This is a great way to help children be able to identify different flags around the world and will be an activity we do for each country.
We have the Usbourne flag flash cards as a learning aid to help us with this.
Poland is a lovely simple flag and the Usbourne card gives us a lovely fact to help us remember the meaning of the colours. The children of Poland are taught a song about their flag and in the song it says that the the red is for the love and the white is for the pure heart. Simply beautiful.
Button decided she wanted to paint the flag today but as half of the flag is white, I decided to add some sticking as well. So she painted the red and used tissue paper for the white.
This gave us a lovely end result and helped build lots of hand eye coordination and muscle skill and strength in her hands. She had to rip the tissue paper and fill the paper with the paint and paper.
The outcome was amazing. If we had done this activity a year ago the page would not have been filled from corner to corner but what a difference a year makes.
While she painted we talked about the flag. I read some of the facts from the card and then we googled how to say "Hello" and "how are you?" in Polish. Once she had finished making the flag we went to look for it on her giant poster of flags. We had a lot of fun doing this quick and easy activity and I hope it builds her knowledge of different flags in a fun and easy way.
Universal yum taste box
This week we have recieved our first yum box from www.universalyums.com and we were all really excited! This is a monthly box of treats and snacks from a different country each month. We are planning to use it as a starting point to select which country we are going to study that month. This month was Poland.
Button was super excited once it arrived and so we pencilled it in for a snack for after our nature walk. Mummy amd Daddy were unsure of how good it would be but Button's buy in certainly gave this month's box some value. Button is an odd one. She will moan at mealtimes and say she does not like things, but is generally willing to try anything.
The box itself was good with snippets of information on each snack and a a table to fill in favourites and most unusual. We took it a step further and set up a table in Button's food observation book. Each of us scored each snack out of ten, said whether it was sweet or savoury and whether or not it tasted how we expected. Button loved 2 or 3 of the snacks and disliked one. All three of us had different opinions which was nice. Overall this activity was fun and made us laugh; it challenged us and gave us an opportunity to try new things; it gave us a small insight into a different country and culture. It was educational but mainly fun. It is overpriced in terms of what you get for the money (cheese amd onion crisps are cheese and onion crisps whatever country you are in) as I think $14 is a lot for a bag of crisp, bag of peanuts, a box of pretzels, one small chocolate bar and then just 5 sweets(3 varieties). However, it is presented well and the additional information is great.
Polish folk art.
You will need:
Black and white card,
We started by looking at examples of Polish art work on the internet. We noticed how a lot of them were symmetrical and colourful. I explained symmetry very briefly, like when we do our butterfly
paintings and paint one side then fold the paper over, to make sure both sides are the same. I showed Button my hands and asked if they were exactly the same, she said no so i explained they were not
symmetrical but if i place one up up against a mirror they would be exactly the same now and it's also called a mirror image.
Button then picked a picture she wanted to try and do and we went for a turkey. I ended up doing all the cutting as she picked a very detailed picture to try and copy but she told me which colours were going where to get the right sizes and she glued them all into place.
So we folded the black card and cut our main picture on the fold so it opened up to give us a symmetrical picture, we glued this to the white card.
With the coloured paper we added, I explained that I would still fold the card to get the same shape for each side but wouldnt cut on the fold, giving me two separate pieces of paper to stick to each side.
Button was so careful when trying to get her sides to match. For her age I would have picked an easier picture so she could have done some cutting skills as well. However, I wanted her input and ideas when it came to the design and she really liked the bird art more than the patterns.
Overall, we got to learn a little about symmetry as well as what art is like in Poland and she enjoyed it.
When Googling about Poland and what they eat, these came up a lot. They are like cheese and potato parcels that you boil then brown off. I was very worried I would be going to a lot of
effort and no one would like them but actually we all loved them and Button wants to make them again.
I got the recipe online and if you look on Pinterest you will find loads of delicious recipes. Even dessert versions. Button enjoyed making the pastry and trying to fill them. We had them before our dinner but you can have them as part of a meal.
They really were yummy and a great way to learn about Polish culture and foods.