Creating the Outback (Australia)

Pull out your best Aussie impressions because it’s time to head to The Land Down Under. That’s right, we are learning about Australia and couldn’t be more excited!

Since we were on day one of our Australian endeavor it was time to make the flag. This one was a bit harder than any of the others had been, but I knew we could pull it off.

With a straight edge, scissors, a glue stick, red, white and blue paper, we sat down and got started. I measured to get the right proportions and marked out the lines for the stripes. Then I passed Aiden the marked paper and his scissors. He cut along the lines to make white and red stripes of two different thicknesses. While he was cutting I started drawing the stars, I had to free hand them, so they aren’t perfect but they’ll do. This time I had to do most of the cutting because the kids were having trouble with the stars and kept accidentally cutting them in half, or otherwise missing a point or two. When the pieces were all cut, I passed the glue stick to Eliana and she glued the pieces. Together we placed them were they belong.

This flag took longer than any of the others had so far and the kids were a little disappointed that they didn’t get to do ALL of the cutting, but in the end, when the flag was complete, they decided it was pretty close to the real thing and so they were happy.  

After creating the flag it was time to move on to our craft project. Since my kids are pretty young I have to be careful that the projects are not only fun for them, but also doable with minimal help from me (they get mad if I intervene too much). I had been bouncing back and forth about what I wanted to make with the kids. I even decided to skip the sculpey if you can believe it! I finally decided that bouncing back and forth, or forth anyway, was exactly the answer. We needed to do a project that included bouncing kangaroos. We talked about what we could make and Aiden said, "Why can't we just draw pictures of kangaroos?" Since this whole adventure is really about teaching them, I feel like it is important to include them as much as possible when it comes to deciding what we will do. So, I suggested that we make placemats. They both liked the idea. This project is probably the most basic and simple project we have done so far, but it was mostly Aiden's idea, so they were happy with it. Supplies we needed: markers and construction paper. After trying to draw a kangaroo and not being happy with the results, we decided to create a template. I cut out two kangaroos from a cereal box and gave one to each of them. They traced them to the best ability of their little hands and adorned them with faces. 

Aiden, just getting started.

Eliana, aka Wild Haired Child, with two of her creations. You can see that this one was for "Daddy".

Check out the joeys in the pouches!
Aiden made this one for me.
It says "momu" which actually sounds like "Mama"... he's still working that out. 

Now that we had a flag, and placemat to eat off of, the only thing left to do was to eat! Well, that wasn't the *only* thing left. There was still menu planning to be done and food prep, but those are minor details right? 

JUST FOR FUN:

I heard this gem while learning about Australia.

A Texan farmer goes to Australia for a vacation. There he meets an Australian farmer and the two of them get to talking. The Aussie shows off his big wheat field and the Texan says, "Oh! We have wheat fields that are at least twice as large".

Then they walk around the ranch a little, and the Australian farmer shows off his herd of cattle. The Texan immediately says, " We have longhorns that are at least twice as large as your cows".

The conversation has, meanwhile, almost died when the Texan sees a herd of kangaroos hopping through the field. He asked, "And what are those"?

The Aussie replies with an incredulous look, "Don't you have any grasshoppers in Texas"?