EH - Australia

It took us months instead of days, but we finally finished studying Australia.

We did some art and we did some reading.

We especially loved the Sleeping Bear Press book D is for Down Under  which we borrowed from our library.

I had the littles do the map requirement in the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer (can't find pictures of that.)

We took a quick trip to the Rhode Island Zoo to visit their Australian animals exhibit. It was a beautiful, sunny January day. Dad got home early and joined us. Can only find this picture:

The Kangaroo we saw

Our grand finale for Australia had to be cool; as well as informational. We had a loooong break for Advent and Christmas. We had to do something before we could consider Australia finished for us. How could we finish up the country study and not re-do all we had done two month before?

What to do?

We made a book!

Taking inspiration from Sleeping Bear Press' alphabet books, we created an alphabet book about some of the cool things we studied. We sat down with a piece of paper and listed all the letters and brain-stormed on what to do for each letter. A very nifty process to see what they remembered about the country. Then we went around the table and each picked one letter to do until the alphabet was divided. Nathaniel, Isabel and Julianne had 7 letters each, and Lucas (with my help) had 5 letters.

We did real basic pages - sometimes, just printing a picture and pasting it down. Others involved a bit more research (usually reserved for Nathaniel and Isabel!) I think it came out pretty good for a spur-of-the-moment decision! I did take us about a week to do all the pages and get them together.

The Cover Page

A   Aborigines

B   Brisbane

C    Captain Cook

D    Desert

E    Echidna

F    Flag

G    Great Barrier Reef

H    Australia Horse

I    Island

J    Willem Jantz

K    Kangaroo, Koala, Kookaburra

L    Land Down Under

M    Melbourne

N    Northern Territory

O    Outback

P    Prisoners

Q    Queensland

R    Religion

S    Sydney

T    Tasmania

U    Uluru

V    Victoria

W    Wombat

X    X-ray Painting

Y    Yellow Gold Rush

Z    Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin)

Once all the pages were finished we brought them to Staples and had them spiral bound. An exciting process to watch (not really, but for some reason, the littles thought the huge hole punch machine was fascinating - go figure!)

The kiddos inform me that this was a very cool project and we should do it again for another country we will study. Not all of them, because then they would be bored with it!

Next week - hopefully - Antarctica!