France Unit

Sooooo… I was working on updating my Europe notebook of my own, and realized I hadn’t actually finished my France notebooking pages, and then I looked and figured out I never shared with y’all the entirety of our France Unit that we finished ages ago as we studied our way through Europe in our geography lessons. France was a tricky place to study because so much history happened there. I’m actually going to include our history lessons that happened in France.

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Books used for our France Unit Study

Our library had SOOOOOOO many books on France. So many books. So many books, that I created an entire France book list.

From this great source of books, we headed out and split our France Unit into a few different areas.

Future Ticia 2026 is updating a few things, and I’m still debating on whether or not I should fold that post into this one. So don’t be surprised if someday I add it in.

France Unit: YouTube list

As I was trying to finish writing this post I realized I needed to put together a video list so you can still learn about many of the ideas if you don’t have the same books our library has. It’s not complete by a long shot, but it’s a good starting point for a France video list to add to our France Unit.

I didn’t add in the French Revolution or much for World War 1, which could be added in.

France Unit: notebooking pages

We partially studied France twice, I say that because I have a France page filled out for some now defunct notebooking page company, and then went back a second time to fill it out with our current style of notebooking pages (you can get the Europe notebooking pages here).

I have put up the France notebooking pages on the subscriber page (I’m about to do a bulk upload of so many country notebooking pages and booklists I hadn’t uploaded yet). Join my newsletter here to get access to the subscriber page.

My takeaways apparently:

• France is divided into 27 regions, which sounded a bit like counties to me?
• I continue to find it hilarious that France originally hated the Eiffel Tower and considered it an eyesore, and now it’s like the tourist destination, and everyone instantly recognizes it.

The rest of our France notebooking pages are down below.

French art and musicians

There is a whole slew of famous French artists and musicians, and we had a blast trying to create art in their style and listening to some of the music.

Okay, I looked back at this and we actually only listened to the music of Joseph Boulogne, a fascinating young man.

Videos for these artists and

• Joseph Boulogne- I loved listening to his music
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Monet- oh, I never wrote about what we did…. I’ll have to dig that up and find it
• Henri Rousseau
• Matisse
• Coco Chanel- she was a fascinating woman, and yes I use the word fascinating a lot, blame Mr. Spock, and well worth learning about

Famous people and events notebooking pages

I only have blog posts for a few of these, but there are videos with information AND books on the book list.

• Joan of Arc
• Tour de France
• Famous Sights in Paris
• Design your underwater home (Jacques Cousteau)
• Normandy Invasion

General Facts about France and French culture in our France Unit Study

 

One part of our notebooking pages is to find out general information about each country we study. I found a great website, France Facts for Kids to generally fill that information out. We also will grab the France card from our Cardline Geography game to fill out the information quickly. Of course, you can always head over to the France Wikipedia page to get a list of mountains or rivers to know there.

France Unit: recipe Skillet Cordon Bleu

Years ago when I was part of the Around the World in 12 Dishes group I made Skillet Cordon Bleu, a lazy man’s version of the Chicken Cordon Blue, and then when we had our Les Miserables book club I made about a million actual french dishes, so I don’t have a specific recipe I’m sharing here.

Future Ticia 2026 decided to fold Skillet Cordon Bleu into here, because it made no sense to have that as a separate post. As I like to call it, lazy man’s chicken cordon bleu.

Skillet Cordon Bleu ingredients

• 4 chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup (or 1 jar using this recipe)
• 2 cups of cubed ham (can be lunch meat ham, or leftover cooked ham)
• 1 cup grated Swiss cheese
• 1/4 cup white wine or sherry
• optional, but I usually also add 2-3 cloves of garlic because I like extra garlic

How to cook this copied over exactly as I originally wrote it

1. Cut your chicken into bite-sized pieces.  This step isn’t necessary, but it makes your food cook faster, a big help if your kids are “dying of starvation.”
2. Sauté your chicken in some butter until it’s browned.
3. While it’s browning, cut your ham into small bite-sized pieces.  Princess was very excited to use a sharp knife, and there were lots of reminders of how to use it.
4. Add the ham, cream of chicken soup, and wine together.  Stir and mix the food together.  If you are completely following directions at this point, then you remove the chicken, and pour in the wine, whisk any bits up off the pan, then add in the cream of chicken soup and ham.  But, that’s extra steps, and I’m lazy. (Future Ticia 2026 actually does that now, but I’m also usually using homemade cream of chicken soup now and I’ve just learned more, but it does make a difference).
5. Add the cheese in.  I think officially the recipe calls for 1 cup, but I just add cheese until it looks good.  I probably added 2 cups or so.  Stir it all together until the cheese melts. Also, not having the meat in, makes it easier for the cheese to melt.
6. Serve your delicious concoction with egg noodles, salad, and some yummy french bread, and you’ve got a delicious meal.  I had no leftovers by the time everyone was done eating, and this is coming from 3 kids who usually aren’t a fan of sauces on their food.

Skillet Cordon Bleu

Print

This take on chicken cordon bleu is great for a week night dinner that is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (optional)
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup (or 1 jar if using homemade cream of chicken soup)
• 1 cup of shredded swiss cheese
• 2 cups of cubed ham
• 1/4 cup of white wine or sherry

Instructions

1. Heat the pan and the olive oil, then add the chicken and garlic and brown the chicken and cook it most of the way through.
2. Remove the chicken from the pan, pour in the wine to deglaze the pan, and use the whisk to remove the brown bits from the pan.
3. Add the cream of chicken soup to the pan and whisk them together, and then slowly mix in the shredded Swiss cheese.
4. Mix in the cubed ham, and then mix back in the chicken. Allow to simmer together for a few minutes so the flavors can meld.
5. Serve over egg noodles.

Future Ticia 2026 will say that I now usually use leftover cubed ham from when I cook a ham. But I also know so much more than I did back then. The difference between me then, who practically didn’t know how to cook from scratch, and me now, who can cook so many things from scratch, is kind of fun to see how I’ve grown.

More 4th-grade learning fun

All right, so I’m totally making up when we finished this France Unit because it’s been that long. I’m arbitrarily saying we started it in 4th grade. So I’m sharing 4th grade ideas.

• How to train a Dragon book club
• Why do people float in salt water
• Unbury Pompeii
• Harriet the Spy book club
• Planetary landing shuttle retrieval

“Eiffel Tower” by szeke is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.