Week 9 - Italy

This ended up being a busy week for us so many of our typical morning routines were interrupted and we ended up doing most of our school through reading books and doing activities. It wasn't hard to justify fun activities by saying they were part of this week's lesson - like eating at a pizzeria for dinner one night! At the end of the week we made our own pizza at home, which was tons of fun!

We did have a couple of coloring/activity pages we used this week: 

•  Make Your Own Pizza
• Italian Paper Girl
• Color the World Venice
• Mona Lisa Coloring sheet

Reading
As with most countries, we found a lot of fun books about Italy. We started with Look What Came from Italy, a book about the many things that come from Italy. Like the ones about the other countries, this book gives a great deal of information to introduce and learn about Italy.

B's self portrait

Our artist of the week is Leonardo da Vinci so we had some great books on him and his work, both as an artist and also as a Renaissance man who was good at just about anything. In fact, we learned that he is considered to be possibly one of the smartest and most talented men of all time.  Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? is a level 4 Reading biography of Leonardo that tells of his lonely childhood and how he overcame it to become one of the most intelligent and talented person to live. Neo Leo compares many of the ideas of Leonardo di Vinci's work and drawings to inventions that exist today.  

I made a one sheet overview about Leonardo da Vinci with questions for B to read and answer. We made our own Self Portraits with oil pastels for this week's artwork.

Angelo was a book that I saw listed on many blogs and FIAR sites for studying Italy. I enjoyed it but my 5 and 3 year olds didn't get into it as much as I did. I feel like in a year or two they would enjoy it more. Its about a man tasked with renovations on an Italian cathedral discovers a wounded bird and begins a friendship that will carry him through the end of his journey. This is a sweet story that shows the beauty of friendship as well as displays some Italian elements.

One book they did enjoy was The Princess and the Pizza. This fictitious book about how pizza was invented provides some comical fun with a theme of girl power and ambition. Princess Paulina misses the perks of being a princess so she enters a contest with hopes of marrying the prince and moving back into the castle. To do so, she must compete against the other princesses to prove to the queen that she is worthy to marry the prince. Through the competition, Princess Paulina discovers that she has other ambitions.

We used this week to learn about fractions and parts of a whole. One of the kids' favorite books of the week was How Many Ways Can You Cut a Pie (Magic Castle Readers). Squirrel is entering her famous acorn pie into the pie eating contest but first she has to keep her friends from eating it all before the contest. A fun story with a lesson on wholes, halves and thirds to learn about fractions. And an added bonus is that B was able to read it over and over again because for the most part the words are on her reading level. We used this free Pizza Fractions set from TeachersPayTeachers.com to continue learning about fractions.

I borrowed How to Make an Apple Pie and see the world from the library thinking it was specific to this week's lesson and then realized that it really incorporates many places across the world. It would have worked great to read this before we started our journey across the world, but it definitely worked this week too as the first stop they make in the story is Italy. When you run out of ingredients to make an apple pie, what else can you do but travel the world to find the best ingredients possible? The book includes a recipe of apple pie at the end. 

Learning Topics

• Fun Facts from TheUnlikelyHomeschool.com: 
•  Italian Dining Customs & Trivia
• Italians take their meals in the following courses:
• Antipasto- appetizer
• Primo- the first course, usually soup
• Secondo- the second course, usually a meat with a side dish
• Dulce- dessert
• Caffe'- coffee which is served after every meal

• The average Italian will consume 55 pounds of pasta each year.  
• The female guest of honor is always served first followed by the male guest of honor.
• Pizza is thought to have come from Naples and was a dish served to the peasants as it used up all the "extras" of the kitchen.  
• Other Notable Italian Facts
• Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, is credited for establishing the first LASTING European expedition of the Americas.
• Galileo Galilei, famed astronomer, was known for championing the idea of heliocentrism, the belief that the sun is the center of the universe.  (For a living-literature style introduction to the controversial, scientific views of Galileo, I'd recommend Starry Messenger by Peter Sis.)
• Italian, renaissance painter, Leonardo da Vinci's most famous works include the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

Related Media

• History of PIzza
  Learn about the history of pizza.

• Introducing Italy
  
  This YouTube video gives kids a quick tour of Italy, featuring Naples, Rome and Venice. 

• Venice with Kids
  A family tours Italy together and tells about their adventures together.

• Fraction lesson on dividing a whole pizza
  A quick lesson on dividing a pizza into multiple parts to form fractions. 

• Fractions - Halves and Quarters
  This is a very cheesy (no pun intended) video for kids but the weirdness grabs their attention. Kids learn about whole, half and quarter as "Papa" divides up the pizza for his daughter and her friends.

Italy was a fun week, especially since we were allowed to eat pizza and make it a center for much of our learning. I'd love to hear your ideas for learning about Italy with little ones!

See these ideas and more on my BKS Prep - Italy Pinterest Board!