Holidays around the world part 1

Our trip around the world started this week and I must say I have become addicted to Google Earth!  We applied for our passports and were approved for travel.  Each day we started our trip at Parsley.  Using Google Earth we were able to really get a good picture of our place in the world.  We started out at school, zoomed out to our surrounding neighborhoods, then on to our city, moving out to our state, and then to our country and continent.  As we zoomed out we kept our eye on the pin that represented Parsley.  Once we got our bearings we were off! 

Our journey started in Mexico. We looked around Mexico at the beaches and some of the Mayan ruins.  We read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tommie dePaola and made the Flor de La Noche Buena  We listened to mariachi music as we wrote about the holidays in Mexico.

Next we travelled to merry ole England.  We had to fly across the Atlantic to get there!  We visited Buckingham palace to say hi to the Queen.  We saw Big Ben and Stonehenge.  We learned that Christmas cards was a tradition that originated in England.  We made cards to send to a nursing home for the residents.  We read that children send letters to Father Christmas by throwing them in the fire and he reads the smoke.

We visited France next on our world tour.  We loved seeing the Eiffel tower! 

Italy was next on our stop.  We read about La Befana, a good witch who delivers gifts to children on Jan. 6th.  We watched a holiday storyteller from Epcot tell the story of La Befana.  You can watch below

Our  final stop for the week was in Germany.  A storyteller (also from Epcot) told us about holiday traditions in Germany.  Did you know that is where the tradition of decorating trees for the holiday began?  We made trees in math by ordering strips of paper from longest to shortest and decorating them.