After our first week studying Russia, I found even more to study the next week. There are times when the resources seem to be overwhelming, especially when you find them on the tail end of your studies.

Both of our girls love to pretend to be ballerinas, so this week we spent some time listening to famous Russian composers and watching some ballet in action. Needless to say, there have been lots of tights flying, tutus twirling and spinning like crazy. Zachary included. :)

Monday

• Quick review from previous week’s studies
• Look at the currency of Russia (see notebooking page I made below)
• Review geography song (from Geography Songs cd)
• Pick a meal to make and put grocery list together
• Watch a little of Fiddler on the Roof (since this takes place in Russia)

Tuesday

• Sing geography song and point to countries on map
• Talk about some of the geographical/climate features of Russia and do map activities: Ural mountains (divide Russia between Europe and Asia); coldest inhabited place on Earth is Verkhoyansk; dry climate and poor soil; Volga River is longest river in Europe, three of longest rivers in world are in Russia (Ob, Yenisei, and Lena); Lake Baikal is deepest, largest fresh water lake in the world; three differenet land areas: tundra, taiga, and steppe
• Listen to Tchaikovsky and have fun dancing

Wednesday

• Use Draw Write Now to draw picture of a brown bear and also copywork about bear
• Talk about some of the different animals in Russia
• Review geography song
• Talk about the history of Russia using notebooking pages
• Watch a little bit of Nutcracker

Thursday

• Sing geography song and point to countries without using cd
• Talk about religion in Russia and what happened during Communist rule (atheism). You can read about Laurianna and McKenna’s reaction to atheism on our family blog – too funny.
• Compare Russian alphabet to our alphabet
• Work on making meal (Beef stroganoff)
• Stamp passports

Websites that we visited:

• National Geographic Kids – facts and pictures about Russia
• Enchanted Learning about Russia – members only
• Travel for Kids – fun things to do with kids in Russia. Also includes book ideas for helping kids learn about Russia
• Time for Kids – learn more about Russia’s culture, landscape and resources
• Mission Friends – resource available from the Lutheran Church. This is the student pdf version that you can print off and use as a great resource for you teaching of Russia. It includes the map activity that we did and a lot of wonderful information. Our kids really enjoyed this!
• Nutcracker on youtube – this is the first of 16 mini-videos of the Nutcracker performed at the Royal Opera House. The girls loved this!

The currency notebooking sheet that I put together on the ruble: Next week we are going to be moving our studies to England/Great Britain, so stay tuned for more!

Resources that we used:

This last week we started our study of Russia with the girls. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and pull all my thoughts together until now, so I might miss some stuff that we did because there have been moments when we have veered off course from my plans and I keep forgetting to pencil in what we actually did {sigh}.

That said, I can give you a basic framework of what our week looked like, include some links that we/I used, the books we used, and one of the worksheets that I pulled together for us. I’m also working on putting a post together that talks about some of the specific things that I try to do for each country that we study (and might go into a little more detail in this post too about how we did some of the things to give you an idea).

Monday

• Locate and map Russia. We have a wall map and globe that we use for this. The girls find the country on the map and we talk about a few different things: what continent the country is on, which hemispheres, what other countries it is near, etc…
• Introduce our new geography song. I can’t say enough about how much we have enjoyed the cd Geography Songs and how much the girls (and Zachary by default) have learned from this cd. This week we learned the song "Former USSR". As we sing the song, we find the other countries that are mentioned in the song and work on remembering where the countries are and pointing them as we sing along.
• Use our atlas to learn more about Russia. We use The Children’s World Atlas from Rand McNally. We read the little blurbs in the book on industry and other key facts about the country: population, major cities, etc…
• Find the capital of the country

Tuesday

• Read Children Just Like Me and complete the worksheet. I made a worksheet to go along with the book, so after we read about the child from the country we are studying, we fill in the information we learned (what city, religion, language, favorite foods, etc…)
• Learn about Russia’s flag. This week I made up a little worksheet about the flag of Russia (you can print it off below).
• Review our geography song
• Talk about some interesting facts about Russia: it is on two different continents (found dividing point), 11 different time zones, takes up almost all of Eastern hemisphere

Wednesday

• Review our geography song with map.
• Play a Russian game
• Travel and learn a little about Russia via a website – a virtual tour

Thursday

• Review our geography song
• Learn about the language(s) spoken in Russia and different religions. We also used this time to talk about the time that Russia was under Communist rule and people weren’t allowed to believe in God.

Here are some of the books that we used this week in our studies:

Some great websites and links related to Russia:

• St. Petersburg.com – a virtual tour of just about anything you can imagine in St. Petersburg
• Flags of the World – a site that gives a lot of detail about the flag of Russia
• National Geographic Xpeditions Atlas – can print of detailed (or not) pdf maps of Russia or any other country
• Ethnologue.com – talks about how many different languages there are in Russia (105 in case you were wondering, four of which are dead)
• Games children play in Russia
• Kids Culture Center – has a lot of basics about Russian culture along with resources
• Rainbow Kids – different coloring pages to learn about Russia

This is the worksheet I put together on the Russian flag:

Next week we will be continuing our time in Russia and learning about the currency of Russia, making a meal, studying the different geography features of Russia and the climate and more so be sure to check back or look for the second link/post.