Teaching 8 year-olds about Australia

One Monday morning whilst visiting the USA, I was offered the chance to teach a class of third-graders about Australia. My partner’s mother said that her cousin is a school teacher in Erwin Tennessee, about a half hour drive from where we were staying… and that it would truly make her day to enrich these children’s lives if they could learn about cultures and songs from around the world first-hand; especially as they hadn’t yet covered Australia.

With much pride, and my boyfriend in had as a safety blanket, we headed to Tennessee. Taking as many goodies as possible to keep these kids interested – eg, clip on koala toys, postcards of Australian sights and cities, Minties, Fantales, Vegemite and more – we taught the class of eight year olds for just over an hour.

They kept me totally amused with questions like “Can you ride in the pouch of a kangaroo?”, “Can you go hunting in Australia?”, and thinking the capital city, Canberra, is similar to the word Cranberry. In their defence, it was only a few days out from Thanksgiving!

After singing our national anthem “Advance Australia Fair”, and teaching them “Waltzing Matilda”, they sang their US anthem too.

A fun time was had by all. Here’s a photo from the experience.