Germany Unit geography Europe preschool 1st 10th

Germany Unit

—

by

Ticia
in , ,

We studied Germany a couple of different times in our geography lessons. We studied it first when the kids were little as part of a Christmas Around the World Unit. Then we made a delicious meal, and finally we did a mad dash through Europe in high school. Now in 2025, years after we completed this unit I’m finally writing it up, I’m also going to bring in the recipe I originally put as its own post. Okay, let’s do some geography.

Germany unit

(there are affiliate links in here)

Germany Unit Resources

There are so many resources for Germany online. Actually, having just updated my China Unit, I’m going to pull from my Pinterest board what others have done:

Geography Germany Unit

I had a whole slew of Christmas in Germany posts saved also, so apparently that is what most people write about for Germany, or World War 2. So I was wrong, I don’t have loads. I learned things.

And there is a whole slew of videos for Geography Now.

First the official video:

Next we have, the Flag Friday video:

I will be watching that next. I currently have the first video going. Then finally, comes…

As he was attempting to write scripts he would write these other videos about states in countries or just useful videos, so it’s an interesting little video like this.

Germany booklist

My library had an amazing selection of books. I’m going to be working from memory several years ago, so hopefully as I see the books it will come to me and I’ll remember it better. Fingers crossed.

Germany booklist geography reading preschool 10th

Germany nonfiction booklist

Most of the books from this list are fairy tales and folk tales as we have the Grimm Fairy tales. I tried not to get every story from there and only pick the less well-known ones or books that looked particularly interesting.

Deep breath, okay I got all of the nonfiction done, now to head back and find the fiction books.

Germany booklist

Germany fiction booklist

Many of these are actually true events told as stories, so do with that what you will. Oh, and I should include a link to my Holocaust picture books. Since I have a completely separate list for that, I mostly did not include any books for that as you may have noticed, but I think one of them is on here.

Germany Unit geography Europe preschool 1st 10th

Germany Unit recipe: Bavarian Pot Roast

I’m going to import an old post here, so be prepared for some amusing story.

I had to laugh as I searched up German recipes because every single recipe started out like this, “My German grandma used to make this.” If they are to be believed, there are an astonishingly large number of German grandmothers running around among food bloggers. At least the one I picked did specify their German grandma was from Bavaria, so hopefully our Bavarian pot roast is somewhat authentic. Either way it was delicious, and I’ll be adding it to my cooking around the world as part of our geography lessons, and our general recipe rotation.

Bavarian pot roast recipe slow cooker Europe main dish

(there are affiliate links in here)

Unrelated to the Bavarian pot roast

Central Texas was founded by Germans. There are German food restaurants all around, a hop, skip, and a jump away from us, Fredricksburg has an Oktoberfest every year, and half a dozen excellent German food recipes.

So, I was looking forward to studying Germany in-depth with the kids, but since a good number of the countries we’ve studied recently had schnitzel as their meals, I didn’t want to eat schnitzel for Germany. Though I have saved a soft pretzel recipe because I love soft pretzels.

Our Bavarian Pot Roast recipe

After looking around a bit, as I said, I found this Bavarian Pot Roast recipe.

I’ve made a few modifications to how I cooked it to suit how we cook.

Bavarian pot roast ingredients

  • pot roast
  • 1 tablespoon oil (I used olive, they said canola)
  • 1 1/4 cup broth (this is the first change I made)
  • 1/4 cup beer
  • 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
  • 1 chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar, though balsamic vinegar, totally chose that one because the bottle is cool, would also taste good)
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I’ve found for my family 1 teaspoon is the limit of what they’ll accept of cinnamon in a main dish, that other recipe did not go well)
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger

Here’s the official way to make it

Yield: 5-6 servings

Bavarian Pot Roast

Bavarian Pot Roast

Bavarian pot roast is a great recipe to fix and leave cooking on your stove or in the slow cooker to eat later.

Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 8 hours 6 seconds
Total Time 8 hours 15 minutes 6 seconds

Ingredients

  • 3-4 pounds pot roast
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 1/4 cup beef broth
  • 1/4 cup beer
  • 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
  • 1 chopped onion
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions

  1. Brown the roast in a pan using the hot oil. Then put in your slow cooker.
  2. In your slow cooker, combine the broth, beer, tomato sauce, onion, sugar, vinegar, salt, cinnamon, bay leaf, pepper, and ginger.
  3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 3-4 hours.
© Ticia

How it actually went

I usually transform recipes like this into slow cooker recipes, which is what I’m going to do next time. I wanted to learn how to use a dutch oven for cooking, so I gave it a try.

It didn’t work out quite so well.

Bavarian potroast

I’m still learning just how to cook with a dutch oven, since then I’m a bit better, but I didn’t watch it closely enough and most of the liquids cooked off, so while the meat was completely cooked, it wasn’t tender and juicy because the liquid had all cooked off.

So, lesson learned, when cooking in the dutch oven you need to watch it more closely. Also, I probably could have started it a little bit earlier and let it cook longer on low, and it would have tasted even better.

I want to give the caveat, this was delicious the first time we made it (and as I finish writing this post six months later, yes I have lots of posts sitting in drafts for months and sometimes even years on end), but a bit dry.

I’ve since made it again, it’s actually quite popular now for making pot roast, and now I make it in the slow cooker (you’ll notice that is how I gave the directions in the recipe card).

Making it in the slow cooker meant I had liquid left afterward to be able to make a gravy, that really worked well with the pot roast.

I also wanted to try: German soft pretzels, because I LOVE soft pretzels with queso. Maybe I’ll give that a try still because soft pretzels are delicious.

Germany Unit notebooking pages

We filled out our Europe notebooking pages and then the minibooks. I think this was when I was still pretending my kids would not be sarcastic little brats when filling out the minibooks. This is what happens when high school kids fill out minibooks like this.

Germany notebooking pages

Okay, let me see what my fun facts were:

  • Each region has its own culture (which makes sense with those regions each being different kingdoms recently)
  • strongest economy in EU
  • oldest brewery started in 1040 by Benedictine monks
  • more tornadoes in Europe than in the rest of Germany!!!!!!

And here are the mini books I made:

  • Grimms’ Fairy Tales
  • Kristallnacht
  • Berlin Airlift
  • The printing press
  • I feel like there are more, but I’m not remembering right now
Germany Unit for homeschool geography

More fun learning ideas

I’m going to randomly grab some other posts to share.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to Recipe