Expedition Earth: Venezuela

Buen Dia’! Welcome to our Expedition Earth week on Venezuela! Did you know that kids in Venezuela have hot chocolate for breakfast? It’s a very thick soupy pudding mixture that children dip bread in! We didn’t have any soupy hot chocolate, but did try our own U.S. version, and frankly they were just happy to have hot chocolate for breakfast! ;o)

So of course we started off our week by finding Venezuela on the map, then stamping our passports!

Here are some more of the things we covered this week:

• Located Venezuela & the Caribbean Sea on the map and completed our worksheet
• How to say “Hello” in Spanish – Hola (Hello) Buen Dia’ (Good Day)!
• Prayed for the Venezuelan people
• Read Children Just Like Me Book
• Completed our mini lap book activity
• Learned about and classified 6 animals of Venezuela
• Geography from A-Z Vocab: Waterfall, Cataract, Cascade
• Read: Living World Encyclopedia (Continued our Rainforest Animals reading)
• Did Paint Your Own Pottery
• Read: Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography (The Caribbean)
• Made a Fiesta mask
• Learned about Angel Falls: The highest waterfall in the world
• Made our own waterfall (outside of course!)
• Made Quesillo (“Little Cheesecake”)

Here are some of the highlights from our week:

We learned details about Venezuela, learned about the flag, and then worked on our mapping and flag pages:

We learned about 6 fun animals found in or near Venezuela. I say ‘near’ because one was lived in the ocean ;o)

Here were this weeks favorites: Pacarana, Boto, and Anaconda

Then we added them to our animal classification wall…anybody else out there running out of room on their wall?!

We made a recipe called “Quesillo” from the Another Trip Around the World book. I was a little concerned that we’d over cooked it (see below), but after tasting, I think it was supposed to be brown on the top.

It’s really more like a flan than a cheesecake. And the brown stuff on the top was the sugar layer that rose during cooking then crystalized on top for a crunchy sugar crust.

After learning about Angel Falls, the largest waterfall in the world, we decided to try and make our own. Our homemade waterfall was a favorite for the week. I’ll put up a more detailed post this weekend, but mainly we gathered as many supplies we could considering it is still basically winter in our region. We stacked the rocks in a Tupperware container and then added in some “greenery”. Then each kid took a turn pouring water down our waterfall.

Well that wraps up our week on Venezuela! Stay tuned as we head over to Peru next week!

Click here to learn more about my Expedition Earth World Geography curriculum!