Our Trip To Italy: A Homeschool Dramatic Play Unit
It’s October. How’s your homeschool year going? 😂😂
When I think of these past two months, all I can hear is Tamela Mann singing “Truth is I’m tired.” Not the entire song (Take Me to The King, just 0:35-0:39). Just that one line. Because the truth is I’m really tiiiirrrrrreeeeddddd!
But when I look back over the past few weeks, I feel encouraged. None of it went the way I thought it would. There was frustration, a bit of discouragement, and a generous amount of overwhelm, too. Tears came from everyone involved. But we pushed through, and now I feel we have a better grip on how we learn and also how I teach. We learned a lot and had so much fun!
We went to Italy!!!
Through reading and dramatic play, that is.
The trip started with Mama—that’s me!— reading (most of) The Italian Way from DK Travel. This is such a wonderful book. NOW I WANT TO GO FOR REAL!!!! I’m nearly salivating remembering the beautiful food and scenery featured in this book. And since my littler learner leans toward science and geography, I decided to pull out our favorite illustrated children’s atlas and took note of what was featured: food, architecture, art, and vehicles. He was interested, so I decided to create a full unit study on this beautiful country. Unlike my previous homeschooling efforts, this one seemed to work. (Thank you, Lord!)
Our Italian Restaurant
A big part of Italy is its cuisine, so I decided to set up an Italian restaurant, featuring yummy pizza, amazing gelato, tasty pasta, and delicious coffee, all made with love and play-dough from my little chef. Time restraints and fatigue wouldn’t allow me to set up the restaurant all at once, so I added props and supplies every day until it was full.
In addition, I wrote a small mini-lesson for each day that focused on something about Italy. I aimed to simply expose my child to the country and focus on their development, so no formal tests or quizzes were given. I did, however, include lots of vocabulary, which seemed to work out well. I ended up creating word cards and strips to aid independent reading and speech, and it worked wonderfully.
No pressure. No tears. But lots of giggles and laughter. Some topics were more interesting than others, so we didn’t get to all of them. They’re on the shelf, though, ready to be read whenever interest strikes again. I grouped these lessons with a separate read-aloud, vocabulary words, art, and a little bit of math. Some topics were repeated for more than one day.
The first lesson was all about Italy. We read the non-fiction reader, went over vocabulary, and also read Our World: Italy by Francesca Di Marzo. (Please note the paperback version has more information than the board book, and is the version we read.)
PIZZA DAY
The second lesson was about pizza. We had so much fun kneading and rolling play dough crust and preparing pizza orders. I was able to incorporate a little bit of math by weighing the dough on a food scale and writing the numbers on a worksheet. We used pizza pieces from our IKEA set for toppings while using our pizza-themed word strips. We also read The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) by Philomen Sturges. Fun was had by all.
PASTA DAY
The fun really kicked in when we added pasta to the restaurant. I whipped up a big batch of red rice to use as pasta sauce, then poured and mixed it with the various types of pasta that we “boiled and strained” on the stove. The most fun, however, was using our manual pasta roller to make spaghetti. Who knew blue noodles with meatballs and shrimp could be so yummy? I didn’t, but now I do! <3
The pasta roller was the real hit, here. It was so fun to see the creativity pour out of my little one. They played with it for hours and often came back to it after other activities. I think it may stay out for a while, even after our Italy unit is finished.
Gelato DAY
How can you visit Italy without taking the time to enjoy gelato? In our reader, We All Scream For Gelato! we learned that it comes in many different colors, and those colors often tell you the flavor of the gelato. We added it to our Italian restaurant by using scoops from a toy ice cream set. We also took advantage of the gelato sale that just so happened to be on at our local grocery store. (I like chocolate chips in my gelato. My child does not.)
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
Our last stop in Italy (for now) was at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Honorable Mentions
We didn’t get to everything that I’d planned for this unit, but I’d still like to share. We enjoyed All The Way To America by Dan Yaccarino and Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta by Aimee Lucido. And though I tried to give a lesson on Leonardo Da Vinci, Hot Wheels and race track construction operations through piles of red rice proved to be more important. I decided to simply show pages from our Children's Book of Art to review his work instead.
Anyway, that’s what we have so far.
Enjoy.
LaShanda