Weeks 12 & 13: Norway & Scandinavia

Sorry to be so late posting & to have missed a week! Lindsey was a bit under the weather for week 12, so most of our activities were during week 13. Here are the highlights -

Piano

Week 12 started with a piano being delivered for Lindsey! She has been wanting to take piano lessons since 2nd grade but we couldn't afford a piano. A family from our church had an old piano in their barn and they gave it to Lindsey. She is so excited! A group of boy scouts delivered it to our house and Lindsey learned to play Hot Cross Buns that afternoon. I found some free online lessons to get her started. She has also taught herself to play part of the keyboard cat song. Praise God for providing her with the piano she has wanted for so long.

Denmark & LEGO

Lindsey loves to build with LEGO blocks and they were invented in Denmark. I found a LEGO lapbook that included their history, how they are made, and math.

One of the activities was to build the flag of Denmark using LEGOS. Other Scandinavian flags are based on Denmark's flag as well. Norway used Denmark's flag as their own until they later added blue to it.

Since we have been working on percents in math, I had Lindsey figure out what percent of her LEGO flag was white and what percent was red. We really enjoyed this lapbook.

Sweden & IKEA

We have been needing desks for our classroom, so we decided to take a field trip to IKEA in Charlotte. It's a 2 hour drive for us & this was our first trip there. It was definitely worth the drive. We brought some of our library books with us in the car so Lindsey could read about Sweden on the way there. I had her write some interesting facts she found on a notebooking page. (She did the same for Norway.)

When we arrived we signed up for the IKEA family discount card. We shopped around the huge store and ate lunch in their restaurant. Lindsey got the kids meal with moose shaped pasta, yogurt, applesauce, and lingonberry juice. I ordered the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries of coarse. I shared some of my meatballs with Lindsey. Yum!

We bought the cutest woodland animal cookie cutters, a gingerbread house, a yule goat, magazine holders, and two laiva desks. The desks were only $18 each and they are a good size for our classroom. I love IKEA! I have a long wishlist and we will be making plans for future trips :)

Lindsey helped me put the first desk together and said "Mom! The instructions are just like the ones for Legos! Do you think that's because they are both from Scandinavian countries? The desk is from Sweden & Legos are from Denmark." I'm so thankful we made the decision to homeschool. I love to see her make connections like that about places we are studying. Thankful for Legos too. Lindsey practically put the second desk together by herself, building with Legos has trained her well.

Zoology: Dissecting An Owl Pellet

We studied Lesson 9: Rodentia and the Rest and Lindsey dissected an owl pellet for her lab. Given her aversion to bones & skeletons, this was not an easy lab for her. She had to stop a few times for a breath of fresh air, but she got through it and did a great job. She was able to find a fairly complete rodent skeleton. The skull even had some teeth.

I ordered the owl pellet kit from Home Science Tools. It came with the owl pellet, tweezers, a wooden probe, instructions and a bone sorting chart. We did have to soak the pellet in water to loosen it because it was to dry/compact to work with easily.

Woodland Animal Sugar Cookies

We used our new woodland animal cookie cutters from IKEA to make some sugar cookies. They were delicious & almost too cute to eat.

We made a thin cookie icing and dipped and/or painted the cookies to ice them. The icing dries hard so the cookies can be stacked. We used gel food colors to tint the icing, except for brown. For brown bears, hedgehogs, and moose, we added a bit of cocoa powder to the icing instead of food color.

The hedgehogs were the favorite. After dipping them in icing, we used chocolate sprinkles for their spines, a sprinkle for the nose, and a mini chocolate chip for the eye.

The moose were too large to dip, so we painted the bodies brown & the antlers yellow (like Bullwinkle). We also painted the icing on the snails.

For the foxes we used a chocolate sprinkle for the eye and a mini chocolate chip for the nose. We also added red sugar crystal sprinkles to the foxes.

Lindsey wanted the squirrels to be blue. We used a sprinkle for the nose & a mini chocolate chip for the eye. On some she also added a mini chocolate chip to their paw as an acorn.

Gingerbread House

We bought our gingerbread house at IKEA, it's called Pepparkaka Hus.

We used the same icing we made for the cookies on our gingerbread house and added more confectioner sugar for the icing to glue the pieces together. We decorated the pieces with icing before assembling the house. We used candy canes, red and green Skittles, gumdrop fruit slices, and a couple lollipops to decorate our house.

We used coconut for snow and added a few marshmallows for snowmen. We used candy canes broken to length in each corner of the house and along the roof. The hook part of the candy canes we used along with fruit slices to create a fence in the back yard. Fruit slices were also used as shrubs around the house. We made paths with the Skittles, one to the backyard and one to the front door. Lollipops became smoke for the chimney. We spread coconut out for snow, but left the aluminum foil showing in one section for a skating pond.

This was a fun project. Sadly our gingerbread house didn't survive until Christmas. Most of our candy had been eaten by Thanksgiving, and the house began to disappear after the woodland animal cookies were gone. It was yummy though :)

Music

My daughter pointed out to me that the popular song "What Does The Fox Say?" by Ylvis is from Norway. So I double checked and yes, Ylvis is a Norwegian group. Just in case you aren't familiar with it, here's their video -

Art

We made cute braided paper heart ornaments to hang on our tree. They are called Flätade Hjärtan. They are little baskets that can be filled with candy or treats. We used red & white cardstock and followed instructions I found at craftandcreativity.com

We also learned about rosemaling. We watched some instructional videos, then practiced on cardstock.

It takes some practice to learn the strokes. Lindsey struggled a little with the circle strokes, and found the S strokes to be the easiest. After practicing, she painted a design on a small cardboard box.

The rosemaling videos we watched are below.

Reading

Of coarse I have to include Hedgie's Surprise by Jan Brett. The needlepoint illustrations are wonderful and the story includes a Tomten. It's a great story to read while studying Scandinavia.

We found some other great books with the help of our librarian: The Race of the Birkebeiners by Lise Lunge-Larsen, Christmas in Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren, & Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Norway. I also got books on Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.

Movies / Videos / Websites

We watched Heidi and How To Train Your Dragon. At first Lindsey didn't want to watch Heidi, but after a while she liked it. It was a long movie, it's in two parts so we watched it over two days. How To Train Your Dragon includes vikings and their boats. These were good to watch while Lindsey wasn't feeling well.

There are several photos and videos on Norway along with information at http://www.visitnorway.com/us/ - The videos of the northern lights are especially beautiful. We also liked this video on YouTube: Visit Norway in 7 min. For Finland visit http://www.visitfinland.com/, for Denmark http://denmark.dk/, and for Sweden http://sweden.se/p2/. We also learned about the Yule Goat tradition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Goat - we bought a small one at IKEA and plan to make some felt Yule Goat ornaments while we look at Christmas around the world.

We ended our Scandinavian adventure at the theater with the new Disney movie Frozen. The movie takes place in Norway. We noticed rosemaling, northern lights, fjords, the architecture, etc... Also at the beginning of the movie it showed them cutting ice from the frozen harbor. We enjoyed the movie, it was fun!

Hope you enjoyed our study of Norway and Scandinavia! We'd love to here your comments below.