Finland Unit

We accidentally studied Finland twice. First when the kids were super little and before we had solidified how I wanted to do our geography lessons, and then a second time when we were doing our marathon Europe Unit racing through trying to finish off one notebook. Either way, I had so much fun with this Finland unit.

Side note, I wrote about this originally in 2013, and rather than have two partial posts, I combined the two into one giant UBER FINLAND UNIT!

(there are affiliate links in here)

Finland Resources

I always look up a few websites to learn more about the country, here are the ones I found for our Finland Unit:

• 25 Interesting Finland facts
• 16 Fun Facts about Finland
• Finland Facts for Kids

And when we went back and studied Finland again, we watched the Geography Now Finland video.

Now, I didn’t watch the Flag Friday with the kids, but I really like the Flag Friday videos, so I’m sharing it with you, besides I like to find out just why the flags are the way they are.

Then finally, Barb also visited Finland (once he got a budget he got to visit the places he talked about sometimes, and I’m super jealous):

Finland books

Our library had a few Finland books, and I wish there had been a few more, but at least there were some.

I’ve uploaded a Finland booklist into the subscriber page (join my newsletter to get access), sadly there are only 3 books.

• Finland!– While my library had 3 generic books on Finland, this was the one I picked, I love these overview books, and they’re really great if you are ever doing a country report
• In a Nordic Village!– It looks like this is out of print, but it’s a great look at life for a child not in the city, so it’s a great glimpse into a life specific to Finland
• The Princess Mouse: a Tale of Finland– If I could find a fairy tale book for every country I would, it’s fascinating to see just how many stories are similar and how each country takes a common idea and makes it their own

Finnish Oven Pancakes

I’m going to literally import my original directions right down to all the mistakes I made originally, and here is where I originally got the Finnish oven pancakes recipe from.

However, at some point I do need to get a much better picture than this. That’s a terrible picture for this delicious meal.

Ingredients

• 2 5/8 cup milk
• 1 7/8 cup cream
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/8 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons butter melted

Let’s make those finish oven pancakes (and oh boy, this is before I figured out to put it in a list)

First mix together all of the liquid ingredients: milk, cream, egg, vanilla, and sugar.  Whip it lightly until the egg is broken up.

** Lesson I learned, use a very big mixing bowl ( like the pouring edge on those) because the bowl I chose and stubbornly insisted on using was too small and we slopped some over the side.

Then slowly add in the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt.  Stir until it’s well combined.  Then mix in the butter.  I’m sure there’s some mysterious cooking reason for this, I honestly don’t know.

Carefully pour the batter into a jelly roll pan that has been greased (which I had always thought was just a cookie sheet), don’t overfill it.  This recipe makes enough to fill two sheets, or zealously overfill one sheet, and fill a smaller sheet that you have handy.

Put your batter in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Check it at this point and marvel that it’s still pretty much liquid.  Check again 15 minutes later when you’re starving and pull it out, only to discover it’s still liquid.

Double-check the recipe and discover the temperature was given in CELSIUS!  That’s half the temperature.  Go change it and crank that oven up, and wait impatiently for it to finish cooking.

Impatiently pull out the food and start cutting it 10 minutes later.  It’s a little underdone, but you’re so hungry you don’t really care anymore.  Start eating the first few slices while the rest cooks a little more.

So, all in all, the food was delicious, if a little underdone.  I’m adding this into my recipes to make more often, with the change of cooking at 425 FAHRENHEIT……………

We served it with homemade whipped cream and strawberries.  The kids also piled bananas on it, but the bananas had disappeared by the time I got to put my plate together.  I barely got strawberries.

Finnish Meatballs

I love to find different meatballs recipes. They’re frequently more or less the same with an ever so slightly different taste. My one challenge is they frequently call for ground meats that I don’t have access to, so I’m not getting the full effect of the taste because the meat has its own taste. Luckily, the Finnish Meatballs ingredients were all ones I could fairly easily find.

Finnish Meatballs ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 cup plain bread crumbs
• 1 yellow onion minced
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice

Let’s make those meatballs!

1. Mix the ground beef, bread crumbs, onion, egg, cream, salt, and allspice until it is thoroughly mixed.
2. Now the original recipe has you cook them in butter, but I like baked meatballs because I’m usually cooking meatballs to feed a crowd, so preheat your oven to 400 degrees
3. While it’s heating, form into golf-ball sized shapes and put on cookie sheet.
4. Bake the meatballs for about 15-20 minutes.
5. Now, I made a brown gravy and mashed potatoes to serve with it, but in the original recipe they made white gravy with the pan drippings, but everyone in my family hates cream gravy, so it seemed useless to make that.

Finland Unit: Notebooking pages

As we watched the Geography Now video we filled in our Europe notebooking pages for Finland.

As we studied our way through Europe, the kids started making jokes how so many countries have Unitary in their style of government.

But, a few things I particularly noticed for Finland:

• 80% of Finland is forest!
• They have a wife-carrying competition, how hilarious is that?
• This was my kids’ favorite, if you get a doctorate in Finland, at graduation you are given a sword and a top hat. My kids love that idea, I promised them I’d give them one when they graduated, they did not have to move to Finland to get it
• There are 650 heavy metal bands per million people

Our original Finland Unit

After I posted this originally, I had someone tell me,

I totally love what you’re doing with the kids! Very impressive. Although I have to tell you, the Finns were not members of the Viking clans and believed in very different gods from the Norse tradition. Please don’t perpetuate that misconception 

I’m including this because it was still a cool thing to learn about, even if I now know they are not part of Norse tradition. Also, I want to know who the Finns were worshipping then.

When I researched Finland at my local library it came up with “Nordic Villages,” which got me thinking about Norse mythology……….  We’ve been reading Eight Days of Luke {affiliate link} (be prepared I’m going to rave about this book in a week, LOVE this author) as our read-aloud, so this worked perfectly.

I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to create something to write on, so I first check Homeschool Share and came up with nothing that worked, so I headed over to Currclick (now defunct homeschooling site) and picked up Flags of the World Mini Book and Viking Age Notebooking pages to create a nice easy and LAZY set of pages about Finland.

We happily colored, cut, and glued as we listened to Thor’s Wedding Day (which dovetailed perfectly with Eight Days of Luke).

I am not including the original picture of our Finland notebooking pages because those are no longer available anywhere

Our notebook for Finland is rather run-of-the-mill, but the kids had fun putting their animal book together and writing a short story about Loki tricking Thor.  I now have requested to make Loki and Thor dolls.  I’m not sure if they’re wanting peg dolls or stuffed dolls……  Peg dolls seem more likely to happen since I have a waiting list of 10 dolls long for stuffed dolls.

After our notebooks were done, we made Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir.  That project occupied them for a few minutes, then they needed guys to play with their hammers.

So, they started making their own crafts.  We went through half a tub of air-dry clay, and they now have “Thor with an owl,” “Luke starting a fire,” and numerous smaller statues Princess created.

All in all the kids really enjoyed learning about Finland, I’m already brainstorming what to do for next month, Spain…….  I’m thinking we’ll learn about the bull-fighting aspect.  I’ve figured out the whole country itself is too overwhelming, but a small aspect we can handle.

Here are more countries (and states) to learn about with unique meatball recipes

Okay, crazy thing. I pick 5 posts to share here, and as I searched up places with meatballs, I found more than 5 posts about it, so I thought I’d be linking to our Hawaiian Meatballs, and I was wrong.

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• Bulgaria Unit
• Albania Unit
• Denmark Unit
• Ukraine Unit
• Norway Unit

“Tempere, Finland ??” by derrickting is licensed under

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