Favorite Friday- Favorite Country International Fair

Avery's International Fair with her Girl Scout Troop was supposed to be this weekend. Elise's International Fair at school would have taken place earlier this month. Both girls were sad about missing their special day, so I wanted to create our own International Fair Celebration. For our favorite country selections we ended up choosing Germany and Ireland. We chose them because we are mostly German/Irish and we actually had costumes/decor from both countries.

I had some cool international paper goods left over from last year's International Day. We have lots of books from around the world and a few books on our ancestry. I found a world map, some Euros, various brochures, post cards, and souvenirs for our display.

I bought Elise's German costume for her International Day at school last year and she didn't end up needing it (I got overly excited when I read the email late one night and thought we were supposed to dress up but we were only supposed to bring a dish.) So Elise finally got to wear her German outfit. It was quite small, oops! She looked adorable but she looked like she should be serving drinks at the local Oktoberfest.

For Avery's Irish costume, I unpacked her St. Patrick's day outfit from the St. Patrick's Day bin. I resisted the temptation to get down all of my St. Patrick's Day decorations. We typically have a big St. Patrick's Day party but sadly that was another event sidelined by COVID-19.

I downloaded a fun handout for each country on teacherspayteachers.com. See below. The girls learned fun facts, wrote about their country, and colored their country flag. Avery had done a little work already on Ireland with her Girl Scout Troop. We then listened to some traditional music from each country and did a little dancing. Each girl then spent a few minutes presenting on their country.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ireland-Booklet-Country-Study-1681146

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Germany-Booklet-a-country-study-731519

For dinner we went with the obvious stereotype choices and kept it pretty simple. For Germany we enjoyed Brezel and Beer (apple cider for the kids, we aren't that authentic!) We cooked up some potatoes for the Irish in us. No way anyone was eating schntizel or corn beef and hash so we cooked what we knew they would enjoy.

After dinner, we looked through a photo album of our 2002 trip to Germany and read through some old post cards. The girls loved seeing pictures of a young Mommy and Daddy traveling Europe.

The day ended with a complete destruction of international peace. It was our absolute worst meltdown in quarantine. A shuffle broke out between Germany (Elise) and Ireland (Avery). Germany attacked Ireland (I know right? No surprises there.) When the US (Mommy & Daddy) stepped in with sanctions (no night swimming and early bed time) it led to an ugly war between all countries. The US did declare victory that evening but a peace treaty was not reached until morning.