International Night

Friday was International Night with our homeschool group. It is a lot of fun and an easy way to get the kids to learn about other countries. Here is a quick run-down of how it works, in case you may want to start something similar in your homeschooling community:

*Families choose a country to study and create a display of their country on a tri-fold display board.

*The children need to create three questions they would like for people to answer after "visiting" their country. The organizer compiles all the questions prior to the event and puts them into a "passport" book for children to use on International Night.

*The night of the event, everyone brings: a) their project (duh); b)a dish from their country to share potluck style-- with a label so everyone knows what they are eating and what country it represents; and c) some sort of stickers or stamps to keep at their display, so the children can "stamp" their passport after visiting that country.

*After everyone shares in a potluck meal, the children are free to go pick up their passport and begin learning about all the other countries represented. They write the answers to the questions in their passport on that country's page, stamp their passport, and move on to the next country!

It is nearly impossible to visit all the countries, but we sure have fun trying!!

I bet you'll NEVER guess which country Team Dragovich studied and displayed-- ha!! I am SOOOOO proud of my boys for all the work THEY did on their own-- finding and printing pictures from the net, printing MULTIPLE maps, until we got just the right ones, doing ALL the writing (if you knew how much my oldest hates to write, you would be falling out of your seat right now), cutting, pasting, painting and arranging on the display board and coloring Africa-- okay, they got worn out by then, and after coloring in 9 countries, they turned it over to Dad. All I did was guide the organization of the facts, paste the two middle maps and do some minor labeling of pictures once glued onto the board. And all on a week that we took off of school since it was Daddy's last week home with us.

AND, of course, to make it even cooler... we borrowed the GREATEST stuff from our friends the Coen's who have already been to Ethiopia and graciously trusted us with their sweet treasures. It all just made this whole adoption process more real to us. Which I don't know if that is good, because now my heart is aching a little more that it was before :).

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Team Dragovich's country-- are you surprised? If you look closely, you will see some flap books see my post on Live & Learn

The boys with some of our props-- Don't ask me why Wyatt has that bag on like he does-- it is a cloth bag you carry stuff in. Isaac is holding an eastern orthodox cross, and Sam is wrapped in a shawl made by the women who carry wood on their backs for a living.

Look at all the neat things the Coens loaned us! The boys' favorites were the toys for Silas, a book and his Ethiopian outfit... wow!

Isaac in Columbia-- this one is for our dear friends whose daddy is Columbian!!

He looks pretty natural in that Russian soldier hat, doesn't he :)?