Morocco

Xavier's favorite part:  Building a casbah with "cannons pointing towards the ocean". The big green duplo blocks sticking out at the top are the cannons.

Cole's favorite part:  The reading, such as

The Traveling Man: The Journey of Ibn Battuta, 1325-1354 by James Rumford.  Ibn Battuta was a kind of Moroccan Marco Polo.  I especially liked the author's talent in crafting such phrases such as "Traveling: first it leaves you speechless, then it makes you a storyteller,"  and "Traveling:  first it makes you a stranger, then it brings you new friends."  Those may not be the exact quotes as we returned the library books before I finished this post. :-)

and

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust by Karen Gray Ruelle and Deborah Durland DeSaix.  We learned from this book that the rector of the Parisian Mosque at this time was Si Kaddour Benghabrit, an Algerian, who had also been a high ranking diplomat in Morocco.  The mosque was built in 1926 when Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia were under French rule.



Evan's favorite part: creating hamsa. Hamsa is the Arabic word for five, and also for these "good luck charms" popular in Morocco (and elsewhere.) 

Cole's hamsa from a piece of Altair Design paper

Xavier's hamsa

Evan's brightly colored hamsa

It was also a treat to look at the online photo album of a middle school friend of mine who has done a lot of traveling, including Morocco.  I love Google image search, but there is something nice about knowing from where the photos came.  Though it wasn't in her Morocco album, one of the first pictures we stumbled on was a photo of a hamsa that she had sent as a gift to someone else.  Fun!

The Big Green Statue, a post about the trip to New York we went on in July.

I am a little lat getting it up.
 In New York we went to see the Statue of Liberty.

This is a paper model I made (with a pattern)
before we left.

After we arrived on Liberty Island, we walked around for a little while and then went through security to go to the crown. After security, we climbed the stairs in the pedestal to get to the statue. When we got to the top of the pedestal we went to take a look from the observation deck, then started up the statue to the crown.

This is in the crown (tight quarters).

In the picture from the crown (below) you can see the new World Trade Center to the far left, and a spike of her crown to the top left (its pretty cool to know that you just saw the actual metal Bartholdi touched).

 You can see the New World Trade Center
to the far left.  

A good thing about taking the stairs instead of the elevator is we got to see the huge bolts pictured below. We are not sure if they actually hold the statue but they are definitely not decoration.

It must have taken a big wrench to tighten
that bolt.

Gauchos

Gauchos
Are: Argentinian cowboys

Have: Capybara saddles

Can: Ride with no boots

These two pictures are from
Sticker dolly dressing around
the world.  The book has festivals
 from around the world.

Including festivals from the Gaucho
Festival in Argentina (above) to the
Rio Carnival in Brazil 

We watched a film called Ride Around the World about cowboys around the world. That is where I learned that Gauchos have capybara saddles and they ride with no boots.

Inuksuk

Evan's Inuksuk

On our first day of studying Canada, we covered the First Nations and the animals of Canada.  (The French and the English arrive later.)  Eskimo is an Algonquin word meaning "eaters of raw meat."  The 'eskimo' call themselves Inuit- "people".

Our hands-on project for the day was experimenting and building Inuksuk. 

Inuk means 'person' in the Inut language, suk means 'substitute'.

The inuksuk was used by the Inuit in Canada to show people the way.

Did you know Canada changed her map in 1995 to recognize the Nunavet Territory in Northeast Canada in 1995?  The Nunavut flag prominently features an Inuksuk and the North Star.

Xavier's first Inuksuk

The book we read to guide our project explained that the Inuksuk acted as Arctic messengers of stone.  It contained comments from several Inuit who were born in the 1915-1930s.  It seems that though Inuksuit are "people substitues", they are really not intended to look like people;  at least that is not the goal.  I saw many inuksuk trinkets in a Canadian souvenir shop this summer and I think that as their popularity spreads they will be increasingly equated with having a human like form.

A "hole" in an inuksuk communicates that direction that should be taken.

They can also have a more cairn like shape or arrow like features for pointing the way.

A larger inuksuk

Around the world in 15 weeks. . .

or maybe 16 or 17.  Evan requested studying other countries this semester.  We had somewhat skipped over a unit that included Japan in order to study New York and Connecticut (Ahem, boys where are those posts?) before our summer trip.   I had already collected some resources for that, so we're off!  We are taking the rest of the summer to do some miscellaneous stuff, but we already started reading Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (a French author- nice how that works out.) It's a hit with the boys so far, although the vocabulary is challenging for them.  The DVD of one of the movie versions is waiting for us, also. This past weekend, I outlined what our semester might look like.

Starting Monday August 26- Each country 1 week, unless noted.
Canada
France (2 weeks)
Spain
Mexico
South America (TBD)
Ancient Baghdad
Japan (2 weeks)
India
Morocco
Tanzania
South Africa
Australia (2 weeks)

The order is something similar to that, but I don't have my calendar in front of  me and I need to get off the computer instead of finding it.  We interrupted our sleep last night to go out and look at meteors from the Perseid shower.  Xavier was non-responsive at 4am, but very disappointed today that he missed it.  He told me to "drop him on the floor" to wake him up and if that didn't work to "pull his ears"!  He really wants to see a shooting star.

On a final note, the boys put together my old world map puzzle (pictured above).  Cole quickly pointed out that it has the USSR instead of Russia and the current countries; Evan is displeased with the Mercator projection which causes Greenland to appear larger than the United States; and it is missing two edge pieces. Update:  Both pieces have been found. . . though I had decided that since the earth has neither edges or corners, the missing pieces weren't such a big deal.   Hmmmm, maybe someone will get a new map puzzle for his birthday. . . .

Throwback Thursday

 I found this picture of Brad in Little League in a green and yellow uniform.  I wanted to recreate it with Evan and green and yellow uniform this year.  The programs that I tried to use to age Evan's picture kept crashing.  If I wait for it to be perfect, you'll never see it.  So I hope you enjoy it anyway.  Below are two "action shots" of Evan catching and batting.  Both Cole and Evan's teams won their little mid-season tournament, so they are "City Champs."

Easter pictures

 And lest you think we are a picture perfect family. . . ..