Chile Unit

Just think of all the puns you can make with the country name. What are you doing? Nothing much, just Chile. Actually now that I think about it, they’re pretty much all variations on that. So, not lots of puns, just one very versatile pun. That being said, it was a fun geography lesson and gave me an excuse to make another version of pot roast.

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Chile Resources

Let’s talk about the very clear elephant in the room. Chile stole Texas’ flag.

I was wrong. It is crazy similar to the Texas flag, and is very confusing.

Okay, but let’s talk Chile resources (I’ve stopped my incorrect rant):

• 17 Chile facts
• Chile Facts for kids
• National Geographic Chile Facts

The part that really amuses me about this video is reading the comments, and the number of people from Chile commenting about the truth of the earthquake comments.

I almost forgot to include the Chile books my library had.

• Welcome to Chile– a nice generic book on the country
• Mariana and the merchild: a folk tale from Chile– an interesting folk tale for sure
• Ghost hands: a story inspired by Patagonia’s Cave of the Hands– prior to reading this, I hadn’t known about it
• Pablo Neruda: poet of the people– you could easily just pick one of these, but they made me want to read more of his poems and he clearly REALLY likes onions
• Ode to an onion
• The day the stones walked: a tale of Easter Island– that reminds me, I should add an Easter Island video, we did search up some of those after learning about the country

Chile recipe: Chilean Pot Roast

I love pot roast, and finding new ways to cook it is always a plus, so when I saw the Chilean Pot Roast recipe I knew I had to try it.

• 1 tablespoon Merken (since I don’t have this the substitute is 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 1/2 pounds pork shoulder roast

1. Mix all the spices together, including the salt, and rub the spices into the pork roast and leave for 4 hours or more (ideally, you do this the day before)
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, place in pan and cook for around 2 hours. Alternately put the roast in the slow cooker with 1/2 -1 cup of broth and cook on low for 8 hours.
3. Once it’s thoroughly cooked, shred the roast.

Chilean Pot Roast

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This savory pot roast is a great meal for a cold night, or a day when you don't want to spend all day in the kitchen.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 8 hours

Additional Time 4 hours

Total Time 12 hours 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon Merken (since I don’t have this the substitute is 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 1/2 pounds pork shoulder roast

Instructions

1. Mix all the spices together, including the salt, and rub the spices into the pork roast and leave for 4 hours or more (ideally, you do this the day before)
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, place in pan and cook for around 2 hours. Alternately put the roast in the slow cooker with 1/2 -1 cup of broth and cook on low for 8 hours.
3. Once it’s thoroughly cooked, shred the roast.

Chile Unit: notebooking pages

We filled out the South America notebooking pages as we learned about Chile.

Here are the facts I found most interesting:

• the longest and narrowest country
• has islands on 3 continents: South America, Oceania, and Antartica
• has a permanent town on Antartica
• largest earthquake on record
• most stable government in South America

Possible extensions we could have done in our Chile unit:

• Volcano Unit
• Earthquakes Unit

More random lessons

Since we did this while in high school, I’m going to go totally opposite and look for ideas from elementary school.

• How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
• Bird Unit
• Snow Science
• Invisible Ink lesson
• Me on the map: My house

“Santiago, Chile” by GothPhil is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.