The final post on our Swiss unit.
All week long we worked on completing our lapbooks for good. (We technically still have two book reviews to do, but we just finished one book today and started the other one, so those pages will get stapled in probably by Friday.) Anyway, here are what our lapbooks look like.
In the middle pocket we stuck all the little books we had made in this unit. The "How to Make Chocolate" book you have already seen, but we've added a "How to make Cheese" book and a "my Globi" book. Globi is a popular Swiss character. My closest guess is maybe he is something like Yogi Bear or the Pink Panther to Americans. He has lots of adventures and it just so happens that we are in possession of a book about Globi's adventerous Swiss vacation. We read the book and followed along on a map of Switzerland to see where Globi was travelling. And when he got to a new spot, we looked it up in a little travel book of Switzerland to look at real photos of where he was and what those places actually look like in real life. Sometimes we read a little snippet out of the travel book, but we mostly let Globi explain everything. The Globi book is really cute and funny and lots of funny things happen to Globi and he has really crazy adventures, but the book is all in verse and that combined with the German, it is a little hard for me to understand, so even though it is a children's book, sometimes we didn't understand every single line.
Just yesterday Derek finished reading "Heidi" to the kids. What a marvelous book. It is beautiful and teaches a wonderful message about the Atonement of Christ. The kids got to watch the movie today, which was quite different from the book. I was sorry the filmmakers took out Grandmama and created a little love story between Clara's father and her governess, but oh well. The kids said they liked them both, but they enjoyed the book a little better. (That is also a good lesson to learn - we shouldn't just rely on the movies to really experience good literature.) Now he is reading the Swiss Family Robinson to the kids. We will probably watch that movie too.
We went up to Midway again this week for Swiss Days, but before we enjoyed the festival, we had a cheese taste test from the cheeses we had left up there the weekend before. We had "Swiss Girl" which is a made Emmentaler (Swiss Cheese), and onion and chive flavored cheddar cheese curds, and "Wasatch Back Jack" which is a national award winning jalapeno jack cheese, and for fun we stuck in a piece of regular string cheese. In this taste test we were able to discuss the differences between fresh cheese - like the curd - and aged cheese - like the Swiss Girl. The kids liked the Swiss Girl best.
When Lukas first took a bite of the spicy jack he wrinkled his face. It was so funny I asked him to show me again with his face how spicy the cheese was and this is what I got.
Abigail and Joshua also had their "tests". Their job was to go through all the items in their lapbooks with their Grammy and show and explain to her what they had learned. I also had them do this with their uncle who just arrived back from Switzerland a couple days before. Wouldn't you love to take a test like this? No anxiety here.
At Swiss Days we did indeed get to hear real yodeling, but not as much as I would have liked, and we got to see the Alphorns, which were awesome. I wish we could have gone up close to them, but our group consisted of 7 very little children and the crowds were huge so any movement we made had to be very calculated and supervised as to not lose any of the children. I decided it was best to learn a little more with our ears than close up with our eyes. The music was very fun. We took a photo with the Swiss Miss royalty which was cute and we had a real Swiss dinner. It was called a Knockwurst, a rye bread sandwich with mustard, pickles, sauerkraut, and a sausage split in half. Actually, I'm not really sure if the Swiss would eat a sandwich just like that, but the flavors were right and it was delicious. We bought Braetzeli, which are flat Swiss cookies, and Zopf, which we had actually made at home a few weeks ago. The Zopf we bought wasn't actually real Zopf, but it was beautiful and delicious.
UPDATE: I forgot to post this picture of Kaleb sporting his Swiss St. Bernard PJs.
All week long we worked on completing our lapbooks for good. (We technically still have two book reviews to do, but we just finished one book today and started the other one, so those pages will get stapled in probably by Friday.) Anyway, here are what our lapbooks look like.
In the middle pocket we stuck all the little books we had made in this unit. The "How to Make Chocolate" book you have already seen, but we've added a "How to make Cheese" book and a "my Globi" book. Globi is a popular Swiss character. My closest guess is maybe he is something like Yogi Bear or the Pink Panther to Americans. He has lots of adventures and it just so happens that we are in possession of a book about Globi's adventerous Swiss vacation. We read the book and followed along on a map of Switzerland to see where Globi was travelling. And when he got to a new spot, we looked it up in a little travel book of Switzerland to look at real photos of where he was and what those places actually look like in real life. Sometimes we read a little snippet out of the travel book, but we mostly let Globi explain everything. The Globi book is really cute and funny and lots of funny things happen to Globi and he has really crazy adventures, but the book is all in verse and that combined with the German, it is a little hard for me to understand, so even though it is a children's book, sometimes we didn't understand every single line.
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| This map shows Globi's travels around Switzerland. It was glued to the back of our Globi books. |
Just yesterday Derek finished reading "Heidi" to the kids. What a marvelous book. It is beautiful and teaches a wonderful message about the Atonement of Christ. The kids got to watch the movie today, which was quite different from the book. I was sorry the filmmakers took out Grandmama and created a little love story between Clara's father and her governess, but oh well. The kids said they liked them both, but they enjoyed the book a little better. (That is also a good lesson to learn - we shouldn't just rely on the movies to really experience good literature.) Now he is reading the Swiss Family Robinson to the kids. We will probably watch that movie too.
We went up to Midway again this week for Swiss Days, but before we enjoyed the festival, we had a cheese taste test from the cheeses we had left up there the weekend before. We had "Swiss Girl" which is a made Emmentaler (Swiss Cheese), and onion and chive flavored cheddar cheese curds, and "Wasatch Back Jack" which is a national award winning jalapeno jack cheese, and for fun we stuck in a piece of regular string cheese. In this taste test we were able to discuss the differences between fresh cheese - like the curd - and aged cheese - like the Swiss Girl. The kids liked the Swiss Girl best.
When Lukas first took a bite of the spicy jack he wrinkled his face. It was so funny I asked him to show me again with his face how spicy the cheese was and this is what I got.
Abigail and Joshua also had their "tests". Their job was to go through all the items in their lapbooks with their Grammy and show and explain to her what they had learned. I also had them do this with their uncle who just arrived back from Switzerland a couple days before. Wouldn't you love to take a test like this? No anxiety here.
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