7 Quick Takes about Games from the 90s, Making Waves on Facebook, and Entertainment in Quarantine

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! The last 7 days told in 7 quick takes.

—1—

Did you play M.A.S.H. when you were younger? If you did, you were probably a kid/teen in the 90s.

I don't remember all the details of how to play, but I do know that you could end up living in a shack married to Jared Leto (or insert similar 1990s heartthrob) and that was OK with me! Do kids still play this?

Another thing we did:

1. Name your favorite animal. Describe it with 3 adjectives.
2. Name your favorite color. Describe it with 3 adjectives.
3. The adjectives you used to describe your favorite animal are really words that describe you. The way you describe your favorite color is how you'd like to be.

Just the other day I tried to explain this to Phillip but I mangled my explanation. He paused, then said, "Got it. So you take your favorite animal, divide it by your age, multiply by your favorite color, and that's how long you're going to live."

Close enough.

—2—

Three cheers for Unremarkable Files breaking 1,000 likes on Facebook!

Okay, so I can't take credit because I didn't personally do anything. But thanks to all you readers who did.

I'm absolutely loving reading all your hilarious and thoughtful comments over there. Keep up the great work, guys!

—3—

I'm all for giving kids choices, but sometimes discussing the day's plans with a 3-year-old isn't terribly helpful.

3-year-old: Can we go on a hike?
Phillip: Maybe. Where should we go? What do you want to see?
3-year-old: Animals.
Phillip: What kind?
3-year-old: Elephants and chickens and... zombies. Wait! Zombies are scary! I don't wanna see zombies!

—4—

Right now there's a very strange dynamic in the Evans household: our oldest two left to visit their grandparents in Minnesota and have been gone all week. 

Totally bored at the airport.

"It's going to be so weird when you're gone!" I told my 11-year-old a few days before she left.

"Yeah," she answered, "but probably not as weird as when I'm here."

Did I mention how much I miss those guys??

—5—

While the older ones were gone we had all sorts of plans with the younger three, but we had to cancel most of them because the kids got sick, one by one.

We had fevers, we had throwing up and exhaustion... the kids were in rough shape. I may or may not have found one of them in the bathroom, sleeping face-down and pantsless on the rug in front of the toilet.

It's sort of like living in a frat house, but without the Greek.

—6—

Since we had two healthy kids and a sick one for most of the week, it presented quite a logistical issue: how to entertain in such a scenario?

We couldn't really go anywhere without giving the plague to everyone, but the healthy ones were bored and stir-crazy. So we had to get a little creative.

One day we decided to do ice racers, by freezing action figures in Tupperware containers and sliding them down a piece of plywood.

I was expecting it to kill more time than it did. In reality, it was over in a half hour and this is how it shook out:

At least it was free and it didn't make a mess.

—7—

Currently my knee is killing me, I think I slept on it wrong. 

Half the time I'm not sure exactly how old I am, but apparently I've reached the age where you get hurt doing nothing. Good times.



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17 Thoughts Parents Have at the Beach

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is take the kids to the beach.

I'm not sure why, because we have to pack a metric ton of stuff, the inside of the van ends up looking like a sandbar, it takes an hour to bathe everyone once we get home, and I still find sand in crevices I didn't even know the baby had at diaper changes! But we still go, often.

Here are some of the things that go through my mind when we spend a day at the beach... how about you?

1. Awww, the baby's so cute playing in the water — no, he's not playing, he's DRINKING it! Stop! Stop!
2. If they let that pool noodle float away again, I am definitely not buying them another one. No way.
3. Is this even real life? I asked ten times before we left the house if anyone had to go to the bathroom. 
4. Look at that other mom's beach bag. *Drool.* It's huge. Would it be weird to ask where she got it? And she has a rolling cart! I want that. I need that. Wait, am I listening to myself? I am so uncool! What happened to me?
5. Oops, guess I should have put the sunscreen on the kids before they all jumped in the water.
6. Hmmm... does that other family look upset that my son is playing with all their sand toys and staked out a spot under their umbrella? No? Well then, I see no problems here.
7. Who got sand in the water bottle?!
8. Are they screaming because they're having fun, or...? Nope, that is definitely unhappy screaming.
9. We have one rule: only splash people who want to be splashed. Was I not clear enough on that when I repeated it seven times on the way here, put it to music and a choreographed dance, and had the kids chant it in unison after me?
10. I really don't want to get in that frigid water, but she's asked me three times now... good thing I brought distractions. I mean, snacks. I brought snacks.
11. I thought I told you not to put your towel in the water. No, you cannot have mine.
12. I'm about five minutes from done with adjusting goggles, finding sunken goggles, and detangling goggles from hair for today.
    
13. What are these crab- and starfish-shaped pieces of plastic, anyway? What child in the history of children has ever played with these things? And why do I keep bringing them here?
14. Please do not announce that you are peeing in the water, please do not announce that you are peeing in the water, please do not announce — crap.
15. Oh yeah, like your kid never pees in the water, lady. Enough with the stink-eye already.
16. I don't like the way those seagulls are eyeing our bag of Goldfish. I'm not afraid of birds but... I'm sort of afraid of them now.
17. We probably should've labeled our toys before coming here. It's time to go and I have no idea how to tell our crap from everybody else's crap.

P.S. If you're at the beach and a small child approaches you saying they have to go to the bathroom, always seek confirmation on whether it's #1 or #2 before whispering, "Just go over there and quietly do it in the water." Don't ask how I know.

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Maybe Church Isn't For You

"I just feel free now."

"How's that?" My husband asked. He was visiting a casual acquaintance we'll call Brian. Brian used to go to our church, but we hadn't seen him there for a long time.

"Let me tell you a story," Brian said, leaning forward in his seat. "You know where I was last Sunday? I was out canoeing on the lake with my girlfriend. The sun was sparkling off the water and then this big heron just flew right over us. I've never felt so peaceful and happy in my life. Church isn't for me."

He's not alone.

More than a third of Americans describe themselves as spiritual, but not religious. Their churches aren't brick-and-mortar structures, but the world God created.

They worship on the hiking trail and on the golf course, in the yoga studio and volunteering at the soup kitchen. They believe in fostering a personal relationship with God, and don't see how stepping inside a church would help them do that.

I respect that way of thinking, except... maybe belonging to a church is about more than just what you get out of it.

A long time ago, Moses and the Israelites were attacked while wandering around in the wilderness outside the Promised Land. Moses chose some men to defend them, and said he'd stand at the top of the hill holding up his arms during the battle.

As long as he held his hands up, the Israelites prevailed.

But when he put them down, they started to lose.

So Moses held his arms up for as long as he could, but after a while the inevitable happened: it was a long day, and they grew too heavy. That's when two other men who were there with him stepped in.

...they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. (Exodus 17: 12)

Luckily for Moses and the Israelites, churches are communities of people. They're more than buildings, they're networks for giving help and receiving it. 

Sometimes you'll be Moses, overwhelmed and shaking as you try to hold up a burden that's too heavy. Sometimes you'll be the able-bodied friends at his side. Whoever you are at any given moment, you're always needed.

Can you worship God out on the lake as well as you can in a pew at church? Can you still feel His presence in the waves and the wind if you're not in a Sunday service? Absolutely. But it's also missing a big part of what it means to be a believer.

There are people in your religious community right now struggling with illness, exhaustion, depression, or crises of faith who need you. And even if you don't know it, you probably need them, too.

So is church for you? Well, it is, and it isn't.

Church is a place you can go to get strength, but it's also a place to give it. Moses was part of a community of believers who (literally) supported him when things got too hard, and that's not so different from the way things are — or at least the way things should be — in our churches today.

Whether you're more like Moses or more like his friends, one thing is clear: if you're not there, it's everyone's loss.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Canada

Every summer vacation, I pretend to take a trip around the world with my kids. Why? Because I'm crazy and like to create work for myself? Maybe. But also because it's educational and gives us something to do in the afternoons. Click here if you want to know more about how it all started.

This week, we learned all about Canada! I'll include links and printables for those of you who want to recreate this whole crazy trip-around-the-world experiment with your own kids (this post includes my affiliate link, meaning that a percentage of your purchase goes to me if you buy through a link on this site.)

Monday

The kids found Canada on our big wall map and filled out a page of their passports. Area-wise, it's the 2nd biggest country in the world.

If you want to download the passport pages, click here.

They already knew what the Canadian flag looked like, but we pulled one up on Google anyway just to make sure they got the right number of points on the maple leaf.

While they were coloring it, I read to them from Our Flag: The Story of Canada's Maple Leaf by Ann-Maureen Owens and Jane Yealland. Then we listened to Canada's national anthem, mostly because we used to put one of my kid's names to that tune when she was a baby and we wanted her to hear it.

We read M Is For Maple by Mike Ulmer (but honestly, I was a little disappointed in this book) and watched Countries Around the World: Canada from Schlessinger Media. I love this video series because their short length and made-for-the-classroom POV is perfect for our purposes.

(We've gotten many videos from the library that looked great but turned out to be ultra-boring travel videos all about hotels and train fares, but have never gone wrong with these videos from Schlessinger Media.)

I had the brilliant idea to have the kids assemble puzzles of the provinces and territories of Canada, and I was going to make them myself.

Obviously I'd never looked closely at a map before deciding to copy it out 4 times and attempted to cut out all the little weird-shaped islands...

This is what a glutton for punishment looks like.

I left the 3-year-old's map intact and she just colored it.

So festive!

I gave the older 3 their pieces in a Ziploc bag and they started laying them out on pieces of construction paper.

It would be an understatement to say my 9-year-old freaked out when the window A/C unit started furiously blowing away all of her carefully-placed pieces!

Ta-da! Finished.

The kids got extra iPad/computer time to either play Tap Quiz Maps (a free geography app on the iPad that I love) or these free online Canada map puzzles. They're so hard-up for screen time they'll even play educational stuff!

I also left out a copy of Only in Canada! by Vivien Bowers. My older kids like those books with 1,001 facts, but I can't stand to read to them because they're just SO LONG and there's no story at all.

For dinner we grilled burgers (and found that wasps had built a nest in our grill AGAIN) and made poutine, a French Canadian side of fries, cheese curds, and beef gravy. Phillip was literally too shocked to speak when I told him I'd never tried a cheese curd before, even though I grew up in Minnesota.

Called 3 grocery stores and 2 farms stands before I found someone who carried cheese curds in New England. I'm insane.

Tuesday

The baby screamed through this 9-minute history of Canada so I wasn't in the room much, but I'm told it was very educational.

We talked a little about the French influence in Canada, particularly Quebec, and then I put on Brainy Baby: French. Okay, so technically it's for babies and toddlers, but do you know what? I'm not ashamed to say that I learned plenty of basic French words from it!

(I will warn you however, that the word for 'doll' is 'poupée,' and if you're watching with anyone over the age of 6 the similarity with the English word "poopy" will not be lost on them. It'll be really hard to reel them back in after that, and you might just give up. You've been warned.)

Going along with Canadian history, I also gave the older two a copy of The Last Safe House by Barbara Greenwood to read about the slaves who escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad.

For dinner, we tried a meat pie called tourtière. Phillip was gracious enough to make the pie crusts for me ahead of time. 

I was so tired I didn't even notice I'd grabbed cake pans instead of pie pans until he pointed it out. Oops.  

It's cake — I mean, pie!

The recipe we tried is here, but I'd Google another one if I were you. It was so salty and greasy that it made my son (who ate the most of it) feel queasy that night. That can't be right.

This was just the appetizer for the antacids we all needed to take after dinner.

Since tourtière is traditionally eaten in French Canada on Christmas Eve, I also let the kids watch this silly YouTube over dinner:

Wednesday

Today we read The Sugaring Off Party by Jonathan London and learned how to make maple syrup in pictures here.

We took a walk and collected maple leaves of all different sizes. When we got home, I showed the kids how to do leaf rubbings. I was shocked that none of them had ever done a leaf rubbing. That's pretty much all I ever did in kindergarten! Public education these days is apparently not what it used to be.

It's easy: just peel the wrapper off a crayon, place a leaf underneath the paper, and rub the sideways crayon hard over the surface.

As you can see, they went a little nuts once they got the hang of it.

This was probably my favorite day, partially because all the maple leaf talk was the perfect excuse to have pancakes with maple syrup for dinner. It's not a cop-out, it's part of a theme, people.

Thursday

We introduced some of Canada's animals with Wildlife of Canada by Lynn Stone. I gave the kids the book Adventures of Riley: Polar Bear Puzzle by Amanda Lumry and Laura Hurwitz to read on their own time.

Together we watched a video about moose and this 2-minute YouTube video on how beavers make dams:

The kids got really excited about our activity, which was making a "MISSING" poster for one of Canada's animals as if it was your pet. We included a picture and a description of the animal, plus a reward.

My 11-year-old had lost her pet whooping crane, noting that she mysteriously loses it at that time every year. Possibly it might be flying south for the winter.

Only an Evans would name her whooping crane "Whoopie Pie."

My 9-year-old was missing her pet Beaver, Evie. When we whistled over the $700.99 reward, she just said, "So? I really want my beaver back!"

For features that might help people find Evie, my daughter wrote "brown, black tail, buck teeth, probably gnawing down this very pole." You know, because missing posters go on telephone poles.

Even the 3-year-old wanted to get in on the action and drew a beaver, too.

Don't feel bad, little one. My drawings usually need arrows telling people what they're looking at, too.

Friday

We watched another library video called Culture of Canada for Children by Schlessinger Media, which I really loved. (They also had History of Canada and Geography of Canada , which I would definitely get if I were to do this over again.) The acting was awfully Saved By the Bell-esque, but not the worst I've seen on a kid's show. Regardless, my kids learned a lot about Canada in 23 minutes.

Today we focused on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP or Mounties for short. I found a fun YouTube video of an American journalist who was allowed to join in RCMP training in Saskatchewan for a day, and the day wouldn't have felt complete if I didn't introduce my kids to Dudley Do-Right from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show:

As an activity we made "help wanted" posters for new RCMP recruits!
One of our posters listed desirable qualities in a recruit such as "bravery" and "not minding having hat straps on your chin." Both true, I suppose.

That night we had split-pea soup, which I'd been assured was a popular dish in Canada. I'd never made it before and almost everyone liked it. So, success!

Saturday

Like I said, sometimes the videos we find at the library are hit-and-miss, and tonight we watched a video about National Parks in the Canadian Rockies that bored my son almost to tears. The only thing that convinced him to make it even halfway through the movie was the promise of cake.

So cake we had.

We used this idea from DLTK's Crafts for Kids and decorated a 9x13" cake with white frosting cut-up strawberries to look like the Canadian flag.

Unfortunately I didn't cut the strawberries up small enough and our cake ended up looking like a nondescript red blob with red strips on the sides. But it still tasted good.

If you do it, cut the strawberries smaller than you think you'll need to.

Is it still a Pinterest fail if you didn't find the idea on Pinterest?

As a bedtime story, we read Dreamstones by Maxine Trottier and said goodbye to Canada. Since we live in New England, we're definitely planning a trip to Niagara Falls on the Canadian side in the next 5 years.

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7 Quick Takes about Looking Awesome, Highbrow Entertainment, and a New Addition to the Family

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! Summing up the last 7 days in 7 quick takes. How was your week?

—1—

Before the heat wave hit, we went to visit a nearby botanical garden. And by "we went to visit," I mean that our family of 7 walked in like a boss and owned the place.

Dominating like the Flying Angels in a V formation.

In my mind, we looked sort of like this:

photo courtesy of Alan Wilson

Or this:



Other than parting crowds as we walked by, we loved the place and stayed all day. It was beautiful!

—2—

If you're looking for a good date night movie, I'd recommend Interstellar. We just rented it on Redbox. It's a little intense, but in a good way.


I like those deeply symbolic movies where things aren't really supposed to be understood all the way.

Probably because it allows me to feel very smart indeed when someone complains, "I didn't get that movie!" and I can just polish my monocle and sniff, "Oh, really? I rather enjoyed it."

—3—

Phillip, who's been on a smoothie kick lately, whipped up something inventive for our movie night.

Happy not to have to share with short people who backwash.

Strawberry, sugar, almonds, and coconut. Mmmmmm.

—4—

The following is a real conversation overheard between my kids at the store:

7-year-old: [looking at the checkout aisle candy] We should get some of this!

9-year-old: Since when do we ever get candy when we go to the store? Unless we're lucky and we go with Dad.

11-year-old: But he only buys it for us because he wants some himself.


I didn't realize that my children were so aware of the way things work in our house!

—5—

We're having our annual Great Camera Debate. We get a new digital camera just about every year, usually because it's been thrown, poked, played with, or dropped in the toilet one too many times by the kids.

I always say we should just get a cheap one because then when the kids inevitably break it, it's not the end of the world to replace. But then the picture quality isn't that great. Phillip says he's tired of cheap, crappy cameras and that we should get a nice(r) one. I usually restate my argument and we end up with another inexpensive and mediocre camera.

By the way, here are the reasons we need a new camera:

1. Baby jammed the lens cover halfway open, now the lens has a permanent scratch
2. Plastic rings around the zoomy thing have all started to fall off for some reason
3. Cover over the battery and memory card pops open whenever it feels like it
4. Half the time, pictures look like this one:

This was a really bad sandwich that I burnt in the broiler, so the out-of-focus actually improves its appearance.

So what do you think? Does it make sense to spend some real money on a camera this time around? 

—6—

A momentous day for Phillip also came when this arrived in the mail:

He's been longing for a new mountain bike for a long time, but with our "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" philosophy we couldn't (or at least, I couldn't) justify buying a new one until the old one was broken.

Well, he broke it, and a new one was ordered the next day.

He was so anxious for the bike to arrive, he's spent the last 5-7 business days at his computer looking up the tracking number and stalking the UPS guy.

"I don't think you understand how excited I am," he tried to explain to me when I sort of laughed at this behavior. "Aside from the day we got married—"

I raised an eyebrow.

"—and the day the kids were born—"

I could see him trying to read in my eyes if there were some other really significant dates he should be including in his disclaimer.

"—this will be, like, the best day of my life."

So after all that waiting, here she is.

Arrived on Tuesday at 10:07 AM, weighing 29 lbs 10 oz. Both dad and bike are doing fine. We can't say enough good things about the UPS guy who delivered her.

—7—

I was just minding my own business, wasting time on YouTube the other night, when confronted with this ad.


What.

Dancing at the party with the pee sample cups (1:26)?? As someone who's peed in a cup probably close to a hundred times at her OBs office for the better part of 10 years, I can assure you that it's nowhere near as fun as that video makes it look.

But go and get your kidneys checked, I guess.


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9 Board Games about Parenting That Should Totally Exist

We play a lot of board games in our family. In fact, there's a 6-foot tall cabinet in the living room dedicated to housing our massive collection of puzzles, cards, and games.

The baby loves to reorganize this for us when we're not looking.

But as I was playing Disney Frozen Surprise Slides (like Candyland but worse) with my daughter, I realized that I don't really like all of them. 

If I could stock our game cupboard with games parents actually like to play, you might find some of these old favorites on the shelves, instead.

Pass the Poop™ 

How good is your poker face? Can you pretend you don't know the baby's Pampers are totally loaded and successfully hand him off to your spouse? Just be careful — you never know who else is playing this wickedly deceptive game of double-crossing!

Minute to Win It: The Intimacy Edition

Grab your romantic partner and get ready! Work as a team in this fast-paced game of wits as you race against the clock to set the mood and do the deed before the buzzer starts calling "Mooooommmmmyyyy..."

Hungry Hungry Hellions™

Uh oh! Somebody's starving in your cart in the middle of Target! Can you stave off a temper tantrum with the half-empty bag of Goldfish in your purse? Or will you have to abandon ship and start over? Only the resourceful can survive this slapdash game of speed shopping where every minute counts.

Guess What?

You've played Guess Who, now it's time to try Guess What? Put your stamina to the test as you listen to your preschooler ask "Guess what?" 500 times in a row. Earn points for not glazing over and responding "uh huh" on autopilot. Last one standing wins!

Hollow Threat Bingo™

What will your kids do when you say "If you don't clean up your room, we're not going to the park with Emily?" Are you prepared to sacrifice your only adult interaction of the day talking to Emily's mom? Of course not! You're already a natural at Hollow Threat Bingo™. Score 5 hollow threats in a row, and your kids won't believe you ever again!

Name that Rash

On your mark, get set, go! It's time to see how fast can you identify that childhood rash. Can you stomach the pictures on Google? Will it be viral or bacterial? Wait to call the pediatrician if you dare, but watch out! You might have to make an extremely inconvenient visit to urgent care when it gets worse over the weekend.

Toss the Moldy Tupperware™

Do you have the guts to open that Tupperware shoved in the very back of your refrigerator to see what could possibly be inside? Play this thrilling game of what-ifs, risks, and courage. Will the whole container go straight into the trash, or are you brave enough to peek inside?

Super Sock Match

From the folks that brought you Laundry: The Neverending Story comes the world's most frustrating matching game where you can never, ever win! Single socks multiply in the dryer and it's up to you to sort them all. Do you have what it takes? (Player's note: Matches only appear once you've given up and thrown away the mate.)

Narcolepsy: The Game™

It's the classic head-throbbing, soul-crushing game of exhaustion that generations of parents just can't stop playing. Up all night? No problem! The more tired you feel, the easier it is to rack up Narcolepsy points by falling asleep anytime, anywhere. But in this game of skill you'll also need a twist of luck: avoid the Insomnia card or you'll lose them all. Draw the Crying Baby card, and you're out of the game.


What's your favorite parenthood game to play? (I know a patent lawyer. I can hook you up.)

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying the United Kingdom

This week of our pretend travels around the world started with a pretty existential question: what is a country? This week, the kids had chosen the United Kingdom from our world map. 

According to the Internet, the United Kingdom is made up England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland... wait a minute. Those are each countries, aren't they? How can a country be part of another country??

So what's a country? I thought briefly that each of those places should have a week all to themselves because they each have their own flag... but then again, U.S. states have their own flags, too. I started asking for second opinions. Phillip started talking about the Prime Minister but that just confused me more. Even my trusted adviser Google was absolutely no help.

In the end, I reasoned that since the United Kingdom is represented in the Olympics as a country, I went with that. If you're from England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland and disagree with my decision, I blame the Olympics. (If it'll make you feel better, it's perfectly okay to tell me I'm an idiot in the comments.)

Disclaimer: This post contains my affiliate links, which means that if you use them to make a purchase I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you.


Monday

The kids found the UK on our map and filled out a page of their passports with information about the United Kingdom. My son was annoyed at all the bordering seas and bodies of water he had to write in. Sorry, bud. They're islands.

I have no idea what that random hand is doing or which child's it is.

If you want to download the passport pages, click here.

Then we drew the UK flag, the Union Jack. It doesn't look that complicated (it's just a bunch of straight lines, after all) but getting the proportions and the angles to come out right was really hard for my kids to figure out!

Union Jack: Looks deceptively straightforward.

They weren't completely happy with the finished product, but I told them that "better is the enemy of good enough," something Phillip is constantly saying just to bug me. (Since I'm a perfectionist, I usually pretend I didn't hear him.)

We read A Visit to the United Kingdom by Rachael Bell and watched a short 13-minute video by Shlessinger Media called Countries Around the World: United Kingdom. I really like that video series because they're short, intended for kids' classroom use, and we can get them at my local library.

I looked around for general UK-themed activities that other people have already made but I couldn't find any I really liked, so I made up a worksheet that would help the kids recognize and identify the 4 countries that made up the United Kingdom and their flags.

The blank UK map is courtesy of Printable Maps, and the flags are from Printable Colouring Pages. You can download the PDF below:


Download the PDF

In this activity, the kids had to find which flags belonged to which countries, color them the right colors, then label their maps and put the flags in the right places.

I didn't anticipate my 3-year-old to want to be involved in this, but she begged for a worksheet, too. Here is her finished work:

A preschooler's creative rendition of the flags of the United Kingdom. Very colorful.

This was how the older kids' turned out:

Meanwhile, the baby was on the floor hard at work, too.

For dinner we had bangers and mash, an English dish with a much cooler name than "sausage and mashed potatoes." They're apparently called "bangers" because they sort of burst out of their casings, but when I asked my kids why they thought so, my daughter guessed "Because they bang the pigs on the head before turning them into sausages?"

We planned to spend one day on each of the 4 areas of the United Kingdom for the rest of the week.


Tuesday

Today was Northern Ireland, but we went to a big awards dinner for Phillip's work so Northern Ireland sort of got the shaft.

Sorry, Northern Ireland. We'll talk about you more when we visit the Republic of Ireland for a whole week next year.

We didn't have time to cover much, but we did talk about why Northern Ireland is part of the UK and the rest of Ireland isn't. Of course I didn't really know so I read a little about it from these smart people over at Quora. Then I acted like a genius who's just always known this stuff when I repeated it to the kids later that day.


Wednesday

Up for today: England! Which makes me a little nervous, because I have many blogging friends who live in England. (Citizens of England, please see the above statement about calling me an idiot in the comments.)

We familiarized ourselves with some of the landmarks and attractions in England by reading Katie in London by James Mayhew.

We attempted to watch a video from our library called Visions of England, which I do NOT recommend for children, any adult with narcolepsy, or adults without narcolepsy. It combined an extremely soft-spoken narrator with sort of a comatose voice and a hard-to-understand accent with an hour of sleepy arial footage of England's landmarks put to music you'd hear at a day spa. It was like one of those YouTube videos called "WATCH THIS IT WILL PUT YOU TO SLEEP!"

Seriously, my kids have a long attention span. We don't have a TV at home, so they will watch the most boring, longest thing on a screen just because it's on a screen — and even we couldn't finish this video.

(At one point my 9-year-old said, "I think for this video they should've picked someone who was a little more excited about England...")

However, we watched it long enough for them to at least get a feel for some of the landmarks and moved on to our activity: making a travel brochure for somewhere in England.

I showed them a few real travel brochures and we talked about the features of each: colorful pictures, an explanation of what and where it is, something about its history, and why you should visit there.

My kids chose Tower Bridge:

Fountains Abbey:

and Hadrian's Wall:

For dinner I threw a roast in the crockpot with carrots and potatoes, and we had Yorkshire pudding. The kids were a little confused at what this bread product had to do with pudding, but they liked it, anyway.


Thursday

We started the day by reading Cultural Traditions in the United Kingdom by Lynn Peppas.

Continuing to talk about England, we talked about similarities between their culture and ours. One big difference is that we in the United States don't have royalty!

I'd checked out a book about Princess Diana, but it talked about all the affairs and wasn't appropriate for the ages of my kids. But we did read an awesome Rookie Biography called Elizabeth the First: Queen of England by Carol Greene.

After that I asked my two oldest to pretend they were newspaper journalists. They needed to create an article with a picture of her and at least three Q&A with Queen Elizabeth. They were hilariously creative.

My oldest wrote a newspaper called The Time Traveler's Gazette. The paper is published in the year 2115 and the reporter goes back in time to different periods to bring them exclusive interviews with historical figures.

As it happened, the kids left their articles outside and it poured rain that night. I learned the next morning that you can dry paper in the microwave. (Regular power for a minute and a half... who knew??)

For dinner we made bubble 'n squeak, which Allrecipes assured me was English. My kids liked the name.


Friday

We moved on to Wales today, and relied heavily on YouTube. This video of 10 facts about Wales was a decent intro.

We watched this animated short to show the kids what the Welsh language sounds like. I have no idea what it's about, but it's all I could find. Believe me, I searched YouTube for a while for something appropriate. Since only 562,000 people speak Welsh, I understand the slim pickings.

This YouTube video tells about Wales' patron saint. St. David's day is celebrated March 1st. My kids absolutely loved the cute 4-year-old narrator's accent.

Because we learned that sheep outnumber humans in Wales 3 to 1, we made the cute stand-up sheep craft from Red Ted Art.

Of course right afterwards we made Welsh cawl for dinner... using lamb. My 3-year-old was running around the table showing everyone her bowl going "There's a sheep in this! They killed it so I could eat it!" And at bedtime she asked me sweetly, "Mommy, sometimes can we have sheep for lunch?"

That hairy arm isn't mine, by the way. Phillip volunteered.

Saturday

Last day: Scotland! We read B is for Bagpipes by Eve Begley Kiehm

This was another YouTube-heavy day. What did people do before YouTube??

We mostly looked up interesting things from the book to see what they were like. We saw Scottish dancing here and here, someone playing the bagpipes, and what curling is. We also looked up a Highland Games sport called "toss the caber:"



Phillip's comment was, "I threw my back out just watching these guys."

We ended by having them write a story about the Loch Ness monster with the help of this printable from Activity Village.

At dinnertime we listened to Scottish folk music while eating Shepherd's Pie. My kids liked it, but let me know in no uncertain terms that it was NOT pie.

All in all, visiting the United Kingdom was fun, and as a bonus for me, I finally figured out the difference between Great Britain and the UK. The kids' main takeaway was that the food is the most interesting thing about the UK: Yorkshire pudding isn't pudding, Shepherd's Pie isn't pie, and how can you not love dishes named "bubble and squeak" or "bangers and mash?"

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