Russia.

So, we've traveled to Russia for the past two weeks.  Whenever I used to think of Russia, I thought of the bad Russian mob guys from movies.  Pretty dumb, right? 

We learned a lot of interesting things about Russia and read a lot of great little stories from the library.  It's amazing that after 15 years of schooling, I didn't even know some basic geography facts about Russia, like it's twice as big as the second biggest country in the world (Canada), and the west coast to the east coast of Russia covers eleven time zones.  Or even what permafrost is or what the difference between the USSR and Russia even was.

Or more likely, I did learn things like that but didn't care enough to remember?  Either way, I enjoyed learning lots of things about Russia over the past two weeks with Christopher. 

Some of the things we did:

Tried out some basic ballet moves...none of us were very good at it.

Colored Faberge egg coloring pages.

Listened to Tchaikovsky.

Calculated the amount of clams a walrus eats in one year...1,095,000 clams!

Made permafrost using jello, soil, and ice.

The jello is the layer of ground that stays frozen even in summer.  The soil is the unfrozen layer above the permafrost.  The ice is the snow that melts in the spring.

Below, the "snow" melted and the dirt is now mud above the frozen ground (jello) underneath.  In other words, Russia is muddy in the spring and summer where there is permafrost.

We also made a set of Matryoshka Dolls.  They are usually wooden dolls but we made ours out of cardstock.

The boys posing with their hand guys.

The boys really enjoyed reading about the animals that live in the arctic region of Russia.  Polar bears, seals, caribou, arctic foxes, lemmings, etc.  We read a Magic School Bus arctic book and that was their favorite of the many books we read. 

And finally, to celebrate the end of our Russian unit, we had a feast.  It was yummy.

We ate bierocks, babkas, smetana mushrooms and pirog.

Bierocks (Runzas aka Meat Pie)

Smetana Mushrooms

Babka (Russian style mashed potatoes)

Pirog (Russian apple pie)

Matthew is continuing to practice reading and other than that, he's basically done for the school year.  I'll be reviewing his addition and subtraction math facts with him over the summer as well.

Gabriel has asked me about a bajillion times to teach him how to read, so we are slowly working on that.  He's so funny in that he really emphasizes each sound way too much when he tries to put them together.  He is trying way too hard but I know he just wants to be able to read like his brothers.  When we go to the library, he refuses to get anything but the fiction chapter books or the non-fiction books like his brothers and then "reads" the books by pointing at each word and pretending to read.  Silly boy.

Next week in school, we will start our unit on Austrailia.  More school updates then, mate!