Week 5: England!

This week I asked MonkeyD which country she wanted to learn about.  I didn't actually expect an answer, but sometimes it's fun asking a question to see what a three year old's answer will be.  She surprised me and instantly responded, "London."  She had just watched the new Tinkerbell movie and Tinkerbell's trip to London was fresh in her mind :-)  So, we embarked upon our exploration of the England. 

I thought that learning about England would be overwhelming because of a surplus in information available.  But, I didn't actually find that to be the case.  Most of my Google searches for "English culture", "England customs", etc., gave me results geared towards people in foreign countries that are trying to learn the English language.

MonkeyD has been enjoying roaming about the BBC's children's website, The BBC's CBeebies, playing games and watching their video clips for several months now.  Without directly meaning to, I think that this website gives her a British experience through the cartoon characters' accents and some of the words that they use that we don't normally use.

We also explored http://projectbritain.com/, a guide to Britich life, customs and culture. 

Our librarians were very helpful and the books that we brought home with us included:

• The Inside-Outside Book of London by Roxie Munro - which doesn't tell a story, but is just illustrations of some of the famous places of London.  
• Madeline in London by Ludwig Bemelmans - Madeline journeys to London to visit her friend.  The illustrations depict some of the things that we had been talking about for London such as the palace guards, tea time, London Bridge, double decker buses and the British flag. 
• The Secret Staircase and Autumn Story by Jill Barklem.  These stories seem a little long for MonkeyD's age, but she surprised me by staying interested in them and requesting them more than once.  They are part of a series about some mice that live in a hedgerow in England.  As written on the book jacket, the author's "interest in natural history and traditional rural customs and crafts has spilled over into these chronicles of hedgerow life."
• Dodsworth in London by Tim Egan.  This was one of my favorites of the books that we read this week as far as introducing things from London.  It's about Dodsworth, a mole, who takes a trip to London who mixes up his duck with the royal duck of England.  Several facts about London's landmarks are mentioned and illustrated throughout the short story.
• Paddington Bear and Paddington Bear in the Garden by Michael Bond.  These books didn't particularly mention anything about English culture, but it was a good time to introduce MonkeyD to the classic Paddington books.  This week was her first introduction to Madeline books too! 

The movies that we watched were Mary Poppins, 101 Dalmations II Patch's London Adventure and Mickey's Seeing the World. 

We didn't get very crafty this week, but MonkeyD and Grandma did put together the Bobby from DLTK's website. 

We planned a few of our meals and snacks based on suggestions in Cooking the English Way by Barbara Hill.  We followed this cookbook's recipes for our English breakfast of mushrooms on toast (except we had it as lunch!), for our Hearty Autumn Hot Pot dinner, and for the scones we made for an afternoon tea.  At our afternoon tea we had English breakfast tea, but also a fruity raspberry pomegranate tea, as I thought that might be more appealing to MonkeyD.  We also had some Cadbury Digestives with our tea.  Fresh from the oven scones with jam and butter went over very well at our house!  

One evening we had shepherd's pie for dinner.  Ours may not have been a very traditional English style though.  We were in the Halloween mood and followed the Kraft recipe for Scary Skillet Shepherd's Pie.  We only followed the recipe loosely, using what we had on hand, but whether traditional or not, it was yummy! 

We also had a fish and chips dinner - the simplest version.  This meal went over very well.  I just bought frozen fish sticks and french fries...I mean chips!  We all enjoyed our chips with salt and vinegar.