Polish cake and learning about countries

Today, Miss Belle and I made mazurek wielkanocny which is a Polish Easter cake. Yes, it is a bit late but we didn't quite get to make it at the right time. The recipe came in our Polish parcel from the cultural exchange. It is an unusual recipe requiring grated hard boiled egg yolk-still it tasted good although it doesn't look as professional as the one on the recipe picture-do they ever?

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We've loved the cultural exchange for learning about other countries. The other resource that is popular here is the UsborneJigsaw World atlas -simple enough for a five year old, and even our three year old enjoys joining in.

This was our Polish package..

It had sweet goodies,

a beautiful painted egg,

amber,

Polish coins  (euros),

a cut out of an egg made with sheep shearers-quite amazing,

a sweet little sheep made from corn, I think,

and more besides-postcards, leaflets, a map, a book about the culture, egg decoration and information about the country.

Next year, I'm hoping to extend this and learn about countries in little mini-projects-unit studies if you like- lasting 6-8 weeks. We've done this a couple of times before, with Middle Son, and this has been very successful but now hope to do this with the younger children. Successful components before included

• map work including salt dough and cookie maps as well as more traditional maps
• cooking
• history
• read alouds
• music
• industry
• interview with person from the country
• famous artists and their pictures

There is so much more that can be done-just need to decide where to start!