Since we’re still working on “Around the World in 52 Weeks”, I thought this They Might Be Giants video would be a perfect theme song.  Although we’re not doing the exact same list, we’re certainly covering a lot of them.  I just hope we can make it through to Zimbabwe… (On a side note, this was the encore at their Sept. 26 show at Town Hall in NYC – awesome!)

We didn’t find any books on Dominica in the children’s section of the library, so we did all of our research on the “Nature Island” online.

Dominica - The Nature Island

I have to admit, looking at pictures of this gorgeous Caribbean island made me want to schedule a vacation RIGHT NOW!  The things that most impressed the kids about Dominica is that fact that it has 16 active volcanoes, a boiling lake, and is surrounded by beautiful marine-life. And, as Jon pointed out, there is amazing kayaking to be found.

In the spirit of Dominica, we decided to create our own volcanic island in our backyard.  As luck would have it, I left the top off the sandbox right before a rainstorm, so we had a large box of sand and water right at our finger tips.  We made a mountain out of the sand, surrounded by our ‘ocean’.   The core of our  volcano was a bottle (Pilsner Urquell left of from Czech week!), and we used paprika to make our lava appear red.  Then, we just added some baking soda, poured in some vinegar, and voila!  A volcanic island!  Yes, I did spend the next 45 minutes bailing out the sandbox so that we did not end up with 0ur own ecological disaster.

Building our volcano

Pouring the vinegar

Kaboom! Lava flow!

After looking at pictures of tropical fish, turtles and other sea life, we decided to do an ocean-themed craft.  We actually combined the concept of traditional basket weaving and marine life to make these cute woven-paper fish.  They were fun to make, and Deirdre was able to do most of the cutting on her own, although she needed some help with the weaving.  Jonah decorated his fish like a ‘robot fish’.  I’ve included some instructions to make your own.

A School of Fish

Cut 2 Rectangles

Cut into strips, leaving about 1/2 uncut at the edge

Use basket weave technique to weave together your 2 pieces

Alternate weave until all pieces are woven together

Fold edges over and glue down

Cut fins along lines as shown

Give your fishy a happy face!

Next stop — Egypt!

What’s not to love about a country with the highest per capita consumption of beer in the world  AND boasts a 99% literacy rate?   As they say in Czech “Kde se pivo vari, tam se dobre dari” (Where beer is brewed, they have it good!).  I was looking forward to exploring the Czech Republic for a couple of reasons — 1) my cousin Jennifer and I visited Prague about 8 years ago, and I absolutely loved it, and 2) my husband is of Czech decent on his mother’s side of the family, so this falls under the “family heritage clause” of this project.

We started off by reading through a pretty decent library book on Czech history and culture, and, of course, the kids were fascinated by the fact that the Czech Republic is teeming with castles.  They have added this to their list of places that they definitely want to visit.  We also found a website with Czech fairy tales so we read through a few of those.  I had forgotten that fairy tales do tend a little bit toward the macabre.  We also found a site with audio of common Czech phrases , and we had fun wishing each other “dobry den” in the morning.

Since the Czech Republic is known for their crystal beads (I really wish I had bought more of these beads when I visited Prague), we pretended to be jewelry makers and used Deirdre’s pop-beads for our necklaces.  I also remembered the amazing marionette shops and was hoping we could put on a puppet show, but, unfortunately, we didn’t seem to make the time for it.  The kids really enjoyed watching videos of Czech folk dancing, and they loved dancing around the kitchen to the music.  Deirdre REALLY wanted to me to make her an authentic folk dancing costume, but that was just way beyond my realm of capabilities right now.  Maybe sometime…

Finally, we dabbled in Czech cooking.  We found this recipe for Palacinky (Czech pancakes) in one of our books, and the kids loved them so much, we ended up making them every morning for a week and a half.  There is now a “No Czech Pancake” rule in my house.

Czech Pancakes for Breakfast

Palacinky (Czech Pancakes) – 4 servings

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp suger
2 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp salt

Directions
Mix eggs with milk. Add salt, butter, sugar, vanilla, and flour, mix until smoother. Heat and lightly grease griddle or frying pan. Make thin, crepe-like pancakes by filling a pan about half full in center and tilting pan so batter spreads quickly over bottom to edges.  Heat until batter is dry, then tun over and cook the other side.  Spread jam on pancake and roll up.  Sprinkle powered sugar on top.

We also had Czech food one night and made Chicken Paprika and Cabbage Poached in Vingear.  Pretty tasty, and the cabbage recipe gave me the chance to finally open the caraway seeds that came with my spice set!  And, of course, we had a Pilsner Urqell!

Next week – Dominica

I learned a few things myself this week during our ‘journey’ to Bangladesh.  I had always thought of it as a ‘tiny’ country over by India.  I really had no idea that it is one of the most populous nations in the world (7th largest population).

Fresh Okra

The book that we selected from the library was a little bit too dense for the kids, but we had fun scanning through the pictures and talking about what life might be like in a small village or large city in Bangladesh.  There was one chapter that talked about children growing up in poverty, and it mentioned that although kids didn’t have many playthings, they enjoyed playing games like hide-and-seek.  For some reason this really resonated with my kids — a common bond over one of their favorite games!  And, of course the wanted to talk about Bengal tigers (as luck would have it, we saw one at the zoo while we were on vacation a few weeks ago).

We also found a website that translated the letters of your name, or any word for that matter, into Devanagari, one of the forms of script used in Bangladesh. We printed out the kids’ names in really large font, and they decorated them to look like calligraphy painintngs.

Our two biggest projects were pottery and cooking Bengali food.  We learned that throwing pottery is a traditional trade in a number of villages.  I don’t have a pottery wheel, but we did manage to have fun doing some hand-building.   And, I’m pretty sure the villagers in Bangladesh focus more on  throwing bowl and pots, rather than animal-shaped Christmas tree ornaments.  Hopefully, we will be able to have these fired soon (thanks, Laurent!)

Our Own Pottery Workshop

Finally, I decided to try my hand at a homemade Chapati (flat bread),  Dhedosh (Okra) and Masoor Daal (lentils) The chapati was surprisingly easy and satisfying to make.  It was definitely a recipe that lent itself to having a 5-year old sous-chef.  Deirdre loved making balls with the dough and rolling them out flat.  And, I was thrilled to make the okra since we actually grew it in our garden this summer.  Yes, the picture at the top of this post is okra straight from the garden!  whoo hooo!  I had to leave out a couple of the more exotic spices since I didn’t have them in stock, but the meal was actually very tasty.  I’ll definitely cook my okra this way for the rest of the season.

Attempting the Cuisine - Lentils, Okra and Chapati

Next week, Czech Republic…