The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Vanuatu

When my 12-year-old asked if we could start up The Educational Summer Vacation again, I said sure and asked him what countries he wanted to learn about. He picked Vanuatu, a country I've never heard of, so we both learned a lot this week! 

Some of the links in this post are my affiliate link, meaning that if you buy anything using those links I could receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!

Monday

Using our big wall map, the kids found the island country of Vanuatu. Normally, they would have filled out one of these cute little passport pages, but they said they didn't want to do that this year. If you're interested in downloading the passport pages for free, here's the link:

Download the Passport Pages

Vanuatu isn't just one island; it's actually 83 of them. The yellow Y-shaped line in the middle of the flag represents how the islands look on a map. They kind of are, if you squint.

The map also features to namele fern leaves in the tusk of a boar. In Vanuatu, pigs are a symbol of wealth. The curvier the tusk, the better.

We finished today by watching this overview video of Vanuatu. It was a good video, but man was it hard to find something that wasn't voiced by AI (you can tell that I didn't succeed.) The last time we did The Educational Summer Vacation two years ago, AI video wasn't a thing yet and YouTube looked completely different. Times have changed.

Tuesday

Did you know that Vanuatu has its own underwater post office? Yes, it's just a tourist thing but it is an actual post office, and if I went there on vacation I would probably mail an underwater postcard, too.

We also read this Barefoot Books interactive book for ages 8-10 about water and everything related to it, from the science of the water cycle to careers that work with water.

Then of course, we had to learn about the active volcano on Vanuatu, Mount Yasur. It's been erupting almost continuously for over 800 years! We watched this video about Mount Yasur, and then because the video mentioned a caldera we also watched this video to learn what a caldera is. 

We also watched this video to learn more about how islands are formed by volcanoes, and the kids figured out just why those 83 islands are in a Y-shape (and why volcanic islands like Hawaii are formed in chains) after all. 

Then it was time for the obligatory baking soda volcano in the sandbox. (My kids are getting older and this was the only time this summer they've even used the sandbox. It's so sad.)

If you don't know how to do a baking soda volcano, here's a tutorial.

A word about baking soda volcanoes: I almost didn't do this. I've done this activity in the past many times over the years with my 6 kids, I feel like it's almost always disappointing waste of time and baking soda. But this time it worked, and I think I can happily hang up my baking soda volcano hat and go out on a high note.

I gave the kids two books to read in their spare time:

• The Secret Explorers and the Smoking Volcano for ages 6-9 (this is the 6^th book in series, but as self-contained adventures you can read them out of order)
• Tsunami, a short, easy read about a family on vacation in Vanuatu when earthquakes and a volcanic eruption hit (4^th grade reading level)

Wednesday

Vanuatu is home to three interesting animals that I wanted to learn about with the kids today.

The first is the sugar glider. They are so cute. We read this book on sugar gliders from the library. It had some really good information but it was also written to teach you about taking care of your pet sugar glider and now my kids all know that is an option and want one. Oops.

An interesting bird called the megapode lives in Vanuatu. They bury their eggs in volcanic ash and let the earth incubate their eggs instead of sitting on them, which I thought was pretty cool. We watched this snippet of a nature documentary showing megapodes, but I should warn you that a lizard does eat one of their eggs at 1:45 if that's the kind of thing your kid is going to have nightmares about for a week.

I rarely laugh out loud at nature documentaries, but the editing after the lizard comes around is *chef's kiss* so I still recommend watching it after that point for the adults.

A third interesting animal only found on Vanuatu and other South Pacific islands is the coconut crab, also called the robber crab. It can't swim, climbs trees and eats coconuts, and is absolutely gigantic. It's the weirdest crab ever.

The video calls the coconut crab's huge size a "mystery," but that's not really true. It's a well-documented evolutionary fact that on isolated islands over millions of years, large animals shrink and small animals get bigger. It's called "island gigantism" and "island dwarfism," which we learned more about in this video. Not only do animals shrink or get bigger, they also tend to pick up new behaviors/diets or lose typical abilities for their species.

So I had my 10- and 12-year-olds each pick an animal, and show me what would happen to it on an isolated island over millions of years.

My 10-year-old drew a duck that grew huge, with a curved neck, sunglasses, and a hat:

This was actually reverse engineering; he already draws the hat-and-sunglasses duck all over everything.

My 12-year-old envisioned the mini-lion:

Both were very creative.

Thursday

The official language of Vanuatu is called Bislama. More than 95% of the words in Bislama are English-origin words, so listening to this video is kind of like a magic eye puzzle for your ears... if you just unfocus, you can sort of understand it.

This is called a Pidgin language, which I'd never really heard of before. When the island was colonized, many of the people were taken as indentured servants or slaves to plantations in Australia and Fiji, where they basically combined English words and Oceanic grammar.

The kids read and listened to a short story in Bislama and I asked them what they understood:

Then we played Simon Says, with a list of commands I generated with AI (but absolutely went and fact-checked because AI is a hallucinating liar sometimes.)

Here are the commands I used:

Jamap (JAHM-ahp) → jump up 

Sidaon (SEE-dah-own) → sit down

Stop (stohp) → stop

Stanap (STAHN-up) → stand up

Foldem han (FOLD-ehm hahn) → fold your arms

Taotsem nos (TOHT-sehm nohs) → touch your nose

Taotsem baksait (TOHT-sehm BAHK-sight) → touch your backside

Taotsem gras blong hed (TOHT-sehm grahs blohng hehd) → touch your hair ['grass belong head' is hair]

Tanem i go (TAHN-em ee go) → turn around

Putautem tang blong yu (POOT-owt-ehm tahng blohng yoo) → stick out your tongue

Klap (klahp) → clap

Smael (smile) → smile

Blokem ia blong yu (BLOHK-ehm YEE-ah blohng yoo) → plug your ears

Openem maus blong yu (OH-pehn-ehm MAH-oos blohng yoo) → open your mouth

Seksekem nos blong yu (sehk-SEHK-ehm nohs blohng yoo) → wiggle your nose

Honestly, I struggled to give these commands out loud to the kids because I kept getting "squaw get em firewood" vibes, like I was parodying someone.

But also, Bislama seems like a very sincere, straightforward, and sweet language (if you don't get this, read it out loud and you will:)

from Instagram

Friday

My kids love the Mr. History videos on YouTube, so they of course enjoyed this one on the history of Vanuatu.

Then we took a look at the currency in Vanuatu, which is called the Vatu:

I thought it was really interesting that the Vatu is the smallest (and only) unit. That would be like us measuring the value of everything in pennies.

The kids and I talked about watched the video a few more times to look at the money, and then I asked them to design their own money.

The 12-year-old created "the American Merican," a play on "the Vanuatu Vatu." All the denominations came in a different color, and their names were different combinations of letters from the phrase "United States of America."

 

My 10-year-old took a typically 10-year-old approach and made a scatalogically-based system of money. I don't even know if I should post this. He might see it and be encouraged by the attention.

Shifting gears, we decided to make a Vanuatu dish called simboro. (We used swiss chard instead of island cabbage, since we were fresh out of island cabbage.)

If your first thought is "that doesn't look like something Jenny's American 10- and 12-year-old would enjoy," you'd be right. I knew from the first moment I saw the recipe that they wouldn't like it, but I thought it would be a good learning experience and they might have fun rolling up the leaves.

They sort of did.

With every country that we study, I always say that I learned a lot. But this time I really learned a lot, because I didn't even know Vanuatu existed. There was one area that I left out, though, and that was the cultural rite of passage of land diving. I screened a video and decided against mentioning it to my kids because (1) I was squirming in physical pain just watching it, and (2) I didn't want to give my boys any ideas.

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7 Quick Takes about Appropriate Things to Say, Bodyguarding Blueberries, and Making Imperceptible Progress Toward Talking Nicer

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

How is your summer going so far? This weekend, I was scared awake by one of my children silently standing at my bedside (I really hoped they'd stop doing that once they got older). 

When I recovered and asked what they wanted, they told me "I feel a sense of doom." 

So we're great, everything's great.

—2—

I saw this sign on a utility closet at my son's gym.

If you start combusting during your pommel horse routine, this is where you go.

I appreciate the humor, and I also want to know where they found a die-cut figure of Puff the Vaping Dragon.

—3—

We've started a new tradition this summer. Every Thursday, Phillip has started commuting to work by bike and afterward we meet him at the town beach. He just bikes straight there and jumps in the lake, which is a perfect way to end a 20-mile bike ride in 80+ degree heat. 

Phillip likes biking to work because of the exercise and because it saves money. The second part is a lie, though. When he regularly bikes to work, we spend so much on food that it cancels out anything we're saving on gas. Fuel is fuel, no way around it.

—4—

Twice a month, I lead weeknight activities for the 8- to 11-year-old boys at church. We were playing an old-school game of Telephone, with the boys taking turns coming up with a phrase or sentence to whisper down the line to the rest of the class.

However, I know how 8- to 11-year-old boys work, so first they had to clear their idea with me.

As predicted, the first boy's chosen sentence was "Poop is stinky and disgusting."

Gently, I told him "Let's make it church-appropriate."

He thought for a moment, chose something else, and then it was the next boy's turn. I cupped my hand to my ear to hear his idea and he whispered, "Church toilets."

"Church-appropriate," I reminded him.

He looked at me with exasperation and protested, "It's about church!"

—5—

When we bought this house 16 years ago, I bought and planted three blueberry bushes on the side of the house. One didn't make it, but two of them have gotten pretty big. 

They've also never given me a single blueberry.

The problem is that the birds (and possibly chipmunks and other small creatures) always eat the berries before I get to them. It's an unfair fight that I feel I can't win: the animals have literally nothing else to do all day every day, whereas if I prioritize my to-do list then protecting the blueberry bushes are on page 16. So I gave up years ago and let the animals knock themselves out.

But on my last trip to the dump, I saw that someone was getting rid of an unused roll of netting and figured, "It's free, I might as well try one more time." Putting nets over the berry bushes and weighting them with rocks at the bottom took my 12-year-old and I a little longer than I would have liked, but maybe it will work this time. 

Regardless, I ate three berries while I was out there putting up the netting so at least now I can say the bushes weren't a total loss.

—6—

We've been working on talking more nicely at home and not using sarcasm with each other this summer. It's gotten... better? 

For example:

10yo: "That cleaning spray smells like a Port-a-Potty."

14yo: "I know who else smells like a Port-a-Potty..."

*pointed look from me*

14yo: "...is something that I would never say."

Progress.

—7—

Lastly, just some funny babies and little kids for you. I miss those days. But maybe not all of them.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Sri Lanka

Last year, my kids said they didn't want to do the educational summer vacation. Like many things about my kids getting older and becoming people with their own opinions and interests, I didn't like it. But we did other things and had a great summer. 

So I was really surprised when, a few days before the end of school, my 12-year-old asked, "Can we do countries this summer?" The first country he chose was Sri Lanka, so let's get started!

(I've included links to the books, videos, and resources we used this week and you're welcome to use them all. Some of the links are my affiliate link, which means I get a small percentage if you buy something using those links. Thank you!)

Monday

Sri Lanka is a teardrop-shaped island off the coast of India. Sometimes it's called the "Pearl of the Indian Ocean." It's had many official names over the years, including Serendip and Ceylan. Sri Lanka has been the official name since 1972. 

The kids didn't want to fill out passport pages this year like we have in the past, but here is a link to those pages if you want to download them and use for your kids. (I used to hole punch the corners and just add more pages from year to year, when my kids were into that kind of thing.)

We found it on the giant wall map we hang up in the summer and watched this video introducing us to Sri Lanka. The narrator was either AI or had a neurological disorder, but the kids persevered. Then we looked up the flag of Sri Lanka and drew one for the wall. 

The flag has different dimensions than a standard sheet of printer paper, so the kids cut a strip off the bottom before coloring it.

Lions aren't native to Sri Lanka, but the symbol and the name is everywhere. It goes back to a legend that Sri Lanka was founded by the son of a princess and a lion. My kids are old enough to interrupt me with "it's not a legend, it's a myth, a princess can't have kids with a lion." Sigh.

I also gave the kids three books to read throughout the week, all set in Serendib (historical Sri Lanka) and recommended for ages 8-12:

• The Boy Who Met a Whale (the 12-year-old said this was his favorite)
• The Girl Who Stole an Elephant
• The Girl Who Lost a Leopard

Ordinarily, I attempt to cook at least something from the country we're visiting. I used to make it from scratch, but I'm not that person anymore. I'm the person who sees a box of this at Trader Joe's and checks "make Sri Lankan dish" off my list:

It wasn't very good, but it was a microwave meal so we weren't expecting a lot. Maybe next country I'll make more of an effort.

Tuesday

Sri Lanka's official language, Sinhala, is spoken by about 75% of people. 'Sinha' means lion, so Sinhala means 'lion-like.' 

It's a very pretty written text, all circles and curves:

Supposedly this is a poem, but it could be Sri Lankan lorem ipsum and I wouldn't know the difference.

The reason that Sinhala is so curvy is that anciently it was written on palm leaves, and the rounded lines were less likely to rip the leaves than sharp angles. People would take the leaves, dry them, and bind them into a sort of book that you could flip through like a Rolodex (if you know what that is, happy 50th birthday, don't forget your multivitamin.) Here's what the palm leaf texts looked like:

This looked pretty easy to replicate, so the kids cut up a paper grocery bag into strips, hole punched through the middle, and bound them with string. With their books assembled, we used the pages to practice writing the Sinhala alphabet.

This writing video was slow and easy to follow, and it was narrated in Sinhala so the kids could could hear it while they wrote. We just followed the video until they got bored.

If your kids are still interested and would like to look into the language spoken by the other 25% of Sri Lanka, they can use this video to practice their Tamil alphabet as well. But mine were kind of done for the day.

But before we ended, I had them look up how to say "thank you" in Sinhala, and we tried to use it at dinnertime. 

Wednesday

Sri Lanka is famous for its "great elephant gathering." It's the largest congregation of elephants in one place in the world, which happens as they all kind of crowd together as other water sources dry up during the dry season.

We watched this video to learn about elephants:

Then we did a couple of activities to help them understand more about elephants.

Elephants' wrinkled skin actually keeps them cool. It's sort of like a sponge that holds water in the cracks, which is why elephants are obsessed with finding mudholes or watering spots. 

To demonstrate that, we poured water over a sponge and a rock, wrung out the sponge, and put them both out in the sun to see which one held onto water for the longest. 

The sponge won.

Then we did a silly activity I called the "trunk dexterity challenge." Elephant trunks have 40,000 muscles in their trunks, and they use them for everything from putting food and water in their mouths to communicating with each other to snorkeling while they're swimming. 

Challenge #1 was racing to pick up and put ten objects in a basket while wearing an oven mitt with the fingers and thumb in the same hole. (African elephants have two finger-like projections at the end of their trunk to help with fine motor movements, but Asian elephants like those in Sri Lanka only have one.)

They each were told to grab "10 random objects smaller than a basketball" and nothing else, so some were harder to pick up and move than others.

Challenge #2 was racing to fill up a cup using a straw and suction power, showing how elephants drink. Elephants don't actually swallow the water in their trunks, they suction in up and shoot it into their mouths. Or all over their back and body if they're hot. Which is why we did this challenge outside.

Afterward, I thanked my 14-year-old for consenting to participate in these challenges with minimal eye-rolling. "I realize this would've been more fun for you five or ten years ago, but thanks for doing it for your younger brothers. They had fun." She shrugged nonchalantly and answered, "I won, though."

Thursday

One of Sri Lanka's major exports is cinnamon, so we first watched this video about how cinnamon is harvested:

We then asked the 14-year-old to look up cinnamon facts online, and I learned that the stuff I buy at the grocery store isn't real cinnamon, but a close cousin called cassia which is toxic in large amounts so that's great. 

Using our toxic cassia cinnamon, we tasted applesauce with and without adding cinnamon. If you wanted to do a taste test with a blindfold and have them guess which is which, that would work, too.

Tea is also a huge crop in Sri Lanka. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we don't drink tea from the tea plant, but herbal tea is okay so I bought some cinnamon-flavored rooibos on Amazon and let the kids try some. 

The delivery guy drove over here sitting on the box, I think.

At first, I just made one mug of tea so we could all try a sip, but I told the kids they could use another teabag to make their own mug if they really liked it.

They did not.

The last thing we studied today was Sigiriya, which tanslates to "Lion Rock." It's a 5th century fortress built on a 600-high foot rock, and like the pyramids it's kind of a mystery just how they did it.

Friday

A few last pieces of culture to cover today! We watched this traditional Kandyan dance (Kandy is a city in Sri Lanka):

The national sport of Sri Lanka is volleyball, but the most popular sport is cricket. My 12-year-old surprised me by saying that he knew how to play cricket (apparently he plays with some friends at school during free time in gym??) but none of the rest of us did, so we watched this instructional video and then went out in the yard to give it a try.

We did the best we could, using a wiffle ball and bat, with two auto ramps from the garage to be our wickets. We probably didn't even play right, but we had fun and by the end everyone was saying "batsman" and "bowler" instead of "batter" and "pitcher" so I think it served its purpose.

Oh, and Sri Lanka's cricket team is called — what else? — the Lions.

I wish we'd had just a little more time and energy to dig deeper into Sri Lanka, because there is so much there. But I'm trying to embrace my limitations and just enjoy this summer that I have to learn about countries with my kids. I don't know how many more years they'll still want to do this with me! 

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