Greece Week!

After a staycation in the States last week, we headed off to Greece this week.

Crafts

We focused mainly on ancient Greece, rather than modern-day Greece. Zahara is already interested in Greek mythology, so we led with that. We only did one craft this week, but I loved it! We made Greek pottery using this very simple technique. I found images online of Greek pottery and traced the shapes onto a blank piece of paper. Then I colored in the shapes using orange and red crayons, and colored over the whole thing with a black crayon. The kids could then create their own images by using a toothpick to scratch off the black color.

We also watched this video of an artist creating a Greek amphora; Zahara did an amazing job following along. I was so impressed with the final results.

Culture

As I said, Zahara is interested in Greek mythology. She learned a little through a school program called BrainPOP, and she also read Percy Jackson. This week we discovered and binged a new-to-us kids podcast from National Geographic called Greeking Out. Each episode tells a different myth in a way that is approachable and fun. The contents can get a little dicey, but we listened with both kids and it was great.

We explored a few more BrainPOP lessons on Ancient Greece to learn more about the original Olympics, democracy, and Athens. We also followed up with a viewing of the classic kids movie Hercules. To be honest, I used this time to workout and cook, but the kids loved it and asked for a repeat viewing. 

Food

We had lots of delicious Greek food this week. We ate at Trapezaria, where we had a real feast. We had various spreads (taramosolata, hummus, and melitzanosalata); spanikopita; grilled halloumi; saganaki (cheese flambeed table-side); falafel, and galaktoboureko for dessert (custard in phyllo dough--so good!).

We also made some great food at home. Our menu: Greek salad, fava, moussaka, tomatokeftedes, tzatziki, kolokithokeftedes, and gyro.

We had to make some adjustments to some of the recipes to make them kosher. We made the moussaka with fake meat and real bechamel. I've never had this before and I really liked the flavor. We made tzatziki with non-dairy yogurt, and then ordered shawarma from a local kosher restaurant to make a gyro. It's not a perfect match to a real gyro, but it was really good. 

For those who are interested, based on the article from Spoon University, the main differences between a gyro and a shawarma are twofold. 1) A gyro is typically made from pork or lamb, and a shawarma can be made of almost any type of meat. The spices on the two meats are different, with shawarma having more intense spices. 2) A shawarma is never topped with tzatziki. 

There were so many other things we didn't get to this week, like baklava, and yaya's cookies from my friend Rachel, and reenacting some of the original Olympic games (I was thinking javelin with pool noodles). But, this was a great sneak peak into a beautiful country with an incredible history. 

Next up, Germany!

See our other country week adventures here.