Ireland Studies

We began our Ireland unit around St. Patrick's Day. I wrote about the books we've used and Irish related activities we did during that time here. We still had a few activities left to wrap up our unit, which we finished this week. One thing we did was watch a few videos on youtube, etc. about Ireland. We also watched a few Irish jigs on youtube and practiced doing it ourselves. We may have even gotten Daddy involved. But, sadly, I don't have any photos to prove it.

For our St. Patrick's Day meal, we had eaten GREEN foods. So for this family fun night, we ate an IRISH meal, which consisted of Corned "Beef" (actually seitan) & Cabbage, Potato Soup, Apple Mash, and Irish Soda Bread (so easy!). I wrote about our meal on my food blog. For table decorations, I found Irish flags online, printed them, cut them out, and scattered them around.

I managed to come up with five different green ribbons around the house. I told them I was using different shades of green to remind them that Ireland is a country known to have "40 shades of green." (I also want to do an art project with every shade of green crayon I can find.)

Two of the books we read recently, Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka & Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato (both by Tomie dePaolo) were the inspiration for our potato activities:

In Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato, the townsfolk grow sick of eating potatoes after awhile.

Here are just a few of the ways we've eaten potatoes lately, in honor of Jamie O'Rourke: potato soup, Apple Potato Mash, french fries, and fried potatoes. We've also eaten tater tots and roasted potatoes & roasted sweet potatoes.

I got out the Mr. Potato Heads for the kids to play with. And then they made Potato Head puppets. I cut out a potato head shape from a brown paper bag. Some of their facial features and accessories were drawn & cut out by them, and I helped on some of them, like the hands. My 10 year old (not surprisingly) wanted to go in his own direction by making a "Spider-Man Potato Head." :)

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