Turkey Geography Unit

Turkey is a crossover country. There are elements of its culture that are very Asian/Middle-Eastern and there are elements of very European culture. We studied Turkey as part of our crazy push to complete all of Europe and be done with a continent. I regret that decision because it caused many Europeans countries to blur together. Oh well, it was a great part of our homeschool geography and our Turkey Unit was fairly decent.

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Resources for the Turkey geography unit

My first step whenever we start on a new country is to log into our local library, and type in the country name and pull whatever books are listed for that country. I did that and immediately realized why this was a terrible idea.

I found about 100 books about Thanksgiving and the turkey animal.

Next step, I looked up facts about Turkey to have any chance of pulling anything beyond “My day at school” book which has a paragraph about school in Turkey.

• Fun Turkey Country facts– see even the sites I found have to refer to it that way. Here I found out the city of Troy is in Turkey, okay book on the Trojan War.
• Facts about Turkey– I scrolled through, lots of church history people, most who are famous for their deeds elsewhere, and I’d covered when we studied other countries. Oh wait, most hazelnuts are produced there? Quick library search later, and…. no. The main book is about a boy visiting his father in jail, and his Dad smells like hazelnuts. NEXT!
• 17 facts about Turkey– mostly the same, but did add in the Hagia Sophia, which is worth learning about, though no books… I don’t even know what to do with oil wrestling

Not so helpful that. Oh well, that means we default back to just watching (drumroll please): Geography Now!

Only, they haven’t reached the T’s yet in their alphabetical march through countries.

Sigh

I’m 400 words into this post, and I don’t have much useful yet.

All right, after much searching I found this video, which I used solely to torture my kids and to get them to stop complaining about the length of the later Geography Now videos.

The video really is that painful.

But to get something slightly useful, I give you the history of Turkey in 10 minutes, which still missed most of the information we needed.

But, at least no one was threatening to chew their leg off and beat me or anything.

I’m finishing writing this over a year later and he’s currently researching his Turkey episode.

Turkey recipe: Turkish meatballs

In my continuing trend of struggling to find useful information on Turkey, I found a list of Turkish recipes. After scrolling through I decided to try my hand at Turkish meatballs. I’m rather fascinated by all of the different variations on meatballs in existence.

I decided to also make some kacik dip, because it seemed like a good addition with the Turkish meatballs.

Spoiler, I didn’t make the dip. I’m also not 100% sure this meatball picture is from Turkey, because I stupidly didn’t save the picture into my Turkey folder right away and was left thinking, “Now what country is this from?”

Turkish meatballs ingredients

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 2 onions minced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 cup broth
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (I’m pretty sure I left this out)

Let’s make this!

Okay, while the official ingredient list included broth, baking soda, and lemon juice, I have to be honest, I didn’t include them.

1. In bowl combine ground beef, breadcrumbs, onion, and garlic.
2. Add in the spices, make sure they are well blended into the mixture.
3. Roll into meatballs, cook in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes.

Yes, it really is that simple. We cooked them and ate it with potatoes, which may not be particularly Turkish, but is popular with my family.

The extensive spices included made it really flavorful. Not necessarily flavors I would have thought of there.

Turkish Meatballs

Print

A nice flavorful Turkish meatballs recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 2 onions minced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon chili powder

Instructions

1. In bowl combine ground beef, breadcrumbs, onion, and garlic.
2. Add in the spices, make sure they are well blended into the mixture.
3. Roll into meatballs, cook in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes.

Turkey Unit: Notebooking pages

You can either use the Europe notebooking pages or Asia notebooking pages since both continents claim the country for themselves.

Oh my goodness, I totally forgot to write the religion in on my page. Shame on me, I did not finish my notebooking pages.

Okay, since I had the hardest time finding anything on the country because of the animal of the same name.

• city of Troy was found there
• Constantinople’s name was changed to Istanbul

Yep, that’s what I wrote down. It’s quite ridiculous. Like look at the best picture I can find for Turkey.

It doesn’t super say “Turkey,” but it was the best I could find because the majority of the pictures I found are, I’m sure you’re about to guess this, the turkey animal. So many pictures of turkeys. Lots and lots of them.

I don’t know for sure just what picture would better incapsulate it though.

More learning fun that I think is better done overall

I’m unimpressed with my Turkey unit to be honest, but I also think it’s good to share when things don’t go well. So you know, not everything turns out the way you would wish.

• Six! The six wives of Henry VIII
• Very Hungry Caterpillar Unit
• Lewis and Clark lesson
• Hinduism lesson
• Paul Revere unit

“Turkey-2655 – North Gate” by archer10 (Dennis) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.