Katy No Pocket, Australia {BFIAR}

As soon as the book was over Duck and Owl wanted to do a "jump like a kangaroo race"  just like they did at the beginning of the story. We jumped all over the house.

Next we measured just how far we could jump.

A favorite project was making Australia cookies. I used this gluten free recipe and used sugar instead of agave. I placed  parchment paper over the map and let the kids push down the dough over Australia  to fill in the shape, they did pretty good. Then we added chocolate chips where  all the mountain ranges were and used colored candies to make major cities. The kids LOVED this and it only took 30 min to do.

Robin working on adding her capitols.

All 4 finished countries, the little broken cookie at the lower right is Tasmania.

Robin did some research on things she loved about Australia..She wrote out all  about what a biliby is and that Australia's major export is cattle.

Falcon wrote a short report on the government and how Tasmania is part of the commonwealth of Australia 

                                  Austrailia

            Tasmania has a population of 507,626. It is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, and although Tasmania is technically part of the commonwealth it still retains its own laws and customs.

            A commonwealth is a group of colonies or states that are bound together for common well being. There are six colonies that make up the Commonwealth of Australia.                                      

Each state is represented at a federal level by a Governor-General. Governor-Generals are appointed by the king/queen that is in office.

            The current queen is Queen Elizabeth II. The queen has very little actual power but plays a more ceremonial/symbolic role in the country.  Governor-Generals on the other hand, have the ability to summon parliament, call elections, and appoint the prime minister, Governor-Generals also have the ability to appoint officials such as high court justices.  

See older kids can learn from  FIAR books too! I usually have my oldest child read the story to the little ones once ( he usually likes the stories) and then have him do a bit of research on a topic involved in the book. For Katy No Pocket he choose to write a little on the country mainly because I thought Tasmania was it's own country! So see I even learned  something new!.

Duck did a lot of activities from this resource

We were studying  Tasmania this month with our homeschool geography group so I choose to row Katy No Pocket to go right along with our studies.

We also  read 

We watched 

 Fiction  movie based in Australia, I watched this with my older kids 12 and 6. 

All 4 of the kids watched this one.

Did you know that Inspector Gadget has a field trip series? We  found it on accident when requesting something else in at the library. Here is one on Australia that I found on youtube..

We love this series and we just checked out the one for Spain and Italy for next week when we row Ferdinand.

Want to see how others are using Five in A Row check that out here.