Around the World Camp: Egypt

First camp is starting to wind down.  Just 2 more countries for our first world tour.

Our penultimate country is Egypt.

For Egypt, I recruited a little help from actual Egyptologist, and one of my "bestest" friends, Dr. Jenny.  She had some great suggestions for famous places and things (like Alexandria, the Suez Canal, the temples at Luxor, etc.) so it was just mummies and pyramids. She also helped identifying famous ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses and what they rule in the mythology, which was our cultural deep dive for the day.

Around the World Camp: United Kingdom

Hail Britannia!

Today we headed over to the United Kingdom.  As one of the more famous countries, this was an easier day for students.  The hardest thing we talked about was the difference between England/Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland, Britain, and the United Kingdom.  But identifying the more famous places and people was easy for students.  In fact, the hardest part was for me to narrow it down to 9 famous things.

For our cultural deep dive, we matched American-English and British-English names (like subway/underground, flashlight/torch, etc.) and even matched them to the Korean vocabulary (for my benefit). :)

Around the World Camp: Russia

Next stop, Russia!

Of course we start the day with the basics.  Where is it, what do they speak, etc., etc.?  We spend a little time on some of the more famous landmarks (like the St. Petersburg Palaces, Hermitage Museum, Red Square), people (Joseph Stalin, the missing Princess Anastasia legend), and cultural aspects (like Matryoshka dolls).  For our cultural "deep dive" we talked about Russian foods, which was not ideal given our craft project, but kids always like learning about food so that's what I went with.

For our project, we looked at one of my most favorite aspects of Russian culture, Faberge Eggs!

Around the World Camp: Mexico

Hola!  Next stop, Mexico!

Today was a really fun day for us because it was the all important, smash-hit cooking day!  We're making quesadillas!

After covering the basics, learning about the Mayans and hearing mariachi music, we talked about popular Mexican dishes.  We had a matching picture to term page about popular Mexican foods like tacos, enchiladas, tamales, etc.

Around the World Camp: India

Next stop for our camp was India.  I had a lot of ideas for this one, but time was a concern.  These early camps I used a few too many supplementary videos so our project time was cut short.  Also, these early camps needed projects that were easily accomplished so students wouldn't drop out early.

Around the World Camp: Italy

First stop on our Around the World Camp is Italy.

For Italy, we talked about the basics...geography, language, demonyms, flag, famous places, people, things, etc.  For our cultural "deep dive" we discussed pasta shapes and translated then from Italian to English (farfalle = butterfly, orecchiette = little ears, etc.)

Around the World Camp(s)

More or less, my summer and winter camp schedule has settled into a pattern.  The first camp I had after my surgery was scheduled to be 3 weeks long, so as I like to came a camp "theme," I decided to have a travel themed camp.  So after planning and prepping for almost a month, students were not signing up for a three week camp, so my school made the last minute decision to cut camp to 2 weeks.

That meant I had to cut a week's worth of lessons from the schedule.  A blessing and a curse.  Blessing because 2 weeks is about all I can handle with all the stress of preparing, teaching, shopping, etc. for camp.  Curse because I already had a rough outline for 3 weeks.  Hakuna matata, though, I'll just bounce the extra week's plan into the next camp.