Geography - Spain

I've decided to take Crumpet on a tour of the Spanish speaking countries of the world. I want him to see how widespread the language is, and to get an idea of how useful it would be to speak Spanish. First, I printed a world map and colored all of the Spanish speaking countries red. Then, we started our travels with Spain.
We looked through the overview book Spain: Enchantment of the World by Lura Rogers. We also wandered through the Spain section of the great website:KidsKonnect.com. There is a huge amount of information here. I showed Crumpet videos on YouTube that I thought would entertain him: one of flamenco dancing and some of La Tomatina, which is a crazy tomato festival in Bunol, Spain which ends up as a huge tomato fight and streets flooded with tomato sauce.
We read The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf again. Then we made our own little bull from a template at DLTK here:
We read a really great book about the Great Mosque of Cordoba. The Most Magnificent Mosque by Ann Jungman is a wonderful story about people of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths working together to save the mosque from destruction.
We made tortilla de patatas for dinner. This was one of my favorite meals in Spain, but it was vetoed by everyone in my house except me. But I'll eat anything... Then we had churros con chocolate for dessert. This was a big hit with my chocoholic child. And me, but I'll eat anything, especially chocolate.
We talked about 2 Spanish artists. Gaudi has been one of my absolute favorite artists since a visit to Barcelona years ago. His work is all over the city, and it covers a huge range of styles. I love this lizard in the Parc Guell:
We jumped from here to talking about mosaics, and I thought we could make our own mosaic art. I found these great sealife squares for making mosaics and I've been so excited to use them. What child doesn't like to cover himself in glue and just make a big hodge podge of colors?? Mine, it seems. He thought this was terrible cruelty and no art was created...
We also talked about Salvador Dali, because we found this great book: Dali and the Path of Dreams by Anna Obiols. This is a really neat book about dreams Dali had as a child which led to his crazy paintings in later life. Really fun, and the artwork in the book is great.

Lastly, we talked about Christopher Columbus and his journey to America from Spain. I did not plan for this to coincide with Columbus Day, but it was nice that it did! We read the book Columbus Day by Christina Mia Gardeski, which was written at the perfect level for Crumpet. It covers lots of details in an easy to understand manner.
Overall, this was a fun, quick introduction to Spain. It did not magically spark Crumpet's interest in speaking Spanish, and I think I'm going to put away the language program for a little while. He is flat out refusing to participate. We will continue our travels to Spanish speaking countries though. Next up, Mexico!
For more geography and history posts, visit Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.