Country of the Week

Your weekly passport to the world

Helping families get to know every country on earth, one week at a time.

Every Sunday we send out a new country pack.  We print a Country Sheet and some activities for the kitchen table.  Over the week we might do a little art, have a Country of the Week dinner, or watch a video together. We'll end up in a conversation nobody planned about how there is a Spanish-speaking country in Africa, or a bat with a 2 meter wing-span. There's no lesson plan and no pressure.  Funny how learning works.

Since 2017, we have helped kids about 5 to 12, and their grown-ups.  Run by a family on Vancouver Island who were subscribers first.

It's family and friends time, this isn't math lessons!

Nobody in our house is required to learn about Greece. The sheet goes up on Sunday. Maybe someone will do an activity or two. Eventually somebody asks what feta actually is. By Thursday there's a mess in the kitchen and we've watched a man climb 272 steps to a cave.

Teachers call this incidental learning. It works on grown-ups too (trust us, we know).

Does it work every week? No. Some weeks the sheet just hangs there. That's fine. COTW has no rules. It's not Kumon!

And when we can, we go. Some weeks the country arrives with our own photos and videos from the ground, sent while we're still there with the backpacks on.

Two kids with Country of the Week backpacks looking at Longshan Temple in Taipei

Longshan Temple, Taipei

Two kids with Country of the Week backpacks looking out over Taipei from the Maokong hills

Above Taipei, backpacks on

How OUR week works

Here's our small weekly rhythm. 

Yours may look different. That's totally OK.

Country Profile Sheets fanned out on the table

Sunday

The new country arrives

An email lands with a hint about where we're going and a new sheet to print, and the members' page has switched over by the time you look.

Hands holding a colouring page

Monday

The art comes out

Every country comes with colouring sheets, an art project and a few activities. One of them ends up on the wall next to the map, and the whole week has a theme.

Dominican Republic night: the Country Profile Sheet propped on the dinner table beside the pot, bread and rice

Wednesday-ish

We cook something

Usually the easiest of the four dishes, if we're honest. In Greece week a block of feta on the table counted as cooking!

Hands with a binder and Country Profile Sheets on the table

Whenever

Puzzles, and the quiz in the car

Word searches and flag matching come out when someone's bored, and the quiz gets done on a phone on the way to school. The grown-ups lose more often than they'd like.

A hand turning a page in the binder of past countries

Next Sunday

Into the binder it goes

The sheet slides into a sleeve and the binder gets a little thicker. The kids flip through it on their own sometimes, which still gets us.

What arrives every Sunday

Enough to fill a week with curiosity without feeling forced.

Country Profile Sheets fanned out on the table

goes on the fridge

Country Profile Sheet

A single page with the flag, the map, four facts and a photo that makes you want to go there. It's the thing families keep.

Hands holding a colouring page

rainy afternoons

Colouring, art and activities

Colouring sheets, an art project, word searches, mazes and coded letters, and they're different for every country.

Dominican Republic night: the Country Profile Sheet propped on the dinner table beside the pot, bread and rice

pick one

Yummy Foods

Four dishes with a line on what each one is, so you can pick one and make it. Recipes and photos get shared in the community.

A hand on a fan of Country Facts sheets on the kitchen table

dinner table ammo

Fun Facts

Real ones with numbers in them, the kind that get repeated at dinner.

A hand on a binder of hand-drawn flags

in the car

Pop Quiz

Tap to answer, nobody keeps score, and the grown-ups get them wrong too.

A musician cycling past a yellow wall with a double bass on his back

our weekly favourites

Music, movies and books

Artists from that country with one tap to Apple Music, Spotify or YouTube Music. Films and YouTube picks we've watched first, with age levels. Picture books for the kids and novels for the grown-ups.

The members' page on a phone, showing São Tomé and Príncipe with the flag, the greeting, the capital and the population

The members' page, freshly rebuilt.

We recently redesigned it so everything for the week is easy to find and fun to poke around in. Open it on a phone, tap what you want, put it down. It changes every Sunday.

Who uses Country of the week

Our famous "Country Sheet" lives on kitchen tables, classroom walls, and even waiting rooms at the doctor!

Hands with a binder and Country Profile Sheets on the table

Families

The sheet goes on the fridge, one dish gets cooked midweek and the quiz happens in the car. Maybe twenty minutes a week, and the kids are the ones who bring it up. For grandparents who are sick of meaningless gifts, a year of countries is the present that keeps arriving.

A hand turning a page of the country binder

Educators

In classrooms around the world a new country goes up on the wall each week, and the sheet, a printable and the quiz fit inside a morning meeting. At home it's the geography and culture thread that runs all year with no planning, no units and nothing to mark. The kids' questions pick the path.

Country fact sheets on the table

Anyone else

Plenty of members have no kids in the house. They read the sheet with their coffee, put the playlist on and cook the dish on the weekend. One of them told us she plans to keep going, a country a week, for the rest of her life.

From COTW families

What it looks like a year or two in.

"I'm not afraid of the world anymore."

Kiana, age 9, when her dad asked what Country of the Week means to her

"We took a detour through Europe to visit Liechtenstein and included a night in San Marino when we visited Italy. Our son received a class merit award for his creative writing when he wrote about waking up in Turkmenistan."

Hollie

"My parents give the subscription to my kids each year for their birthday. Each week on a Sunday night after dinner we start our new country by colouring in the flag and map. Our youngest is a parkour enthusiast, so the first video we watch is a parkour video from the new country."

Jonas, Australia

"Easton heard a man at the craft market was from Ghana, walked over to him, and said 'Maakye', which is hello. He remembered it from Country of the Week earlier that spring."

Amanda and Dave

"As homeschoolers, it is the ONE class they look forward to, and complain if we miss."

Sheryl

"I am especially impressed with the positive perspective COTW takes when sharing information about countries with a recent difficult past such as Rwanda. The focus is balanced and hopeful and honest."

Sharon, subscribing on her own

Read all the reviews, plus the CBC Radio interview with founder Dave Ternier.

Dad and son from behind, looking at the big wall map

Not just for kids

Grown-ups get hooked the most. 

It started as a thing for the children. Then the parents started looking forward to Sunday more than the kids did. Then people with no kids in the house signed up, because an hour a week somewhere new, shown by people who love it, turns out to be a pretty nice way to live.

So if you're a curious adult, a grandparent, a teacher, or just someone who's had enough of the headlines, this is for you as well. Nothing on the page talks down to anybody.

Join

Start with Canada, which is free and never goes away.

Canada is our home and our open front door. Sign up and you get the full Canada week, so you can see what it feels like in your house before you decide anything. It isn't a stale sample either, because we keep Canada current the same way we do every other country. You'll learn about new musicians, books, and other random things we may find interesting!

🇨🇦 Free

$0

Learning about Canada is always free

  • The full Canada week, kept up to date
  • Profile sheet and printables
  • Foods, facts, quiz, playlist, movies and books
🇨🇦 Start with Canada, free

Annual

$135 per year, CAD

Most families

  • A new country every Sunday
  • Every past country, open to you
  • The weekly email with the hint and the sheet
  • All printables, playlists, movie and book picks
Join for the year

Monthly

$15 per month, CAD

Month to month

  • Everything in Annual
  • Cancel any time, keep what you printed
Join monthly