The Australia Report

Leah is putting together a backboard about Australia for her World Tour presentation to her class. This is something that the Kindergarten does each year. Natalie was in Kindergarten for 2 years and presented Japan and Sweden. Now, because my brother and his wife and my three nephews moved to Australia a few weeks ago, our family is learning all about a new country!

Here is what she has so far:

The Australia flag which she colored in (I found a nice flag outline at the Australian government website: itsanhonour.gov.au)

The words to the Australian National Anthem

A page of National Symbols she drew showing the colors (green and gold), the gemstone (opal), the floral emblem (the golden wattle), and the capital (Canberra)

A picture she drew of things which come from Australia:
wool, wheat, sugar, apples, gold, silver, pearls

A picture she drew showing Spring here and Autumn in Australia

A pictures she drew showing Day here and Night in Australia
(one of our resource books recommends www.worldtimeserver.com to see the current time in Australia)

A picture showing that Australia is about the same size as the United States of America (which I traced from the World Book Encyclopedia)

A picture she drew of plants from Australia (we also got this information from the World Book)

Three pictures she drew of animals from Australia: yellow-tailed black cockatoo, eastern grey kangaroo, red-necked wallaby
(from an EXCELLENT book called Wallaby Creekby Joyce Ann Powzyk)

A map of Major Australian Rivers which we printed from Enchanted Learning and then Leah colored over it to show areas of Rain Forest, Eucalyptus Forest, Woodland and Desert -- we got this information from the Wallaby Creek book

A picture she drew in the style of Aboriginal cave paintings
(Global Art: Activities, Projects, and Inventions from Around the Worldby MaryAnn Kohl has a great activity for this: "Dreamtime Painting" p.141)

Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions from Around the Worldwith the page flagged that tells the Aboriginal Australians tradition for a tooth that falls out

A vial of eucalyptus essential oil

A skein of Australian merino wool
(Did you know that there are more sheep than people in Australia??? 100 million more, to be exact.)


Because Rebecca is sick and we can't go out to purchase a backboard, she is writing all her information on sheets of paper and then we can glue it on Monday evening.


Still to come:

The Anzac Cookie recipe from 101cookbooks.com, my absolute favorite cooking blog and I was amazed to find Heidi's recipe as one of the top Google searches for ANZAC

Picture books from Australia:
The Singing Snake, an Australian Aboriginal folktale

Pete the Sheep-Sheep