A Staycation: Australia!

We use CHC’s Explore the Continents as a general guide for our staycation to Australia.

We checked out all the books we could about Australia from the library.  The nonfiction books were all sort of standard, but there were some fiction books that we read and re-read.

Best of Australia in Children’s Literature

(We started reading this book from the library out loud, but it got lost.  We’re still looking for it, so no verdict on whether it’s recommendable or not.  St. Anthony…)

Best of Super Easy Australian Activities

I had originally intended to do all sorts of art extension activities…but we didn’t get to them.  Whatev!  Here’s what we did do.

Color in a map of Australia
Learn Australian lingo
Spend some time with the Kratt brothers

Listen to a didgeridoo (not for the whole 10 hours that this clip lasts)
Make vague didgeridoo sounds using various household objects
Learn about St. Mary MacKillop
Draw Australian animals with sidewalk chalk on the driveway

Australian Celebration

Our culminating activity was eating shrimp on the barbie and listening to Waltzing Matilda.
After dinner we watched an episode of The Crocodile Hunter as a family.

David loves shrimp.  I think it’s got a weird texture.  So naturally, I’ve never made shrimp in the whole 9 years we’ve been married.  David was pretty excited when I suggested picking up some shrimp for the kids to try.  He was even more excited to grill the little guys up.

Cee was apparently not sure how this whole shrimp experiment was going to go.  In a note to Elle as dinner was being prepared, she wrote:

Me neither, kid.  Me neither.

Here’s what the actual dinner looked like.

 

Then came the actual tasting of the shrimp.  Cee and Elle were both a little nervous.

 

The verdict?

Moe couldn’t be troubled to give a pictorial verdict because he was too busy devouring his shrimp.  He had already finished his original three by the time I noticed that he had eaten them – tail and all.  Tail and all.

I made sure to take the tails off all the other shrimp before I gave them to him.  It weirded me out.

I guess that means our Australian celebration was a success?

 

I ate some shrimp as well, and it wasn’t awful!  Afterwards we showed the kids a picture of an actual live shrimp.  They were sufficiently surprised (and maybe a little horrified).  My work here is done.

 

 

 

“Wait a minute,” you might be saying to yourself.  “That doesn’t look like a lot of stuff to do.  You didn’t learn how to throw a boomerang?  You didn’t make a lapbook on how Australia was populated by convicts?  You didn’t have the kids write reports on the mistreatment of the aboriginal people throughout history?”

Ummm…nope.  I just got some stuff from the library and googled a few things.  Meh.  Maybe the next time we do a staycation to Australia we’ll get to those things.  Probably not, but maybe.  I’m content that my kids know about marsupials and occasionally use ‘G’day mate’ in conversation.  They ate a new food that looks like a bug.  Sometimes good-enough really is good enough.