Flags

[angus]

I'm constantly surprised by the vast number of flags,sometimes grotesquely large, flying on Government,commercial and private flagpoles,

but on Tommy Hilfiger underwear it seems perfectly normal.


I have one flag in my basement and one in my office, FWIW.  None on my underwear, though. 

[angus]

The Ontario flag, just like the NZ flag is imperialist sh*t.

My son has an Ontario flag in his bedroom.  Quebec as well.  I really like Flags, and I got into giving him a little flag of every country he visits, so now he has a little collection sticking out of a New York Yankees bucket on his bookshelf, between his New York Yankees bear and his New York Yankees cap.  In the case of Canada, I give him provincial flags.  He's only been to Ontario and Quebec so far. 

[angus]

I was going to say that not even I own an Ontario flag, but that's not true. I do own a set of mini desktop territorial & provincial flags that I had been using to try to teach our 3 year old the provincial flags. I haven't been keeping it up, but ironically, she can only identify the Ontario flag correctly. She also thinks BC is Britain (understandably).

I should go back to teaching her national flags. At one point she kept demanding I open up a map of Europe from Wikipedia will all the flags on it. But, lately we've been teaching her more practical things, like you know... the alphabet.

Yeah, ours are the 4" by 6" flags as well.  I agree that national flags are more fun.  We mostly focus on the Americas and Asia, because all the places I've taken him are in those parts of the world, but I have gone over some of the European flags as well.  Many of the European ones are dreadfully boring, but they're challenging for small children:  Can you tell me which is Belgium and which is Germany?  

I'll tell you what a great educational tool is:  the shower curtain.  Right now we have a political map of the world on it, which capital cities marked.  It's transparent, but the words and colors are opaque.  I also have one with a periodic table of the elements.  You can also get them with the flags of the world, subway maps, mathematical puzzles, the solar system planets, bones of the human skeleton, and the Presidents of the United States.  Just be sure to install it with the inside out, so that the child can study while he or she showers.

[angus]

We got our world map shower curtain at Target.  The periodic table shower curtain came from Bed, Bath & Beyond.  Those are chain stores in the US.  Amazon also has a bunch of stuff you can order on line.  Type in "shower curtain educational" in the Amazon.com search engine.