Our Geography Club

This year, we've banded together with a few other families from our church to learn some geography together.

At the beginning of the semester, we got together to brainstorm and find out from the kids which countries they were most interested in learning about. For this semester, we have England, China, Belize and France on the docket. I hosted England in September, since my girls had lobbied for that topic. And this week, we celebrated our tiny fraction of knowledge of that vast nation known as China.

Basically, we gather once a month for potluck of dishes from our spotlighted country (motto: If You Cook it, They Will Come.) Then each of the children, ages 13 to 4, gives some sort of presentation on a topic completely of their own choosing.

The first month, Ian covered Weapons of Medieval Warfare in England. This month, he covered Weapons of Medieval Warfare in China. I can't wait 'til we get to Belize!

The girls have both confessed to feeling nervous about presenting to the group, but they've both gotten up there and, armed with visual aids, given two-minute presentations. Short and aesthetically appealing -- could you ask for better?

(Caroline's wearing the chi pao her aunt lent her and carrying the fan her doting uncle brought her from China.)

Our hostess taught  the children some Chinese characters and let them practice with calligraphy brushes.

For the potluck, we made our own fortune cookies. Would you believe that a) I found out two minutes before leaving the house that fortune cookies were actually invented in New York City, and b) I watched a how-to video online made  by Paula Deen???

(Confucius say, fortune cookies not contain fried eggs or Krispy Kreme donuts.)

(Confucius also say, fortune cookies normally crispy and not look like pancakes ... but we're just going to let Confucius sit quietly by himself in the corner.)

We made up our own fortunes, ranging from "Your fortune is ... a Nerf Gun attack!!!!!" (Ian) to "Good things come to those who wait," (Eliza) to "You are beautiful" (Caroline) to "You will leave your dirty socks at the Diller home very soon" (me).

It's almost frightening, the way I can predict the future.

Either that, or I'm scarily good at learning from the past.