Here is Australia’s continent box. It has the same basic things as my other boxes. I’d like to add a boomerang, some vegemite and a Wiggles & Crocodile Dundee movie.

Top Left: Our landmarks flash cards came with two from Australia.

Bottom Right: Art Styles envelope. The art I chose to highlight are the xray style, petroglyphs, bark painting, rock art, body painting & dot art.

My mom collects postcards. The one pictured in the bottom right of the photo is one she received from somebody traveling to Australia.

Papers and activities printed from:
Education.com  •  Making Friends  •  Practical Pages  •  Paper Toys

Our Continent Boxes:
Africa
Antarctica
Asia
Australia
Europe
North America
South America

To learn more about our continent boxes click here.

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The next stop on our trip around the world was the Great Barrier Reef in Australia studying the coral reef biome. I especially loved this week because many years ago I used to scuba dive & this brought back many fun memories.

Google defines a coral reef as:

a ridge of rock in the sea formed by the growth and deposit of coral

School Room

Our coral reef display
There are a few books and Disney’s Finding Nemo DVD. I also added a couple personal treasures the hubby & I have collected on our tropical vacations.

Biome pocket chart with coral reef info

Left: The front of Farm Kid1’s postcard. I love that he drew a diver.

Right: Fish stamp Farm Kid1 drew for his postcard.

Farm Kid1 loves exploring our continent boxes. This is what Australia’s box looks like.

We have done a few silhouette projects. Farm Kid1 wanted to do another one for his coral reef craft.

Other

I love Wyland! He’s an amazing artist and a marine conservation activist. His paintings are Beautiful, with a capital B. His sculptures are fantastic. We went into his gallery once while in Waikiki. I couldn’t afford much in there, but I did buy his Artist of the Sea book.

A funny coincidence
I brought home a book from the library without really looking through it first. It had the word reef in it, so I checked it out. Farm Kid1 & I had just finished admiring Wyland’s book when I started reading Riddle of the Reef to him. And I’ll be danged, one of the characters in the book was Wyland himself. It was a fun coincidence.

Before we had kids, the hubby & I were fortunate enough to go on a few diving vacations. Farm Kid1 & I looked through 2 of my diving scrapbooks. These photos are from one my all time favorite diving moments. During a night dive in Bonaire we witnessed coral spawning (that’s the blurry stuff in the photos). This is not something you see everyday. It was definitely a rare treat that I won’t forget.

Our Bahamas trip was a fun book to look through with Farm Kid1. The number one reason is that Farm Kid1 loves these pics of his dad near a barracuda. Dad earned a few more cool points with these pics. And second, there is a fun story involving Farm Kid1. We booked this trip with some diving friends many, many months in advance. This wasn’t an ordinary vacation, we spent a week out at sea on a fairly small motorized sail boat. As life would have it, I ended up being 8 weeks pregnant with Farm Kid1 on this trip. So not only did I not get to dive, but I was also extremely sick from the morning sickness combined with the rocking boat. I did get in a couple good snorkeling adventures though. The pics in this photo were taken by a friend of ours & my dad.

One day I would love to make it Australia both to explore the land and the great barrier reef.

Links to our Continents & Biomes:
North America – Temperate Rainforest
South America – Tropical Rainforest
Antarctica – Ice Cap
Africa – Sahara Desert
Australia – Coral Reef
Asia – Tundra
Europe – Deciduous Forest

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For three weeks we will be learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world. We are studying three countries each week. This first week we learned about Finland, France, and Australia.

Much of the information for this unit was found on Homeschool Share. I also checked out many books from the library & searched the web.

I am using our cork board as a map to mark the countries we study.

For each country I printed a photo and wrote “Merry Christmas” in their language. I also printed a mini flag for Farm Kid1 to color. He has expressed interest in learning various flags so this was a fun way to incorporate that.

Finland
Hyvää Joulua

Little known fact (or at least I didn’t know this): Santa Clause actually lives in northern Finland. He lives up in the mountains in a place we can’t get to, but there is a town nearby which we can go visit. If we lived in Finland or if we were rich, I would totally take my kids there.

My husband’s great grandparents came to America from Finland. His grandma is still living & to this day enjoys her very Finnish sauna (which btw, is pronounced sow-nah, not saw-nah).

FINNISH STAR
I made the one on the left, Farm Kid1 did the one on the right. The directions came from Craftideas.info. There was a bit of a learning curve, but they were simple enough to put together. Farm Kid1 was able to do it with just little help from me. They are a little more interesting if you use double sided paper, like the one on the left. Farm Kid1 also made slightly smaller versions using music themed paper for his 3 piano teachers.

GNOMES
Apparently gnomes are a big thing in Finland. So, we made these cute little gnomes from pinecones. I used the directions on the Duo Fiberworks site. I love these guys. The only problem is that I found I did the majority of the crafting on them. Farm Kid1 gave one to his eye dr & sent one to his great grandma, whose family is from Finland.

BIRD SEED ORNAMENTS
The Finnish set out treats for the wildlife during the holiday season. So we made these bird seed ornaments. I found the directions on Homemade Mamas. The kids really enjoyed this project. We made a bunch & gave them to my kid’s teachers.

On our first attempt (right photo) we used cracked corn since we didn’t have regular bird seed. I don’t recommend this. It was more crumbly than using the birdseed.

France
joyeux Noël

PARIS CANVAS COLLAGE
Before we had kids, the hubby & I spent a day in Paris. This canvas collage of pics hangs in our school room. Farm Kid1 enjoys looking at it, so this unit gave us a reason to talk about it.

NATIVITY
The nativity scene is a huge part of Christmas tradition in France, as well as many other countries.

My hubby’s grandma painted this fabulous nativity set. It was nice to tell the story to Farm Kid1. I think it made it more significant to him since many of the countries we studied also value the nativity and that we, too, have our very own family nativity scene being passed down.

YULE LOGS
In these modern days, the French eat their yule logs, as opposed to burn them. We made the easy-peasy version. My kids didn’t know what twinkies were so this was especially fun for them.

Frost a twinkie with chocolate, sprinkle with powdered sugar & decorate with sprinkles. Yummy, sugary goodness.

Australia
Merry Christmas

POPPERS
Although originally from England, the Australians make Christmas poppers. Last week we made little star ornaments out of plaster of paris. I asked Farm Kid1 to pick 2 people he wanted to give a plaster star to & then wrap it popper-style.

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
There is an Australian version of the 12 days of Christmas. So, Farm Kid1 made a drawing of that song as well as a drawing of the version we sing in the United States.

We watched this you tube video: Christmas in Australia.
Which led us to this video on you tube: Aussie Jingle Bells … for some reason this totally cracks me up…

Our Christmas Around the World Links:
Week 1 – Finland, France & Australia
Week 2 – Mexico, Philippines & Switzerland
Week 3 – England, Italy & Israel

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