Olympics country studies: Great Britain

After a fun experience during the 2010 Winter Games, we decided to do another round of Olympics country studies during the London 2012 Games. First up, Great Britain (of course!).

As always, the library proved to be a valuable resource. We first read these two books, which give a great overview of culture, history, the flag, cuisine, geography, lifestyle, landmarks and more. Good stuff.

• We made the flag of Great Britain, which was not the easiest flag to recreate-

• We watched a video on how to speak with a British accent, so fun. Our favorite line was "are there more birds?" Connor really had it down.

• I had decided to do a section on William Shakespeare. We first read this book:
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• We read part of a sonnet: 

"daisies pied, and violets blue
And ladysmocks all silver white
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight
Daffodils... take charm the winds of March with beauty
Of all the flowers... a rose is best."

We researched what those flowers look like, and then the kids drew their own English garden based on that sonnet:

• We learned some of the words created by William Shakespeare, and created some of our own words. My favorite was "zooga," which Connor made up; he said it means crazy. We've actually been using it in our everyday conversation!

• and I had been thrilled to find this book. It had tons of great ideas, pictures of WS's homes from his youth, awesome stuff:

From that book, we did these activities:

We make pomander balls, which were used during Elizabethan times to ward off the "foule stynking aire" that they believed caused the plague. This was an orange, poked with holes, filled with whole cloves and sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg. Smelled great! It wasn't meant to look so Halloween-like, but the only netting I hand on hand was black-

We made slashed-shirt costumes and swords, like the actors wore in WS's time. The boys were like "can we really cut up these shirts?" (I had bought them at Wal-mart for a few dollars). Then we learned how to make a sword fight look real, like from Romeo and Juliet. The boys loved this, as expected.

Isabel decided to be a Roman guard-

We learned how to make sound effects, such as they had done back then. They liked the shoes to create a person walking, and the pots and pans to make thunder, from a scene in Julius Caesar-

• We did a section on The Beatles. When I told the kids we were going to learn about the Beatles next, Connor said, "I know, I know, they came to America from England and made all the girls scream and cry." We listened to Beatles songs and watched Beatles videos. We did a Yellow Submarine/Octopus' Garden coloring page-

and they saw Brian's entire Beatles CD collection. All bought before we were married, all very much loved by him, as they are his favorite band.We gently pointed out the change in appearance of the Beatles from the first CD to the last. But we didn't explain why.

• We did high tea in the afternoon. We learned about the Royal Family and its history, and about tea etiquette. Isabel and I made her one of the lace crowns from Pinterest (so fun and darling!). I bought some real English clotted cream, and we had scones with the clotted cream and strawberry jam (my mouth waters just recalling it - so delightful and wonderful), and apple juice. You'll notice Isabel properly drinking with her pinkies raised.

• For dinner, I made fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper and served with a side of vinegar and salt. Major hit, although I make these homemade fish sticks from time to time and the kids always devour them-

• And then Connor wanted to make a replica of Big Ben-

• And we watched the opening ceremonies.