Around the World in a Month

Our homeschool academy has two days left before a long break until after the New Years! I am excited for the change of pace for several weeks, but it is a little daunting to think of the long days at home, and Will comes home later now because basketball has started. So, what will we do to fill our time?

This summer, as we planned our unit days, we decided to do Holidays Around the World for December. It is a perfect inquiry study for the break because we will have lots of time to study! 

This evening I asked the boys what countries they wanted to learn about. I told them to pick from the flags that are hanging up (from the Olympics still! ;) ) plus a couple of others not up. I love that even Liam is recognizing the flags and countries since they have been up since the summer, so maybe its a good thing they never came down! 

They picked Italy, Brazil, Japan, Kenya, and India! The plan is that each week we will focus on a country, read some books, and try out the food. 

Here are some resources and ideas if you want to plan country studies for your kiddos at home or school:

Give your Child the World is an AMAZING resource! We did a book club with it this summer, and it is definitely a resource that I will keep coming back too. I went through and made a list of some books to put on hold at the library. 

For food options, I am going to check out some recipes from Global Table Adventure. A family has made recipes from every country in the world and blogged about it! How cool is that?! I think it would be fun to try out some different restaurants, and I will ask some friends for their favorite recipes too! 

As we learn and do some research, I think we will try out these books that I made. I am not sure we will use all the pages, but I do want Alex to record some of what he has been learning! There are currently 11 books in this set, but I am going to be adding 3 more soon! You can read more about suggestions on how to use it here, or check out the resource on TPT by clicking on the picture!

Don't forget to buy a map so you can keep track of the countries you learn about! We add pins to the countries that we read about, and we refer to the map often when we are talking at the table. The world is so big and the kids need a visual to help them understand where they are in relation to everything else!

Once we get started, I will try to share our activities each week! I need to catch up on some things that have been going on in third grade too!

What countries would you want to study?

Hello Olympics!

The Olympics are drawing to a close but I still haven't shared about the fun we had for the opening ceremony! This would be tons of fun to do for the closing ceremony too. 

For some reason, because of the business of life, I didn't even realize that the opening ceremony was happening until the morning of! We were on our way to the library and the idea of making a fun party around the ceremony started churning in my head. We picked up a couple of books about the olympics and headed to the grocery store for some international snacks!

Before the ceremony we had our own olympics, including the marshmallow-on-a-spoon race and the cheerios stacking contest. Will and I wowed the boys with a marshmallow straw race. It was a good time! :)

Our main task of the day was coloring some flags to make a banner. I was pleasantly surprised with how much Alex enjoyed the activity! (Let's be honest, these kind of things can be totally hit or miss!) I had printed smaller flags in color so he was able to copy them quite easily! 

We had such great conversations during our coloring. He asked about the song that played when they showed the flag, so we talked about the Star Spangled Banner and how each country had their own special flag and song. We talked about the stars and stripes of the American Flag. He noticed similarities between the Australian and Great Britain flags along with the one 5 pointed star in the Australian flag. I love it when these natural conversations come up. Even Liam has been recognizing flags as we watch the olympics which has been fun. 

Our conversations got me wondering about how other countries chose their national anthems, what they mean, the variety of flags, and how the colors mean things to different countries. So much of that country identity is portrayed through their flag and anthem. I want to understand the things that make each country proud. Hopefully in 2 years we can inquire more in depth into some of those questions! 

Perfect for home or school! :)

Shared Research

So, I tend to be one of those teachers that gives the kids a blank piece of paper to record information on instead of a copied recording sheet. Or we staples pages together for a observation journal rather than a pre-made booklet.

Normally for two reasons.

1. The copies. The struggle is real. 

2. I'm always a little worried about stifling any creativity or brilliant ideas if I try to keep our thinking in the box, or really, within the guidelines suggested on a piece of paper. 

If you love worksheets and cute and pretty plant observation journals, there is NOTHING wrong with those (I'm actually thinking of making a one this year! ;) )

If you don't let recording sheets darken your door, that is totally fine!  

Here's the deal. Neither sides of the coin are wrong, because I think we need to allow both in our classroom at times. As kids inquire, the teacher needs to decide how we will guide them in the inquiry process. Will we provide lots of scaffolding? Will it stay really open ended? A lot of it depends on what we are wanting them to learn. Sometimes the topic of inquiry might be more open-ended, but our goal is to help them know how to find the answers to their inquiries.

I'm definitely rethinking how I have done some note taking, plant observing, recording our work papers. I want kids to have choice in what they write down based on what they think is important, but they also need some support, especially in the primary grades. 

This quarter, our IB unit involves a lot of observing, note taking,  and recording. And we are having to do some shared research as well. So I want to provide lots of opportunities to my kiddos that have to do with our unit and sometimes to just practice how to research and record our findings.

That is how these Country Fact Books were born.

Its the right mixture of support for what to research, yet still open ended enough to allow room for all the interesting facts we might discover.

When I teach my kids how to start researching something, I tell them that I like to type my question into google (hey, I'm sure that is what you do too!) One boy commented that on the iPad you can also tell it your question! ;) When we use informational text, we tend to look more at the index, glossary, and table of contents to see if we can find the information we need in that book. (You can read about one of our other shared research projects here)

The country books are perfect to help guide what direction you want to go with your research and give the kids structure, while still leaving plenty of room for them to make their own interesting discoveries to add to their books! Its the best of both worlds! :)

 

Kids can add a word, phrase, or a sentence based what the teacher desires or depending on their ability level.

 

Don't forget to keep track of your sources! Even if they just write down part of the website, I think it is important that they start learning to cite their sources!

Right now I have Japan and India posted, BUT more will be added soon! 

{click on the pictures for more information!}

If you are interested in collecting all of them once they are completed, go ahead and buy the bundle!

All the books will be added here and you will save 60%!

Click on the picture to check it out!