Galloping The Globe: Russia

We have completed our first country study using Galloping The Globe.  So far I am really impressed with this curriculum.  We had a lot of fun learning about Russia.

I spread the lessons over two weeks.  This study is mainly for ds3, but ds4 listens in and participates some as well.  I bought a drawing book for ds3 to use as a notebook or journal for these lessons.  I even pasted some of the worksheets into the journal ahead of time.  I think this will work out well to help organize and document his studies over this year.

Here is the first page of the journal.  We have a worksheet about the continents and a map of Europe, the first continent we are tackling.  As he studies a country he will color it in on the map. 

Our first day in our study of Russia was an informal introduction of sorts.  We have a kid friendly Atlas with which we looked up Russia and studied the details on the map…the natural resources, animals, capital city, etc.  On the second day we read about a Russian child in the book Children Like Me, a great companion for Galloping The Globe, and filled in a coordinating notebooking sheet I found at HomeschoolCreations.  (If you are using Galloping The Globe you have to check out Jolanthe’s site…she has tons of ideas and cool printables for the countries her kids have already studied.)  Next day we learned about Russia’s flag and colored a worksheet about it.

I searched around the internet until I found some info and a coordinating lesson plan on a famous Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky.  I folded some sheets of construction paper so there would be 8 squares to color on.  We put on some classical music and I told the boys to picture the music in their head and just paint/draw what they imagined.

The artists at work, and their masterpieces.

In week two of our study we learned about some famous places in Russia.  I found this book at a local homeschool consignment shop…it is a little too advanced for my boys just yet, but does provide lots of info and pics of famous landmarks.  We also searched the internet and found plenty of things about the Kremlin.  Then we learned a little about bears…we are studying animal classification in science so this tied in nicely.  Next day we learned about Russian language and currency.  I found the Russia ABC’s book at our library and it is great!  We also searched and found a English to Russian online translator so we could hear people speaking the language.

On our last day we (attempted) to make some Russian food, blinis.  I found a recipe on AllRecipes and it looked easy enough (they are basically just thin pancakes) but we only succeeded at making one lol. 

Supposedly in Russia they like their bliny with sour cream.  I asked ds3 what it tasted like…”eggs with sour cream.”  :)

Our study complete, we “stamped” our passports and reviewed a little of what we learned over the two weeks.  This was definitely a fun and educational unit.  Now on to England!