The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying the Dominican Republic

At the beginning of the summer, my two youngest kids (ages 10 and 12) picked a few countries to spend a week learning about! We've been doing this for years, and I can't tell you how many times my kids answer a tricky trivia question or wow their friends with an obscure fact that they learned "from doing countries." It's also very cool to have them exposed to more than what they see in our neighborhood and at school.

This week my 10-year-old picked the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is half of an island called Hispaniola; the other half is Haiti. They're pretty different even though they're right together, but I guess that's another story for another week.

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Monday

We started like always, finding the Dominican Republic on our wall map and drawing the country's flag.

The flag was adopted in 1844. The red and blue are from Haiti, which once occupied it. The white cross is the symbol of peace, and the Bible on the crest is open to the verse "and truth shall make you free."

In previous years the kids would have also filled out a page of their passports, but I guess mine are too old and cool to do that anymore. Here are free printable ones if yours are not.

This dramatic video introduced the kids to the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic and life there:

 

The country is not without its problems, though. There's a lot of poverty. And tropical storms and hurricanes also plague DR, not just by causing damage and injury, but by washing tons of garbage onto the beaches. (Here's a really short clip of the garbage on Montesinos Beach after Tropical Storm Beryl in 2018.)

Another thing that the Dominican Republic is known for? Baseball. Ten percent of the players in the MLB are from the DR, which is pretty wild if you think about it. We read in a library book called Home Run Kings about one of the most famous, Sammy Sosa, whose name even I know (even though I can't usually remember which sport is the Superbowl and which one is the World Series.)

One of the most popular pastimes in the Dominican Republic is dominoes. We have a double-12 set that we play often, but I think the version we always play is called Mexican Train. We learned how to play by Dominican rules, pared down our dominoes set, and played a few rounds.

The kids thought it was okay but they missed the rules we usually play by. They're creatures of habit.

To end the day, I gave them a few books by Julia Alvarez that had to do with the Dominican Republic:

• How Tia Lola Came to Stay (fiction, ages 8-12)
• Before We were Free (YA novel for grades 7+)

Tuesday 

This 3-minute introduction to the history of the Dominican Republic was just right for the attention spans of my 10- and 12-year-old.

The Dominican Republic was originally populated by the Taíno people, who left behind rock paintings you can see today in numerous tourist sites, like those in Cueva de las Maravillas. We looked up information about the rock paintings (careful, there are probably some you want to skip discussing with your kids.)

After Christopher Columbus discovered the island and named it Hispaniola ("little Spain") in 1942, the natives were taken advantage of and kind of wiped out. Most people who live in DR today are descended from Spanish colonizers or the African slaves who they brought there.

The Dominican Republic gained independence in 1844, but remnants of Spanish colonization remain. In fact, the disputed grave of Christopher Columbus is on the island. We watched this video tour of Faro a Colón ("Columbus Lighthouse") and talked about where each of us thought his bones really ended up, in Spain or in the Dominican Republic:

Then we learned about Fortaleza Ozama, a Spanish fortress from 1505 with 6-foot thick walls. We checked out this post with pictures, and then the kids designed an ultimate protection fortress of their own creation.

I'm not totally convinced that my 12-year-old knows who M.C. Hammer is, but he named this hammer-shaped fortress after him so I guess that's something:

Guarded by robotic soldiers and something called a "black hole launcher." Sounds terrifying.

My 10-year-old wasn't to be outdone, though, and built a tower connected to the moon that was protected by lightning rods, pressure-activated missile launchers, and a pool of lava that could also blast off into space and then self-destruct in case someone managed to infiltrate it.

I hope neither of these kids work in defense when they grow up. They're both insane.

Wednesday

Did you know that a lot of Spanish words come from Arawak, the language of the Taíno people (for example, iguana comes from an Arawak word meaning "big lizard.")

We listened to this song from Calico Spanish about farm animals and their noises (I think it would have been fun to sing and dance to it as suggested, but those days are gone for my big kids) and then they filled out this AI-generated worksheet:

We also wanted to explore the music of the Dominican Republic. We learned how to dance merengue, and for days afterward my kids were laughing and saying "Speed that thang up" in a robot voice like in this video:

We read picture book called Angélica and la Güira, and then we decided to make one ourselves. (I'd always heard it called a güiro, so I looked it up: a güira is made of metal and a güiro is made of wood. So there you go.) 

I'm not a crafty person, but this tutorial was absolutely my kind of craft. You literally take a tin can or a plastic water bottle with ridges, and run a pencil across it to make a percussion sound. We played them to a merengue video. 

Bachata is another musical style also from the Dominican Republic. We listened to this playlist to hear the sound of it, but if your kids are actually Spanish-speaking you should probably pick another playlist with more appropriate lyrics.

Thursday

Every February, the Dominican Republic celebrates Canival with parades and costumed characters. It's a total party. Here are some of the standard characters you might see in a Carnival parade.

I started out the week with grand plans to make papier mache masks with the kids, but it's a little too complicated so it didn't happen... but it could for you!

Instead, we bought green plantains at the store and my husband followed this recipe to make a DR comfort food called mangu. It was pretty good! Especially since I didn't have to make it.

Friday

The Dominican Republic has some really fun animals. The solenodon (which looks like a shrew) is a venemous mammal only found on the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba. We watched this video to learn more about solendons.

The jaragua lizard, also found in DR, is the world's smallest lizard. It can fit on a dime. 

Also, humpback whales have chosen the waters around the Dominican Republic as a great place to get together during the winter breeding season, which makes it the best place in the world to go whale watching. 

I hope the videographers for this documentary on humpback whales got some kind of award for their work, because it was amazing. 

 

Afterward, I had the boys go outside and compare the lengths of each of those animals, from the 50-foot humpback whale to the 16mm jaragua lizard, in the driveway with a length of yarn. It kept them busy for a while, and tricked them into playing outside afterward when they ordinarily would've been inside reading or begging for video games.

Saturday

One more thing DR is known for is Dominican amber. It's fossilized tree resin from an extinct tree, and it's generally accepted as the most clear and beautiful kind of amber. Sometimes there are even fossilized insects or flowers inside.

I bought a bar of glycerin soap at the grocery store, and using this process from a library book called Dominican Republic by Mary Engler, the kids made "Dominican amber."

They melted down half of the glycerin soap bar in small containers, and inserted an artifact of their choice from the yard as it started to cool and harden.

The 10-year-old chose a leaf from a holly bush:

And the 12-year-old used an acorn from the yard:

It was a fun little craft, and a fun end to the week studying the Dominican Republic.

Remember how I said random knowledge from our weeks studying countries always pops up? Just after we'd finished our week in the Dominican Republic, I passed a semi on the freeway with a picture of the Dominican flag on the back. A week ago I would've wondered what country it was and had to Google it. You just never know when the things we learn are going to come in handy.

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