It seems like this month has lasted extra long.  We did learn a lot about Italy, though.  And I do enjoy spreading it out over a a longer time period.  I think the boys don’t feel rushed to learn something quickly.  We can spend a lot of time on a lot of different things!

We stamped our passports and took off!

We always learn about a country’s flag first.  The boys enjoy painting them.

We also used a great new set of flag puzzles.  I can’t find them on-line anywhere.  I got them at Half Price Books.

La Befana came to visit them on January 6th.  That was a lot of fun!

We learned about many different historical sights of the country.  One was the city of Venice.  The boys painted gondolas using water colors.  While wet, we sprinkled salt on the colors to give it texture.  This idea came from a neat Usborne book we have called Art Ideas.

We learned about Mt. Vesuvius and made our own volcanoes using a couple of kits.  Ethan was excited to use his new Mind Blowing Science Kit.  That made a really neat color changing volcano!

We learned some Italian terms using a fun On-Line Dictionary.

We watched a Netflix video called Italy Revealed.  We all enjoyed that.  We also watched several different Discovery Education videos!

No lack of food fun in this country!  We had many different Italian dishes all month long!  Try this Cheesy Italian Bread!

We broke out Chad’s grandma’s old pasta maker.  It was even made in Italy.  Andrew noticed that right off!  The kids love to use this.  We made some great tasting noodles using this recipe.  I just boiled them in chicken broth.

We got some fun Italian goodies in the funniest places. These candies from Walgreens.

And these pastries from the dollar store!

Our Pizza Party a hit.  We loved doing the Download N Go unit study.  We learned all kinds of fun things!

There were many Italian books on our shelves!

Italy (Scholastic), Italy (First Reports), Italy (Countries of the World),  Grandfather’s Rock, Big Anthony, Days of the Blackbird, Strega Nona, Gaspard On Vacation, Stories from Around the World, The Most Fascinating Places on Earth, and more!

We love our Galloping the Globe!  And we love to share what we have learned!