CULTURE: Hungarian for an afternoon

Because we were rowing through "Hanna's Cold Winter," I went searching for a taste of Hungarian culture in the Twin Cities, and discovered that there's not only a Minnesota Hungarian group but that they have a holiday festival. And so we signed up and went!

December 6th is a special day in Hungary. Mikulas (St. Nicholas) is coming to town on this day.
On the evening of the 5th of December children polish their boots and put them in the window. During the night, Mikulás (St. Nicholas) will come and fill their boots with candy, fruit, chocolate Mikulas figures and small gifts. That is, if they have been good! Naughty children receive a bundle of twigs, usually with a krampusz-figure attached (Krampusz: is Mikulas' helper, a mean goblin who punishes bad children). Since no child is all good or all bad, most get the bundle of twiggs and the presents.

The event started off with presentations from students in their Hungarian language program, and concluded with a visit from Mikulas, who passed out treat bags and posed for photos. Then there was a potluck, and we got to taste Hungarian food. It was great to be surrounded as much as we could with Hungarian music, language, food, and people. What a fun thing to stumble upon!

FIAR: Visit to Italy through Papa Piccolo

Ah, Italy. Bellissimo Italiano.

With The Girl's love of language and my love of travel, we could have kept going forever with this study on Italy. And The Boy was along for the ride. (Well, mostly the catnip tea, which he can't get enough of.)

As always, we started off with the Homeschool Share lapbook; here is the link to the one on Italy.

I love the free country landmark sheets from Education.com, because they show the flag, and important landmarks, with a few other activities. Here's the link for the one on Italy. 

COLOR THEORY
The color wheel is fundamental to good art, and so we did a few experiments with colored water, a handout protected within a ziplock bag, and eye droppers. Here is the link to the free printable we used. The artwork we made on a paper towel was hung up and displayed for several months. It was so cool!

Here's the color wheel activity page that served as our guide (and reminder).  Here's another color wheel handout we used.

We meant to paint like Michelangelo by taping paper to the bottom of a table, but never did because then I saw the idea of re-creating a taller structure so folks could stand and paint the bottom of a surface (like this), and thought that would be so much better. Better, but not something I figured out how to do. Another time.

ARTISTS: MICHELANGELO AND DAVINCI
There is so much about the Renaissance and artwork that we could have talked about, but this time around I thought we would just get to know a few of the artists. I started off with focusing on Michelangelo, but then tales of Leonardo da Vinci slipped in.