popcorn movie. :-) MonkeyD was a little frightened during parts of each movie, so she was glad to be snuggling next to us. She pointed out to me that the characters took their shoes off and put their slippers on at the beginning of school, as was mentioned in a book we had read. We also noticed the rainy weather in My Neighbor Totoro, and the mountains and sea in Ponyo.

There were two websites that we used, Time for Kids and Kids Web Japan. Kids Web Japan had some fun games that we played together.

At the end of the week we made a family visit to University of Illinois Champaign's Japan House garden. There had been tea ceremonies and house tours on Thursday, but we hadn't made reservations and I wasn't feeling up to going out that day. But, we really enjoyed our short walk through the garden and decided we will definitely have to visit in the spring when the cherry trees are blossoming. There was a poster announcing that a Japanese traditional music concert the next night, it would have been fun if we could have worked it into our schedule, but that didn't work out for us.

After our visit to the Japanese garden, we stopped at our local Korean market (if you're in Champaign, check out The Green Onion) to pick up some Japanese desserts. Of course, we left the store with much more than just some desserts, but we went into a grocery store hungry, so what would one expect? We also bought each of the girls a little pair of Training Chopsticks for Children. MonkeyD tried hers out with both her watermelon and later her udon noodles and I was so impressed with how easily she could manage! She wants to eat everything with her chopsticks now :-) After dinner we enjoyed our Japanese desserts - mochi ryoka (rice cake with bean jam).

At the end of the week I got around to putting together a map so that we could have another visual for the places that we learn about. I probably should have started out with this, but I hadn't gotten it yet. I picked up a simple map at the Dollar Tree and glued it to some cardboard to make it sturdier. Then I highlighted our home state in one color and the states that our family lives in with another color. Then with MonkeyD's help, we made a sticker with some foam stickers that said Japan. We placed the Japan sticker and a sticker of the Japanese flag next to Japan. We placed a colorful star sticker over the black dot that showed where Tokyo is. We put a small picture of a house on our home state and heart stickers on the states where our grandparents, aunts and uncles live. We put a US flag near the US. Then, to emphasise where the water was versus the land, and because stickers are fun, MonkeyD placed some various fish stickers in the oceans.

The Journey Begins

2010-10-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

My husband and I have always had an interest in traveling, learning about and experiencing other cultures. We haven't had the opportunity to live abroad yet, but we continue to have that as one of our goals in life. My husband has been lucky enough to see some new countries first hand while he was serving in the Navy. We have made a few trips to nearby vacation destinations (Caribbean islands, Tijuana, Ensenada, Cozumel, Niagara Falls, Canada). We always told ourselves that we would have both learned a second language by the time we had kids, so that we could raise them in a dual language home. Well, we fell short of that goal (neither of us had quite enough self-discipline for obtaining that goal).

Now that we actually have children, we keep looking for ways to expose them to the world's diversity. When our oldest daughter was an infant we received a cd of lullabies from around the world. It's called "The Planet Sleeps", and I highly recommend it! There was one particular song on there, Chi Mi Na Mór-Bheanna, that worked magically to put our daughters to sleep, especially when we were in the car and couldn't comfort them ourselves. Last year my husband put together a calendar for us of holidays around that world and we planned to observe and learn about as many of those holidays as we could. We stuck with that for a while, but... We also planned to live in a large city with access to many different cultural museums, festivals, restaurants etc. However, sometimes you just have to move where job opportunities call you. Some day, we think it would be terrific if our kids could attend a dual language immersion school, but then again, it depends what is available where we are living.

Now, recently, a friend on Facebook recommended an article on raising global children: How Every Child Can Grow Up Global. At the end of the article were suggestions of things to do with your family to help raise your children's knowledge of other countries and cultures. Those ideas sounded like lots of fun! And, so, I was re-inspired to surround my children with experiences from around the world. Our plan is to focus on one country each week. I decided to write a blog about what we do each week as a way to share with others which books and activities we found helpful, to hopefully receive feedback from others about ideas they have, and also as a way to keep myself motivated and encouraged to contiue with our project of being a Family Gone Global.

And now our journey begins...