Natural Resources and their Products

Another extension to our continent unity study is learning about the natural resources that are mined or abundant in certain parts of the world.  This is a new topic that I introduced to Mavi and he definitely loved it.  He was very interested in learning about the products of each continent, what they look like as raw materials and how these materials are processed so the people can use them.

Materials Used in this Activity

• Natural Resources of the World can be purchased from my shop
• Natural Resources and their Products cards (FREE DOWNLOAD)
• Reduce-Reuse-Recycle worksheet from Have Fun Teaching

Activity 1: Learning about the natural resources of the world

1. Presentation of the Natural Resources Around the World cards.  There are 5 natural resources for each continent in the file, and we talked about each one of them. We discussed how the resources are produced, harvested, and processed to make consumer products.
2. To assess his understanding we played a sorting game.  I took three resource cards from each continent and had him match the cards to the continent that they belong.

Activity 2: Learning about the products of the natural resources of the world

1. Presentation of the Natural Resources and their Products cards.  Here we matched the raw materials to their end product/s.



2. I made Mavi look around the house for products similar to the pictures in the cards and bring them to the table.
3. For edible products he brought coffee, sugar, rice, water, chocolate, bread, and cheese. For other materials, he brought paper and his wool sweater.  I added my jewelries for the gold nugget. Aside from these he was able to identify more materials made from wood and rocks.

Activity 3: Working on Reduce-Reuse-Recycle worksheet

1. Using the worksheet, we identified what can be recycled from the pictures presented.



2. Cut the pictures that can be recycled/reused and glue them on the worksheet.

He was able to identify items that can be reused by pointing out that he sees his Daddy dropping old clothes and bottles in the recycle bins :)

Because my son had fun (especially on the taste test of the end products), I highly recommend this activity to children ages 5+ and with prior knowledge of geography.  I hope your kids will also love these activities!

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