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Italy Unit Study
Italy is the center point for a lot of history. A LOT OF HISTORY. Narrowing that down into a usable Italy unit became a challenge to decide what I want to include. I ended up leaving out large amounts of things I could have included in our Italy Unit because it strayed too much from geography lessons into history lessons. This was a huge part of our Europe Unit.
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General Facts and Ideas for Italy Unit
I had fun with our Italy Unit and primarily focused on art history and various random cool bits of culture or character I found.
And because it’s a bit later in their series, there is also a Flag Friday video.
Go check out the Christmas in Italy lesson
As part of our Italy unit, we did a mini Christmas in Italy unit, which mainly consisted of lots of delicious cookies (and my first time to cook with saffron, which I’d heard quite a lot about), and fun books to read. We did also make a Christmas ornament to go with it.
Italy unit books
Originally I had this as a completely different post, but I’ve figured out it makes more sense to have it all as one giant awesome post! Now to copy and paste:
I maxed out my library card with this book list, and had to recheck them to get all of the geography lessons done for this.
(this post is chock full of affiliate links)
Because there are so many Italy picture books, I am subdividing this book into different categories. In addition, I’ve added a new feature to my book lists, if you’re local to me, I’ve got a printable list for all of these books that I got from the library!
ITALY PICTURE BOOKS ABOUT CULTURE
These picture books are just fun about culture and different cities in Italy. These give you an idea of the country in general.
- Italy Adventure– This book is what got us started in Italy, I love this series and am sad we’ve outgrown the intended audience
- Three Scoops and a Fig– A cute story about a little girl cooking for her Nonno and Nonna
- Pizza in Pienza– a fun book about how pizza was invented, also I’ve linked to the edition that’s in English and Italian (our library doesn’t have this edition, but it’s a cool idea), also a pizza recipe is included
- The Matchbox Diary– This was my FAVORITE book from all of the books we checked out, it’s the story of an Italian immigrant and how before he learned to read he would fill a matchbox as a sort of diary, and then once he learned to read and write he kept doing it because he loved the memories.
- Gaspard on Vacation– a fun book about exploring Venice
- The Glassmaker’s Daughter– a cute story about a glassmaker who promises a prize to anyone who can make his grumpy daughter smile
- Madeline and the Cats of Rome– the Madeline books are always a fun way to explore another city as we follow her adventures
- The Paint Box– A fictional story of the daughter of a painter who longs to be an artist herself, but can’t because she’s a woman, it’s a bit of fun with a “grass is greener on the other side”, since it’s fictional, I did not put it down with the Art Picture books
- Ice Mummy: the Discovery of a 5,000-year-old man– Prior to reading this I hadn’t known something like this was discovered in Italy
- Nonna tell me a story: Lidia’s Christmas Kitchen– A cute story of a traditional Italian Christmas with LOTS of Christmas cookie recipes
- Pompeii- Buried Alive– a great book about the eruption of this volcano and the discovery of the city
- Time Trekkers: The Romans– I have a full book list of Ancient Rome picture books, this just happened to be the one I grabbed
- Let’s Visit Italy– I like to always grab one book like this for each country we study to give a nice overview
CATHOLIC PICTURE BOOKS IN ITALY
Because, in the middle of Italy is Rome, which has the “capital” of the Roman Catholic Church, and Christianity was central to large portions of Italian and Roman history, there is a whole slew of Catholic Saints from Italy. This of course means, it is a large part of the culture of Italy. Even if you are not Catholic, which I’m not, or Christian, which I am, it’s important to read some of these books because it gives you an idea of who Italians are and how they got to who they are now.
- Paul Gallico’s The Small Miracle– the story of a small boy who prayed to Saint Francis for a miracle and went to Rome to ask the Pope to pray for his donkey, very cute story
- Francis Woke Up Early– My library had several books on Saint Francis, this particular one focuses on him as a child and a story of him and a hungry wolf. I opted to get a different book on Saint Francis, but still think it’s a good book if you choose to pick it up
- A Gift from Saint Francis: The First Creche– Sadly this adorable-looking book was checked out at the time, so we missed the chance to read it
- The Holy Twins: Benedict and Scholastica– I knew about Benedictine monks, but hadn’t known about Scholastica, so this was fun for me to learn about as we read the book
- Brother Francis and the Friendly Beasts– I love books like this, so it made me smile to read it
ART AND LITERATURE ITALY PICTURE BOOKS
Italy is the birthplace of the Renaissance. Just like with my France picture books, there are a whole slew of picture books about artists and musicians to read.
- Vivaldi and the Invisible Orchestra– a great book about one of my favorite composers
- Gabriella’s song-set in Venice, it’s a fun story of how a little girl inspired a composer
- A Boy Named Giotto– about the artist Giotto, who I’m now realizing we forgot to learn much about in our Renaissance artists unit, there are just so many of them…
- Leonardo’s Horse– I missed this was a Jean Fritz book, I LOVE her books, when we studied Italy we’d just been studying the Renaissance and I’d just read all about this particular statue so that made this book even more fun for me
- Boticelli– I love this series, it’s great for learning about artists (the rest of the books are from this series)
- Michelangelo
- Raphael
- Titian
ITALIAN FOLK TALES AND FAIRY TALES PICTURE BOOKS
I love folk tales and fairy tales. So, I always try to find at least one book in this vein for every country I can. In some countries I’m more successful than in others. Italy had several great books in this category.
- Strega Nona: her story– Tomie DePaola has a whole series of these books. They are wildly popular about Strega Nona, a witch, who is sometimes nice and sometimes not. I checked out several books from the series (I’m only linking to one of them), these books actually led to us studying Russia next because the kids wanted to read about Baba Yaga to compare the two characters.
- Andiamo, Weasel!– A cute story about a crow who trusts a weasel and regrets it. From what I can tell this isn’t a traditional folk tale, but it’s in that genre
- Brave Donatella and the Jasmine Thief– This was checked out when we did our study, and I’m sad because the book looks so cute, it explains how some Italian wedding traditions started
- Grandfather’s Rock: An Italian Folktale– The book cover doesn’t look like much, but the story is fun
- The Feathered Ogre– A quick early chapter book to read
- Petrosinnella: a Neoploitan Rapunzel– I love reading different versions of fairy tales, so this one made me super happy to find
- Androcles and the Lion– a classic tale from Roman times supposedly based on a true story, there are loads of versions of this picture book
I’ll admit, this list doesn’t include much in the way of history, so to add in a bit of history, I’m also going to point you towards:
- Greek/Roman Mythology picture books (wow, I still haven’t written this like I thought I had)
- Roman history picture books
Italy Notebooking pages
Surprise! Italy has a lot of mini-books, I’m sure you are all shocked. In addition, I also had the Case of Adventure Italy books to add in there also, so it was lots of fun. The mini-books can be found on the subscriber page (join my newsletter)
- Italian Renaissance artists: Raphael, Titian,
- Italian Saints: Francis of Assissi
- Marco Polo
- Mini-books from Case of Adventure Italy
Italian Recipes
Italian food is popular here. We cook a lot of Italian food, and so I’ve got a few Italian recipes, which I do need to go back in and add recipe cards to.
- Zuppa Tuscana (wildly popular with my husband and my sons)
- Marinara Sauce
- Carbonara Sauce
- Italian Bolognese (this is what we made for our Italy unit study)
Unrelated, but more cool bits happening in Italy
- “Rome, Italy” by melenama is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
- “Venice Canal, Italy” by Artur Staszewski is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Comments
2 responses to “Italy Unit Study”
We went to Rome this summer and the mix of old and new was fascinating.
Ah, Italy! Looking at your pictures, I remembered great times there – from Florence to Rome to Naples and Venice too. Definitely want to go back with my husband one day – my trips to Italy were all “pre-marriage”. Except Venice – we were there together but only for 2 days…
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