Look Inside: Santa's Tasty Trip Around the World

Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Waldock Way. My name is Jessica. And today's video is going to be a look inside our brand new Santa's Tasty Trip Around the World. This study was inspired by our favorite picture book, A World of Cookies from Santa. And it is going to be a funtastic way to spend Christmas. We are going to explore each of the places that he visits in the book and make each of the recipes and learn a little along the way. Let me go ahead and show you inside the study now. Inside Santa's Tasty Trip Around the World, the very first thing that you will find is an introduction. So the introduction is going to give you kind of an overview of what to expect, what you're gonna be doing, and how you can use this unit study in your homeschool. Next, you will see the table of contents. The table of contents gives you an overview of the 32 locations that you're gonna be traveling to, as well as the 32 treats that Santa eats at each of those locations. Now, just because there is 32 of them does not mean that you have to do all of them. We made this in a very flexible manner so that you could do as much or as little as you want. You can pick maybe the first four this year. You could go through and pick five. You can make it a bingo. You can really do whatever you want. It's super flexible, and so you can make it work for your family and your homeschool. Zero pressure. Next, we have the unit study page. This is probably one of my favorite pages in all of our unit studies, because this is where you get all the extra goodness. So here is going to be all of your suggested books for additional reading. Again, suggested, not required. There is no required resource for this study. These are all additional books that would be great additions, but you don't have to have them. Here is a clickable link as well as a QR code that can be scanned for YouTube video playlist, and the same for a Pinterest board if you like to do crafts. And then down here, there are some helpful additional links for further research and trivia and quizzes if you have a kid like mine who likes to do trivia and quizzes themselves. Next, you have a track your tasty trip around the world map. You are going to be traveling to many different places, as many possibly as 32. So it is going to be really fun to be able to track that. So with this map, you can have your kid mark it, and then they can even draw lines to how you did it and what order, just to kind of see where all Santa travels during his tasty trip. And then for each location that you're going to be stopping, you're going to have something similar to this. So this is Christmas Island. There is coconut macaroons as the tasty treat Santa's gonna be eating. Here is what Christmas Island looks like so that you're getting in a little bit of basic geography. And then this is kind of what the cookie is going to look like. Now, these are left in black outlines in case your kids would like to color them, but again, they're not required to. Here are the ingredients and the directions for making coconut macaroons. And then we tried to put just a little short factoid up there at the top. So for instance, sweetened condensed milk is a favorite ingredient on Christmas Island as it's easier to store than fresh milk. Combined with coconut, it makes a sweet, moist cookie. So right from the get-go, you're getting just a little bit more information about Christmas Island and the cookie you're going to be making. And then you can choose to do this portion before or after, but we are probably going to do it after we have made the cookie. There is more information about the location, how they celebrate Christmas, something that's special to them, something about them, things they do differently. So for instance, Christmas Island. People on Christmas Island get to celebrate the holidays one day ahead of the rest of the world since they are the very first country west of the world dateline. So the kids on Christmas Island are the very first to open their Christmas presents. Christmas Island, now known as Kiritmati, was discovered on Christmas Eve by Captain Cook in 1777. This beautiful island is the world's largest atoll. An atoll is an island with a ribbon reef surrounding a lagoon. Since most of the island's food supplies are imported and coconut grows abundantly, the Christmas cookies found on this Pacific Ocean island are made with flaked coconut and shelf-stable condensed milk. Now they've learned even more geography, more about the place, more about why those cookies are the ones that they've made, and then they can mark down here whether they enjoyed the treat the Santa ate, yes or no. So did they like those coconut macaroons? And then here, they can practice some writing with why or why not. Now if your kids are not independent writers yet, it's okay, you can just write for them. Ask them, why didn't you like it? What did it taste like? What was the texture? What was the things you liked about it or didn't like about it? You know, did you not like baking it? Did you not like the way it felt or whatever it is, you can just write for them. It's just kind of a way to get them thinking descriptively about what they're eating. And then like I said, every location is a very similar layout. Now in the back, there is something for either older kids as an extension or further research if you would like, and it is a one page very in-depth report on the location. So you could choose if you have older children to have them do one of these pages for each location you visit, or you could choose to have your child at the end pick maybe their favorite and just do one deep dive. So this, they're going to do the location, color where it's at, draw the flag. You have all of this geographical goodness. You have the coordinates, the area, the bordering countries, the climate, the terrain, the lowest, highest points, the natural resources. Here's more about the people in the society. Here's more about the government, the economy, additional facts. So a really great deep dive into the location. So like I said, you can have an older child do it for each place you visit, or you could do it at the very end and have them pick their favorite. Last but not least, we have Santa's tasty trip around the world game. It wouldn't be a Walled Off Way unit study if there wasn't a game included. And this one is super fun. So you will either take a game pawn if you have extra ones. If not, we have provided game player pieces on the directions page and place it at start right next to Santa. Each player will then take one of the color cards, they'll be flipped over obviously, and they will move either forward or backwards to the nearest corresponding color. When the players land on a coral or a red round cookie spot, they get to answer a trivia question. If they answer the trivia question correct, they get a cookie card. If it is coral, they get a one point cookie card. And if it's red, they get a two point cookie card. The player who earns eight points worth of cookie cards first is the winner.