Book Review: How to Build Your Own Country

I think most kids think about what it would be like to run their own country from time to time, and How to Build Your Own Country by Valerie Wyatt helps kids to do just that, whether their nation is their bedroom, backyard or even a corner of the Internet.

The best part? It only takes three simple steps!

First, you stake out your identity, including your country’s name, flag and other national symbols. You’ll learn how to attract a population, design a passport and make a Mad Libs-style national anthem.

Second, run your country by choosing the style of government (some of the choices are described in the book), holding elections, writing a constitution and making laws. It covers the services your citizens might expect from your government and why taxation is a popular way to make provide services.

Finally, you’ll meet the neighbors with some facts about nations (biggest and smallest, oldest and newest, etc.), different organizations of nations you can join and how to keep the peace in your nation.

Funny stories and cautionary tales are sprinkled in about tiny nations from around the world, voting mishaps, ridiculous laws and more. There’s a fact file for the fictional nation of Bathmatia, which you can use to develop your own information about your imagined nation.

This would be a fun book to read in class or at home and have kids develop their own nations, whether they imagine an undiscovered island to be their kingdom or start a new nation in the bedroom. Great for social studies classes or patriotic unit studies around national holidays.

Along the way kids will learn about the basic systems of government and the basics of what it takes to run a country.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Kids Can Press, suggested retail price $11.99.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

Have you read?

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