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We had lots of fun studying Russia. In fact, now that we've moved on, Alex asked if we could "Do Russia" again.
Here is some of what we did:
- Matryushka Dolls - http://mssscrafts.com/crafts/matryushka/ - we printed out 5 nesting dolls (see our photo) that you color then bend & they will actually nest inside each other - we also read the Christmas story about her from the same site
- Tchaikovsky - listened several times to "Tchaikovsky Discovers America" - wonderful!! We will probably buy this...
- Faberge Eggs - spray painted Easter Eggs & decorated with glitter & "jewel" stickers - even hid a jewel inside
- Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake - colored some swans & folded a paper oragami swan
- Onion domes - coloring page (used glitter glue, too) from crayola.com
- Great book: "The Littlest Matryoshka" by Bliss - cute story about nesting dolls
- "Rechenka's Eggs" by Polacco (added April 2006) - cute fiction book that also shows some Russian onion domed buildings and clothes and it uses some Russian words
Crayola.com had a lot of great ideas! Sorry this is so quick & choppy!
Update: Another lady who does Galloping the Globe shared her blog with our group. If we ever get a chance to study Russia some more, we would like to try some of the ideas from her blog: http://www.abiding.blogspot.com/.
Also for France, we've been studying the French Impressionists painters, especially Monet. Monet liked to take his easel outside to paint and he painted a lot of water scenes. So, we took our easel outside to paint a picture of our pool & the reflections in the pool. This was so much fun! Alex spent about 45 minutes on her painting! She even used her imagination and added water lilies. 
We just used water colors, so we didn't have many colors to choose from - I think Alex had 24 colors, and I only had 8. We need to buy some better paints!
We are studying the Wright brothers (who gained noteriety in France when they showed off their plane & flying skills). We found the instructions for making an "Incredible Edible Wright Flyer."
It is made with graham crackers, pretzles, and icing. We tried to make it with the icing, but it wasn't working for us. Maybe we should have tried a different kind of icing? Anyway, we ended up using a glue gun. I also wish we'd have broken the pretzles in half to make the plane shorter. This was a grown up job - too hard for Alex, but she enjoyed watching, eating, and then playing with the Flyer.
This week we've been studying France. We looked at several picture books about France and studied several famous people. We watched the Nest animated movie of Joan of Arc, read quite a bit about Louis Pasteur (and watched the Nest animated movie), and read a book about Degas. Next week, we will finish by cooking a French dinner and studying Monet.
From www.papertoys.com, we found a printout to make a model of the Eiffel Tower. I really thought it looked difficult to cut, but Alex did a wonderful job! And, we once again enjoyed the freedom of homeschooling to "do school" in the beautiful outdoors! 
We've been studying Galileo, and decided to make the Leaning Tower of Pisa using vanilla wafers and icing. Galileo went to the top of the tower and dropped two different weights - one heavy & one light. At the time, people believed the heavier one would hit the ground first. But, the two weights hit the ground at the same time. Galileo revolutionized the way scientists "did science" by using experiments, not just "thinking about things."
Our favorite resources for Galileo were the animated video by Nest Entertainment and the book, "Galileo" (a "What's Their Story?" book) by Jacueline Mitton.
We studied Scotland a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. The highlight of our study was visiting a friend of ours who is from Scotland. She shared some photo albums with us, especially of her wedding, and then showed us her husband's actual kilt & accessories from their wedding! It was really neat to actually see it and learn some new terms. She also served us some shortbread and gave us a package to make Shepherd's pie and loaned us some tapes of bagpipe music. I wish I had taken my camera!
I've already returned the books, so I don't remember if there were any that we liked particularly better than others. But, one extrememly cute book that we still have is called "The Ghosts' Trip to Loch Ness" by Duquennoy.
I think if we study Scotland in the future, or we might do it anyway, I'd make my daughter a simple kilt to dress up in - I think she'd love that!
