Tag: geography

The Land of China

Tracy

We have had such a good time studying China. Even though, in the back of my mind, I know we could have done so much more with this particular study: panda bears, the Great Wall, etc. I really am excited about what the kids are learning.

Usborne Essential Atlas

I mentioned in a previous post how much my son is enjoying topography and learning the land features of the different countries. As we studied China, he was immediately intrigued by the huge section of purple, a new color that we hadn’t really encountered yet in our country studies. And with his ever-increasing reading skills, he was able to read the topography key all by himself to discover that purple indicated mountains. Who would have thought a child could get so excited about colors on a map!

 

We’ve also had a lot of fun with our notebook pages. The kids have really gotten into notebooking, and I’m so glad. I debated about which approach to go with, notebooking or lapbooking (not that you have to pick either/or; I made the decision based on the time I knew we would have). While lapbooking is very cool, it takes so much time and space, and I noticed that my kids were much more likely to flip through their notebooks than they were to go back through a lapbook.

For our geography study, we’ve been using the printable notebooking pages from Erica’s Expedition Earth. There are also a number of free printables that Jolanthe offers with her geography study, and we use her “Children Just Like Me” pages. But I found Erica’s geography pages to be a little more age-appropriate for my kiddos. Each week we color the country and draw a star for the capital city. I don’t fill in all of the blanks on the page, just the ones that will stand out to my kids: the continent, the capital, and the population. We also color the country’s flag and talk over a few facts about the flag’s colors.

 

Because we have our routine set for how we “tour” each country, my son opens each new study with a million questions:”Are we going to read Around the World in 80 Tales?”, “Are we going to read about a kid from China?”, and the big question, “What do they worship?” It has been so moving to be to see his intense interest in the missionaries and spiritual condition of the people in these countries. And to hear his short, innocent prayers that the people groups would have a missionary or get a Bible in their language, I’m often moved to tears.

Another fun aspect of this study was our Chinese meal. I love Chinese food, anyway. And though I love to eat it prepared at a restaurant best, I make a pretty good stir-fry and fried rice. So, we ate at home.

 

I’m really not a recipe person. My stir-fry is a mix of frozen vegetables, some cut up chicken breast, and Kikkoman’s stir-fry sauce. For my fried rice, I steam some edamame beans, squeeze them from their pods, and set aside. I then scramble 1 or 2 eggs (depending on how much rice I am making). Then, toss some cooked rice into the pan to saute with some olive oil, add the scrambled egg and stir, then add the edamame and stir until the rice has the crunchy texture I want. Nothing super fancy.

Both the kids had fun trying to eat a little rice with chopsticks, but notice we all forks for back-up.

It was definitely a fun finish to our China study. Next up, the land of Russia!

A Trip to Egypt

Tracy

During my blogging break, we covered Egypt in our geography study. There is so much to cover with this country! Picking and choosing what to study was a real challenge, but a fun challenge and a fun study. Our schedule for geography is pretty close to the same each week.

Week 1

Day 1: Stamp the passport with flag sticker; learn a new geography song; find our new country on the map and globe.

Day 2: Read from our atlas and talk about geography of our country; find our new geo terms in Geography from A to Z

Day 3: Color our country and mark the capital (and any other key features) on our notebooking page.

Day 4:  Read about the country’s flag and color our notebooking page.

Day 5: (Our Casual Friday) Watch a video, do a craft, read about the animals of the country, etc.

Week 2

Day 1: Discuss the spiritual needs of the country from Operation World website; pray for an unreached people group of that country.

Day 2: Read Children Just Like Me and complete notebooking page.

Day 3: Read Around the World in 80 Tales and any library books from on that country.

Day 4: Read a story of a missionary to that country.

Day 5: (Our Casual Friday) Spend the entire school time studying animals from that country and reviewing our animal classifications (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, arthropods).

For our Egypt study, I actually put Netflix to work. I have read on other people’s blogs how they love using Netflix for homeschool, and it gave me the idea to look for some Imax films for our geography study. Of course, Egypt was a good place to start. So we popped some popcorn and sat down to watch “The Mystery of the Nile.” I wasn’t sure how they would do with a film like this, but they absolutely loved it. It was the perfect casual Friday activity.

Nigeria, Part 2

Tracy

We’ve been wrapping our study in Nigeria, and I wanted to share a few of our highlights.

During the last part of our first week, we finished our country and flag notebooking pages.

Coloring the country of Nigeria

 

Coloring the Flag of Nigeria

 

In addition to learning where Nigeria is on a map, we studied their flag. The green represents the agriculture (“farming”) and the white stands for unity (“lots of different people coming together as one country”).

In week two, we cover culture and missions. In addition to our prayer cards, we read a couple of pages from Children Just Like Me and complete a notebooking page. For the little one, I have a fantastic sticker dolly dressing book from Usborne. The book features people from around the world with sticker clothing to match. The little one gets to find the outfit that fits the person from the country we are studying (with quite a bit of help, but it still intrigues her).

The countries don’t always match up with our study, but when we do get to pull out this activity, it’s a big hit.

Then, we finish our second week with a missionary story. This week, we read about Mary Slessor, a missionary to the cannibals of Africa (thankfully, the story was about her work with orphans, confronting the false belief in “evil spirits”, and showing the African women the truth of God).

I really appreciated the missionary book we read from, Ten Girls Who Changed the World. At the end of each short story, there is a little discussion section that ends with a sample prayer to pray. The discussion and prayer was about allowing God to use our personalities to serve Him, and boldly standing up for what is right.

Do they comprehend everything we cover? Probably not. But I’m a firm believer in over-estimating rather than under-estimating what they will pick up. And what I cover today is laying a foundation for covering the same concepts more thoroughly in the future.

Next Stop, Nigeria! (day 1 & 2)

Tracy1 Comment on Next Stop, Nigeria! (day 1 & 2)

We officially wrote our “exit date” on our passports for South Africa, concluding our 2 week tour, and began our new study of Nigeria this week.

Day 1, we reviewed our continents/oceans song and our Southern Africa song before beginning our new song on the countries of West Africa.

“Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia,

Guinea-Bassau, Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia,

Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso. Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria,

and the islands of Cape Verde.

Hundreds of different ethnic groups are living in West Africa.”

(from Geography Songs)

Next, we officially stamped our passports with the flag sticker of Nigeria.

On Day 2, we had a blast learning to use our atlas and discovering the new geography terms for Nigeria. Our Essential Atlas of the World has a topographical map and key that we learned to use, and then we turned to our book Geography A to Z to find the definition for the topography terms that were used in our atlas. “Savannah,” “plateau,” “gulf,” and “cape” were the terms for this week (cape and plateau are review). I was thrilled to see my books working so well together.

(Sometimes, it’s a little scary to piece together your own curriculum because you don’t know how well everything will fit together. I feel greatly relieved!)

After reading our terms, I took the kids back to the atlas and had them find all of the capes along the coastline of western Africa. It was thrilling to see that even the little one was very quick to find them all, including ones that her brother didn’t find. Both of them had a lot of fun, and it was a terrific lesson in maps and atlases.

Next up, some notebooking pages on the country and the flag of Nigeria, as well as some fun fables from the land.

South Africa Study: Days 3-5

Tracy

For Day 3 of our geography study, we reviewed our songs and located South Africa on the map. Then, we studied the flag of South Africa and completed our notebooking page.

Though we discussed the significance of the colors of the flag, our main fact to remember was that the “Y” in the flag showed “all kinds of people becoming one nation.”

On Day 4, we had a fun day learning about South Africa’s “Big Five”: the buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, and rhinoceros. We merely read the sheet and added it to our notebook, then used our extra time to look at more library books about South Africa.

(It seems the resources that I have scheduled to use from the Time for Kids website are no longer available for free. Most of what I had planned to use, I have saved in my Evernote files. But that means I can’t share the links with you since the links no longer exist. Sorry about that! What bad news!!)

Day 5 was a super fun way to end our first week of geography. We looked at South African art, and then made our own border art. Ahead of time, I had cut small rectangles, triangles, and circles (hole punched dots) for the kids to glue to strips of cardstock, about 6 of each shape per child.

The kids had a great time gluing their shapes in a pattern; and really, the project required very little help from me—just a little oversight of the glue. The result was awesome!

I’m such a kid at heart. I love construction paper and glue. I’m going to miss this stage when my kids one day outgrow construction paper art.

 

South Africa Study: Day 1 and 2

Tracy4 Comments on South Africa Study: Day 1 and 2

We have officially launched into our geography study, heading first to the continent of Africa. We’ve memorized the continents, thanks to some really fun Geography Songs. Now, we’ve headed to the country of South Africa.

Day 1—We found South Africa on the map and listened to our new song on the countries of Southern Africa:

Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambiqu,

Namibia, South Africa,

Lesotho and Swaziland—these are the countries of Southern Africa.

Comoros and Seychelles and Madagascar

and Mauritius are islands to the east.

Then, we read our library book A is for Africa. And stamped our passports!

Day 2—We reviewed our songs and looked at Africa in our atlas.

Then, we studied our geography terms for South Africa: cape, plateau, and grasslands. Last, we spent about five more minutes coloring the country of South Africa for our notebooking page.

Each day we spent about 15 minutes, so I was thrilled that my plans actually fit into the allotted time. That’s always a relief!

And not only are the kids learning a ton already (more than I expected), we are having an absolute blast. I can’t wait to share the rest of the adventure with you.

 

Planning Geography: Our trip Around the World

Tracy10 Comments on Planning Geography: Our trip Around the World

I’ve been so excited (and overwhelmed) about planning our geography study this year. I wanted to get the kids familiar with basic geography before we head into Tapestry of Grace curriculum next year, and I wanted to emphasize missionaries and the need for missions.

But I couldn’t make my mind up between Expedition Earth and the lessons from HomeschoolCreations.com. In the end, I decided to morph the two together. Yes, there were moments when I wondered what was wrong with me. I can’t ever take the easy way, it seems. Always have to customize. But now that it’s in the works, I’m really excited, and it was totally worth it.

First, I looked at both plans and chose the countries they had in common. That worked out to about 3 per continent (5 for Europe). Next, I looked at the books they recommended. The ones that they both used, Children Just Like Me, for instance, were easy to decide on. But then, I had to look at where they were different and choose my favorites. Around the World in 80 Tales, recommended by HC, looked like so much fun and right on my kid’s age level. But both of them recommended atlases that were rather expensive. So I found a cheaper alternative to that with Usborne’s Essential Atlas of the World ($10.99 and available as a giveaway right now). Geography A to Z was an EE recommendation that, again, looked very appropriate for my kids learning level.

So, after I pieced together my countries and my booklist, I had the mounting task of how to merge the plans. And here’s where I again complicated my life. EE does each country in one week; HC takes about 8 days; I wanted two weeks. So here’s what I decided on: one week of geography, and one week of culture and missions.  Plus, EE comes with an animal study: six animals from each country that we study and their classifications. I love that we’ll be able to touch on some science on our trip around the world.

I hope you’ll join us in our journey this fall. I really am excited, not just about what we’ll learn, but about how the Lord will use this study in our lives.

Up next: tomorrow I’m blogging about our Art plans. Come see the fun!