Kiribati Unit

The interesting thing when I’m looking up many of the Oceania Units is discovering how very small these countries are, and how similar many of these island nations are. This can be tricky when looking for recipes for the countries, but that’s another story. All in all, I was quite intrigued by our Kiribati Unit because of how unique the country was. All in all, a great geography lesson.

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Kiribati Unit resources

Not too surprisingly a country of only 313 miles does not have a lot of sites talking about it, so my resources this time are a little unusual.

• CIA facts about Kiribati– apparently if you want information about countries the CIA is a good source for a decent overview of its political climate and history
• BBC Kiribati information– not quite as interesting, though it has a bit more visual information
• 41 Kiribati facts– I really liked the facts here, some of them are mentioned in the Geography Now video
• Kiribati geography facts– interesting bits of information, especially how it’s dealing with their land disappearing

No seriously, that is a true tricky part of their life, they are very aware of land erosion. They have lost two islands, and much of the country is right at sea level. Most of their islands are atolls, and many of them are rings.

Here is the Flag Friday video, which I’m about to start watching after the Kiribati episode is all done.

Kiribati unit recipe: Mushroom Chicken

The tricky part of many favorite cultural dishes is my inability to find the ingredients OR knowing many people in my family won’t like that recipe. I found a 10 popular foods in Kiribati site and eventually found a Mushroom Chicken, which the site where I got the recipe says is actually Tuvaluan, which rather makes sense because the nations were once all one nation, and still do a lot of trading back and forth, so I’m sure there is cross-cultural recipes.

I did slightly modify the original recipe from chicken nibbles (wings).

Mushroom chicken ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of sliced mushrooms
• 3 pounds of chicken thighs, skin removed (optional)
• 1-pint heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups chicken broth
• Maggi seasoning
• salt and pepper
• 2 packets French onion soup (1/2 cup if using homemade French onion soup)

Cooking mushroom chicken

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Lay the chicken thighs out flat and sprinkle salt and pepper on them to your liking, then sprinkle the Maggi seasoning as well, it comes out of the bottle slowly, so feel free to add as much as looks good to you. Flip the thighs over and sprinkle more of the salt, pepper, and Maggi seasoning on it. Then place the chicken in a greased pan. Cook chicken in the oven for 30 minutes.
3. While the chicken is cooking, heat a pan to medium heat and pour in the cream and the chicken broth. Stir cream occasionally until boiling.
4. Pour the chopped mushrooms into the saur and cook for another 10 minutes.
5. Add in several shakes of the Maggi seasoning, and 2 packets of French onion soup (1/2 cup if you are using homemade French onion soup).
6. When the chicken is cooked, pour the mushroom sauce over the chicken and allow to sit.
7. Serve with salad and egg noodles.

Yield: 6 servings

Kiribati Mushroom Chicken

Print

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 35 minutes

Ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of sliced mushrooms
• 3 pounds of chicken thighs, skin removed (optional)
• 1-pint heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups chicken broth
• Maggi seasoning
• salt and pepper
• 2 packets French onion soup (1/2 cup if using homemade French onion soup)

Kiribati Unit: notebooking pages

As I mentioned earlier, I am quite amused by this country. It fascinates me that an entire country could potentially disappear under the ocean sometime, and maybe even in my lifetime when I’m a very old lady. It’s just weird to think about.

To complete our Kiribati Unit we filled out the Oceania notebooking pages, and there was so much I wrote down even if you can fit 836 Kiribati into Texas. It’s only 313 square miles.

• The entire country could sink under the ocean in the next 50 years. I cannot emphasize this enough, two islands are already GONE! They have an entire contingency plan for when that happens.
• Christmas Island- there is a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie about this island
• It is in all four hemispheres and crosses both the International Dateline and the equator
• Every day for two hours, there are technically 3 days going on because of where they live, that has made life very confusing because to keep their country all in the same day, they are in a different time zone from other countries and islands near them.
• When the Bible was translated into their language there was no word for mountain because the country is so flat, the highest point is 80 meters tall

More great learning fun

I’m going to pick a bunch of random posts, let’s see what I dig up.

• Louisiana Unit
• Teaching Reading to Multiple Kids
• Morning Time for Middle School
• Catapult history lesson
• Legend of the Bluebonnet lesson