Homeschool World's Fair

This past Wednesday, we participated in a homeschool world's fair. The idea was that each homeschool family choose a country to study and then create a booth dealing with the country. About 10 families participated and it was loads of fun!

We chose The Philippines (of course) and had a ball putting our project together. The former high school teacher in me started planning all kinds of grand and complicated things for our backboard. We checked out a few books from the library and began reading. And then the boys got really bored about half way through the first book. It was then that I remembered my kiddos have just finished first grade and preschool...they aren't ready for all the neat statistics and info that I was trying to find. So I began thinking like a lower elementary student. What kind of things would they find interesting? And how should be best approach decorating our backboard?

After talking to the boys, we decided we would focus on everything fun about the Philippines. After all, what do people REALLY remember at these types of events? The fun stuff! Only teachers actually read all the info...and there weren't any typical teachers present! So we flipped through the books and scanned Wikipedia for anything fun and interesting to kids. Since Rob and I have a wealth of info already on our country of choice, we were able to easily direct the kids. We had one whole side of the backboard dedicated to food (lumpia and halo halo, anyone?), another side with rice terraces and dancers, and we did our more "serious" info in the middle (flag, pic of the capital, map, etc.) Ben, Anna, and I used the Big shot to cut out letters in the colors of the flag, Matthew cut out pics and matted them, I glued them to the board. We found a game from the Philippines, a dress shirt that Ben had worn, a Filipino version of Coke, and missionary cards that we were able to add to our display.

I found a sitter for Anna that day so I wouldn't have to chase her around the room and we were off. We got our booth set up in no time (yay for really big backboards!) and were able to wander around and see what everyone else had done. The boys learned about China, Guatemala, Japan, Egypt, Romania, Ghana, India, Ireland, and Germany. Many of the booths had food and the boys decided we need to add that next year. We were planning to make lumpia (Filipino eggrolls) but Rob had to work that day and I don't know how to make them.

Speaking of Rob, he showed up in between jobs to visit us, but just as he arrived, Ben came out of the bathroom and had had an accident. Rob ran him to Kohl's to buy some new shorts and came back in time to leave again :( Poor guy...some days we just don't know if he's coming or going!

It was a great way to end our school year and the kids really enjoyed the fair. I asked them if they actually read any info and they told me no, so I knew we did the right thing by focusing on pictures :)