Euro 2012 and our flag craft

Originally I wanted to do a flag craft to tie in with the Olympics. But, with over 200 nations taking part, that seemed a little ambitious. The Euro 2012 football tournament seems to have crept up a bit, sandwiched between the Jubilee and Olympics, but with a smaller number of countries taking part I thought that making 16 flags would be a lot more manageable.

I had intended to draw out all the flags myself, but a quick Google search found these fab flag printables from Activity Village which were perfect. I printed them all out, and we set to painting them. I used an atlas for reference, which was also an opportunity to have a chat with Harry about the different countries and look at some maps. I'm not sure how much he took in, but I'm laying the foundations! Then we looked at each one individually and I got him to work out which colours they needed to be. He surprised me with his attention span, he actually painted all the flags (he was a bit daunted by Greece, but gave it a good go).

They looked nice when they were done, but because we only used watercolour paint they needed to be blinged up a bit. I delved into my craft stash and pulled out the collage baskets, sequins, glitter paint and glitter, and some bits left over from a craft kit that we've been working with. We threw glue about for a bit, and then after an impatient wait for everything to dry I laminated the flags so that they were a bit sturdier (and so that we weren't showered with glitter every time that we took them out).

As for what to do with them now, there are lots of possibilities for games to play with them. I'm not sure that we're quite ready for actually learning the names of the countries yet, but we could try simpler ones like matching flags with the same colours or patterns. I will be talking about the countries as we look at the flags though, just trying to get across the idea that the world is made up of lots of different countries. It's also a really good way for me to learn some of the flags myself, as I am by no means an expert!

We are very interested in travel and geography as a family, so this is definitely a topic that I want to concentrate on with Harry, in fact I've put together a few ideas for teaching young children about geography here.