E is for Earth (year 2, week 32)

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I ordered some homeschool supplies last week, which caused me to change the order of our themes to accomidate when our items will be arriving.  This week was supposed to be "A is for America," but I switched it to "E is for Earth."  I bought a couple new books for our homeschool: "Children Just Like Me" and "P is for Passport."  I also bought us a world map  ($10!) and a US map (which we'll use next week).  We're slowly getting our homeschool area put together.

I introduced the kids to the Montessori map that I had started back in August.  The continents are glued/sewn down yet, and I'd still like to do the land and water part, but it still have us a lot to talk about.  We hadn't talked about the Montessori continent colors before, so we did that this week, and talked about which continent was biggest and smallest.  Of course, we talked about where we live in the world.

Tadpole (2.5) loved the feel of the felt continents and spent a lot of time stacking them by side, counting them, and trying to name their colors.  He also liked to spread the out on the "ocean" like he had seen me do.  It was so neat to see him expressing all the concepts that he has been observing from the rest of us.

Tuesday evening, I went grocery shopping and specifically picked out food that had been imported from other countries.  Even in my small town, I was able to find bananas from Ecuador, pineapple from Costa Rica, candy from Japan, dragon fruit from Vietnam, and coconut from Indonesia (I think).  Throughout the week, we tasted the different foods and looked at our new map to see where the foods had originated.  It also gave us a great opportunity to talk about how the foods may have gotten to our grocery store.

On Wednesday, our new maps arrived in the mail, and I immediately hung them on the wall.  I love our Wall Pops world map!  It's a giant (2ft by 3ft) sticker that went on smooth and looks great on the wall.  It also is laminated so that we can write on it and stick our food import stickers on it.

I made some homemade pointers for Dragonfly and I and we had a very enjoyable time exploring the world together.  We talked about where we live, the countries that are near to our town (we're about 15 miles from Canada), and the countries that are important/interesting to our family.  By the end of our time (maybe a half hour), Dragonfly could point to nearly 20 countries as I named them, including the tiny Asian country where her uncle, aunty, and cousins live, the island nation where our friends live, the South American country where daddy was born, the place where the polar bears live, the continent where the penguins live, and the African country where mommy and daddy lived before she was born.  Several hours later, she was able to tell them to her daddy.  I think she may be a kinetic learner, and this activity gave me many ideas for activities in the futures.

Dragonfly and I also read a great book called, "P is for Passport."  The book goes through all the letters of the alphabet and talks about different places, customs, languages, foods, etc, yet how similar people are all over the world.  For example, "m is for music," "g is for grain," and "f is for faith."  The book served as a great introduction to the world.  It  would also be neat if used as a unit study, where the family did a notebook page after researching more about each topic.

So, that was pretty much our week.

Videos
- Psalm 8 sung in Hebrew
- 7 Continents Song
- "King of the Jungle" song

Printables

- landforms dictionary
- ocean 3-part cards
- types of pollution cards
- me on the map circles
- Around the World and World Landmarks (safari toob) 3-part cards
- children around the world picture cards
- land and water forms cards
- Montessori continent cards

Ideas
- continent boxes
- felt map
- earth sensory bin
- land, air, water sorting
- montessori map coloring
- polluted sensory bin
- "show me your neighborhood around the world" blog link up