Aussie Eats: Shrimp on the Barbie

Our cooking project this week is an obvious choice for Australia–shrimp on the barbie! The kids think it’s cool to say barbie and I think it’s cool that they going to give shrimp a try. This is a simple recipe and since HZ didn’t get to participate in the word search activity yesterday he’s going to help prepare the shrimp without the girls today.

We start with 16 shrimp…

HZ chops some parsley into small pieces and sprinkles some (about 2 tablespoons) over the shrimp. We also add about a tablespoon of minced garlic and toss them together in a bowl.

Next some fresh black pepper…

1/8 cup of olive oil…

And a good squeeze of lemon…

Mix it all up…

And carefully skewer four shrimp at a time

Now they are “barbie”-ready and while they cook and cool we read some great storybooks set in Australia. Who’s Upside Down is new to us but it’s written by Crockett Johnson, the author of Harold and the Purple Crayon, and had a similar quality. For a simple story it’s quite clever and thought-provoking. A good one!

CZ says the Biggest Frog in Australia is her favorite so far and Rainbow Bird tells a great Aborigine folktake that reminds us how important fire was to the Australian Aboriginals. They used fire to prepare the land for farming, to communicate with each other over distances (smoke signals), to clear paths, to kill poisonous snakes, and to cook their food…And this bring us back to the BBQ and our shrimp…Served with a squeeze of fresh lemon…

The girls love them! Great job HZ!

Animals of the Outback

To the kids, the most famous Australians are the koala bears and kangaroos! We learn some cool things about them and all the other animals of the outback from the fact-filled book Australia’s Amazing Birds and Animals.

We decide to have some fun with the book and make it into a game.

First the girls take turns reading sections to each other.

And then each pick a type of word game to make for the other.

AZ picks her 10 favorite animals and hides them in a word search.

CZ decides to make a crossword puzzle and uses her favorite animal fun facts as clues. The finished product:

And AZ’s:

Now for the fun part! Solving each others!

HZ wants to get in on the fun.

Both puzzles are actually pretty challenging! Good job girls!

Here are some cool things that we learned about Australian animals:
-Koalas are marsupials just like kangaroos and they also carry their babies in a pouch but their pouch opens backwards to protect the baby from tree branches, since koalas spend almost all of their time in eucalyptus trees.

-A platypus is a monotreme, a rare form of mammal that lays eggs. The male platypus has a poison spur in each of his hind legs.

-The frogmouth bird is nocturnal and camouflages itself to look like a tree stump during the day as protection.

-There are over 100 types of snakes in Australia but the longest is the pipe on that can grow to over 20 feet in length.

-The flying fox is actually a bat that gets its name from its pointy ears and nose.

-Small wallabies and padmelon can look like rats but hop upright on their hind legs like kangaroos.

-While the Australian marsupials rear one baby a season, estuarine crocodile can lay up to eighty eggs at a time!

Aboriginal Arts and Crafts

Australian aboriginals made beautiful beaded jewelry by stringing together shells, bones or painted rocks. They used ochre, in varying tones, mixed with water to paint the rocks, and also to paint their skin. We see some great examples of this in Festivals of the World: Australia. We decide to make our own necklaces out of shells and head to the beach to find some pretty ones…

It’s a great day for the beach…

And the little islands in the distance remind us a bit of the islands of Australia…

HZ puts his Mickey glasses on to help him spot some good shells…

The tide is low so many of the shells we find still have someone living them!

Check out all of these clams…

And one horseshoe crab in the rocks!

We find lots of good shells in the marsh…

And some smooth rocks to save for painting another day

After dinner and a long day at the beach we pour out our shells and give them a good wash…

Out of the soapy water crawls a little crab!!

Once we have washed all the shells and carefully poked a hole through them with a nail and hammer (and set the crab up in a temporary home!) we’re ready to make some necklaces…

We use a mixture of shells and beads.

CZ pays tribute to Australia with hers..

It’s tricky to string the shells without breaking them so the kids take their time…

The finished product..Ready to wear!

Dreamtime: A Dreamy beginning

The Aborigines are thought to have arrived in Australia by boat some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. From the interesting book The First Peoples of Australia: The Aboriginal Peoples we learn a lot about their history and culture. The term ab origine is latin for “from the beginning” and the Aboriginies in Australia are known to be the first inhabitants of the country. These native Australians were grouped into about 250 tribes with different names and languages. The Koori people came from Koori lands, for example, and the Murri people lived in what is now Queensland.The name Aborigine was given to the natives by the British when they first settled in Australia in the late 1700’s.

When the British arrived in Australia they quickly found conflict with the natives and using more sophisticated weapons (guns vs boomerangs and spears!) were able to defeat the Aborigines with ease. Within 50 years of the British invasion, the Aborigine population was reduced to one tenth of what it had been. By the 19th century, English settlers had established their own rules, religion and social practices, just like they had when they settled in North America.

The Aboriginal people were not treated as equals and were only allowed to live in certain areas. It was not until 1967 that they were considered to be Australian citizens. To recognize the unfair treatment of the Aborigines since the British arrival, a national annual holiday called Sorry Day was established in 1998 and is celebrated every May 26th. (We like the idea of Sorry Day and think we should adopt it!) Today there are about 250,000 Aborigines living throughout Australia and Tasmania, although many of them live a modern lifestyle and only some have kept to the traditional bark huts and living off the land.

From Exploration in Australia we learn more about the Aborigine beliefs. We read about Dreamtime, the beginning of time, according to the Aborigines, when the spirits of their ancestors came from the sky and created the mountains, rivers, and the people and animals of the land. Once the spirits had brought life to the earth they returned to the sky and the Aborigines paid tribute to these spirits as the basis for their religion through stories, song and dance. They also took special care of the natural elements they found especially sacred, like the mountains. Over the last several weeks we have read about many different religious beliefs but the kids especially like the idea of Dreamtime!

Because the climate varies throughout the country different Aborigine tribes needed different types of clothes–some wearing only small cloths or skirts made of leaves, while others wearing warmer outfits made of animal skins. Many of the tribes adorned themselves with jewelry made of feathers or sea shells. The girls think this sounds pretty and it inspires our craft for tomorrow!

Australia–Week 6–G’day Mate!

We start week 6 feeling a bit of relief that we are on to Australia — with so many fewer counties and cultures than Asia, Africa and Europe, we think it will be a bit more manageable to learn about in a week! Afterall, we share the same language and much the same traditions and cuisine. But things take a bit of turn when we pull out the atlases and globe…

We know that Australia is both a country and a continent, but learn that the continent is sometimes called Sahul, Australinea or Meganesia, to include the neighboring islands, which were once a part of the main island of Australia (Officially called the Commonwealth of Australia), until the land broke away thousands of years ago. From The Children’s World Atlas we learn that New Zealand and some of the nearby islands technically sit on a mainly submerged continent called Zealandia. Zealandia and the greater area of Australia combine into a region called Oceania or Australasia. Getting a bit more complicated than we thought!

For now we keep it simple and focus on the country of Australia. And actually the country itself keeps things straightforward by dividing along straight lines of longitude and latitude into 6 states–Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the island of Tasmania. The terrain and culture are similar to America’s in many ways. There are dry areas in the center of the country (called the outback), and warmer areas by the coast. There are modern cities and smaller suburbs and towns, and lots of farming area. Just like in America, the British claimed and settled in Australia several hundred years ago and brought with them their traditions and religion. Although in Australia, it wasn’t until the early 1900’s that the six British colonies federated and became one nation, with the colonies officially becoming the states of the Commonwealth of Australia.

While there are many similarities between the US and Australia, it’s easy to spot some differences. From a fun book called Top to Bottom Down Under we read about some of them. As we already know, the water swirls the opposite direction when you flush the toilet in Australia. This, the kids think, is a little bit cool, but they think it’s a lot more cool to read about the trees that lose their bark each winter instead of their leaves. And then there are the birds that live in underground holes, like moles, and can swim under water like fish, but can not fly. And the seasons, which are completely reversed from ours. Christmas is celebrated at the beach! Since December is so cold for us in the northeast, this is starting to sound a bit like a Dr Seuss world to the kids!

We also learn that the English in Australia has many words that we might not be familiar with. Like hooroo means good-bye, jumbuck means sheep, and oldies means parents! We decide to say hooroo to Australia for the night and look forward to learning more about it tomorrow 🙂