Colombia is located at the top of South America. Colombia is the only country in South America with a coastline on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Colombia is nicknamed the "gateway to South America" because it sits in the northwestern part of the continent where South America connects with Central and North America. It is the fifth largest country in Latin America and home to the world's second largest population of Spanish-speaking people.
Colombia’s climate varies from region to region. If it is too cold in the capital, Bogotá then you can just drive an hour down the mountain and you will be warm and cozy by the pool or on a beach.
Not only does the climate vary but also the landscape. Colombia is a land of extremes. Through it’s center run the towering, snow-covered volcanoes and mountains of the Andes. Tropical beaches line the north and west. And there are deserts in the north and vast grasslands, called Los Llanos, in the east.
There is so much to see and do; you can head off into the Amazon or any of the many inland jungles, snow-capped volcanoes, rocky deserts, lush valleys, alpine lakes, coffee plantations or deserted beaches.
Much of Colombia's forest habitats have been undisturbed for many millions of years. This has given wildlife a chance to evolve into many different species. Animals from jaguars to caimans to poison dart frogs all call Colombia's jungles home. The mountains provide habitat for huge Andean condors and rare spectacled bears, South America's only bear species.
Colombia's people are as varied as it’s landscape. Most citizens are descended from three ethnic groups: Indian, African, and European settlers. This rich cultural mix makes the country's foods, music, dance, and art diverse and unique.
There are all kinds of festivals, celebrations and parties in Colombia, they are known for their nightlife. They love to dance, and if you don’t know how to dance they will happily teach you.
1. Location: Colombia is located in South America
2. Capital of Colombia: Bogotá
3. Language: Spanish
4. Currency: Peso
5. Count 1 to 5 in Spanish: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco
6. Flag:
7. National Tree: The Wax Palm tree is the national
tree of Colombia. The Wax Palm tree is the tallest
palm tree in the world.
8. Animals: National bird of Colombia is the True
Parrot
9. Food: Some common foods in Colombia include rice, potatoes, legumes, beef,
chicken, pork, goat, fish and seafood and a variety of tropical fruits.
10. Weather: Tropical; hot and wet along coasts and eastern plains, cooler in
highlands
11. Famous for: Colombia is the world’s third largest producer of coffee. It is
famous for high quality Arabica beans grown in a small area known as the
Coffee Cultural Landscape.
Tejo (pronounced Teh-ho)
Tejo is a traditional sport in Colombia. The game consists of throwing a metal puck/disc, weighing approximately 1.5lbs, across an alley at a distance of about twenty meters, to a one meter by one meter board covered with clay with a target in the middle and set at a 45 degree angle. The metal puck is called a “tejo”.
Try making and playing a varaiation of the popular sport Tejo.
What you need:
• Shallow box (any size will do) • Clay or play dough • 1 Metal disc for each player (could use a washer) • Plastic cup What to do:
1. Place small plastic cup (target) inside the center of the box. 2. Fill the bottom of the box with clay or play dough, around the cup. 3. Choose the distance you wish to throw from. 4. Throw the disc at the box to try and get the disc to stick to the clay/play dough inside the box. 5. Scoring is as follows:
Ø Hand: 1 point to the tejo that is closest to the target at the end of a round. Ø Bullseye: 6 points to that player who gets their tejo (disc) inside the target.
(Substitutes: you could use carpet instead of clay and a plastic disc covered in Velcro instead of metal)
Salsa Dancing
Salsa dancing and Salsa music are popular in Colombia. Salsa dancing and music is an activity of the masses in Colombia, not just a class they take. Almost everywhere you go you can hear Salsa music, walking by stores, eating in a café and especially at the Salsa Clubs.
Colombian Salsa dancing is characterized by fast movements of the legs, either with a partner or individually in front of your partner while holding hands. There are also basic turns while Salsa dancing.
In Colombia if you want to learn to dance the Salsa you would go to schools they have dedicated to teaching Salsa dancing. It takes years to learn and perfect the dance.
Check out the videos below to hear some Salsa music and see some Salsa dancing. Maybe even give the dancing a try!
Basic Salsa dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocjtBX4pSlk
Competitive Salsa Dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkNz749rI0M
Tingo, Tingo, Tango
What You Need:
• Players • Small object to pass around
What You Do:
1. Players stand in a circle and one player is “it.” 2. The player who is “it” closes their eyes while standing away from the circle and repeats, “Tingo, tingo, tingo, tingo.” As they repeat “Tingo,” the other children pass a small object around the circle from hand to hand. 3. The player whom is “it” switches and calls out, “Tango!” the player caught with the object in hand has to pay a penalty. 4. The player who is “it” must assign a penalty of their choosing, such as: singing a song, crow like a rooster or hop around on one foot. The player who paid the penalty becomes “it” for the next round.
Palm Tree Craft
The Wax Palm tree is the national tree of Colombia. The Wax Palm tree is the tallest palm tree in the world! Make your own palm trees.
What you need:
• Green Paper
• Green Pipe cleaners
• Tape
• Scissors
• Toilet paper or paper towel rolls
What to do:
1. Watch tutorial video http://tinyurl.com/zo68tzu
2. Fold and cut green paper into palm leaves.
3. Cut pipe cleaners in half and tape on the crease of each leaf.
4. Fold pipe cleaners downward, collect them all together forming the top of a
palm tree and twist the pipe cleaners together.
5. Stick the bunch of pipe cleaners into the end of a paper towel or toilet
paper roll and you have a palm tree!
1. My Name Is Gabito: The Life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez/ Me Llamo Gabito: La Vida De Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Monica Brown
2. Saturday Sancocho by Leyla Torres
3. Biblioburro: A True Story from Colombia by Jeanette Winter
The True Parrot is the national bird of Colombia. Colour the two parrots below.
Welcome to kids kitchen…
The “Kids Kitchen” section is an exploration of food and cuisine around the
world, each month we will discover a new country.
“Kids Kitchen” includes the following:
• Kitchen/food/cooking activities: Each month complete new
kitchen/food/cooking related activities that will teach children important
life skills.
• Activity books: Each child has received a “Together Wee Can Taste the
World” activity book, which include different food related activities. Each
month help children work on a new activity in their books.
• Local Food: You will find information about local food in each country
along with some popular recipes. Explore new foods by making some of
these recipes with the children.
• Favourite Recipe: The children’s activity books
include blank recipe pages, one for each country. You
can use these pages to record a favourite recipe; pictures of
children cooking/eating local foods, or children can draw or
cut and paste pictures of local foods.
Thanksgiving is around the corner and it is a great time of year to reach out and help those in need.
Did you know in March 2015, 852,137 people received food from a food bank in Canada? More than one-third of those helped were children.
When you're planning a food drive, getting people excited and curious is one of the best ways to create buzz and fill an empty donation box. Yes, there's some planning involved and details to sort out, but one of the most effective ways to make sure your drive is a success is to make it easy and fun for people to donate.
Here are some food drive ideas that will help you get your friends and neighbours in a giving mood.
1. Create a theme: Themes sound hard but make planning easier. For example we can use the theme “fall bounty” seeing as how Thanksgiving is coming up, which makes it easy to know what images and colours to use on posters/flyers and people will be able to relate to what you are doing. 2. Raffle off a prize: Holding a raffle is a great way to encourage people to donate. You and the children can work together to make or bake a special prize to raffle off. You can create ballots and for each item someone donates they receive a ballot for a chance to win. 3. Make food the fee: Host a bake sale and charge food donations. Instead of charging money for your delicious baked goods you and the children prepared, charge them food items.
What to do:
1. Choose what kind of food drive you want to have and figure out what you will need: food donation box, food items list, flyers, baked goods, raffle tickets etc. 2. Get creative and create posters and flyers about your event, hang one in your home, hand them out to parents and neighbours. 3. Find a local food bank to donate your food items you collect http://tinyurl.com/qah9srg
All food donations are appreciated but there are some food and household items that are urgently needed.
Top 5 needed food items:
1. Peanut Butter 2. Beans in sauce 3. Canned Fish 4. Canned Fruit 5. Cold Cereal
Food and Household items that are urgently needed:
NOTE: All Food and household donations can be dropped off at your local Food Bank, your local grocery store, or fire department.
Colombian food is very diverse, each region of the country having its own characteristic dishes. Colombian cuisine offers dishes that have been handed down from generation to generation, influenced by not only indigenous Colombian culture, but Spanish, African and Arab cultures as well. Colombian food is versatile, rich, full of flavour, colourful and comforting.
Colombia is not a paradise for vegetarians as the Colombian diet includes a lot of meat. In the coastal areas you will find a good variety of fish, lobster and seafood often prepared with a sauce made out of coconut milk. The variety of fresh fruit is overwhelming and many of the varieties you have probably never heard of before.
In general breakfast is quite important in Colombia and consists of fruit juice, coffee or hot chocolate, fruit, eggs and bread. Lunch, which is served between 12 and 2pm, is the main meal of the day – at least in the countryside. A traditional main meal consists of a soup, a main dish, a drink and sometimes a dessert, which is generally very sweet. The dinner is more like a snack. In the big cities the main meal often will be served around 7pm or 8pm.
Here are some traditional Colombian dishes.
1. Ajiaco: A chicken soup which includes chicken, two (preferably three) kinds of potatoes, corn, sour cream, capers, avocado and guasca. Guasca is a special herb that is grown throughout the Americas and gives the soup its distinct flavour.
2. Arepa: The basic side to any Colombian meal. It is bread made from cornmeal, similar to a thick pancake. It is normally eaten with butter, although sometimes corn is added.
3. Arroz con Coco: It is a common side dish of the Caribbean coast of Colombia. White rice is cooked in coconut milk with water, salt and sugar.
4. Bandeja Paisa: A huge mixture of food on more of a platter than a plate, it consists of grilled steak, fried pork rind, chorizo sausages, on a bed of rice and red beans that is then topped with a fried egg and a side of sliced avocado and sweet banana (chips). It is arguably the national dish of Colombia.
5. Changua: Breakfast in the Andean Mountains normally consists of this creamy soup made with milk, water, eggs, and scallions. The eggs are dropped into the mixture without breaking the yolks. It is served with cilantro and a piece of (stale) bread that soaks in the mixture.
6. Empanadas: Stuffed pastry that can either be sweet or savory. The savory Colombian empanadas are filled with beef, chicken and/or cheese as well as with rice and coriander. Compared to the Chilean or Argentinean empanadas they are not baked but fried.
7. Fruit: The diverse offer of fresh fruit in Colombia is immense and many of the different types have probably not been tried or seen by most of the people outside the tropics. You can find just in the supermarket 5 different types of mangos or 6 types of bananas. Just some of the tropical fruit you can try are: lulo, curuba, mamoncillo, uchuva, chontaduro, borojó, zapote, anon, carambolo, corozo.
8. Tamales: Cooked corn dough filled with meat, chicken and vegetable wrapped in banana leaves. The Tamales Tolimenses, which are famous in the Tolima region, are filled with chicken, pork, rice, potatoes, carrots and peas.
9. Arroz con Coco: Coconut rice pudding, it can be served as a side dish or a dessert. It is made with lemon zest and cinnamon.
10. Postre de Natas: Milk and condensed milk cooked with sugar, cinnamon and raisins.
Tropical Palm Tree Snack
Ingredients: • Snap peas or slices of kiwi or avocado (use as palms) • Red Grapes (use as coconuts - cut in halves to avoid choking) • Long Pretzel Stick (use as tree trunk) • Crushed Pretzels (use as sand)
Directions:
1. Cut Grapes in half 2. Wash snap peas 3. Crush pretzels in a Ziploc bag using a wood spoon or hands to break them up to create “sand” 4. Arrange “sand”, tree trunk, palms, and coconuts to form a palm tree on the beach.
Colombian Potato Salad (Serves 8-10)
Ingredients: • 2 lbs red potatoes, cooked, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes when cool, about 6 cups total • 3 large carrots, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and steamed until crisp-tender, cooled • ½ cup chopped red onion • ¼ - ½ cup chopped cilantro, depending on taste • 3 large tomatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks
Dressing Ingredients: • 1/3 cup wine vinegar • 1 tablespoon oil • 1 teaspoon seasoning salt (may add more to taste) • 1 teaspoon sugar • ¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
Directions: 1. Combine potato cubes, carrot pieces, chopped onions and cilantro in a large bowl. 2. In a small bowl whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad ingredients. 3. Gently combine tomato chunks with the rest of the salad. 4. Chill and allow flavours to blend.
Cocadas Blancas - Colombian-Style Coconut Candy (Makes about 12 cocadas)
Ingredients: • 2 1/2 cups of shredded coconut fresh or store bought • 3/4 cup of sugar • 1 1/2 cups of coconut water • 1/4 cup of whole milk • Pinch of cinnamon powder
Directions: 1. Place all the ingredients in a pot. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to low. 2. Let it simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes or until thickened. Stir often with a wooden spoon to prevent the coconut mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot. 3. Using 2 spoons, drop small amounts of the mixture onto the baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing them 2 inches apart. 4. Let cool completely. Store them in an airtight container for up to two weeks
Roscones – Colombian Donut
Ingredients: • 1 1/4 cups flour • 1/3 cup sugar • 1/4 cup butter • 1 egg • 1/8 tsp salt • 1/2 dry yeast
Directions: 1. Mix the yeast with warm water until frothy. 2. Mix butter, sugar, salt and yeast. 3. Incorporate egg. 4. Add flour slowly while mixing. 5. Let dough stand for at least an hour in a warm spot. 6. Press dough to release air. 7. Shape into rounds and place a teaspoon of guava paste around the center. 8. Let stand for 45 minutes. 9. Bake in 300 preheated oven for 40 minutes.