Continent Study of EUROPE for Kids - Biomes, Flora and Fauna

For the second part of my Continent Study - Europe series, I wanted to share how we use materials of biome cards and maps, amazing animals and plants of Europe.

Learning the Regions of Europe

Many years ago, Mavi and I worked on regions of Europe by sorting out country flags and maps according to their regions. Many have asked for this activity, so I am finally publishing our materials. 

 

Ireland Country Study

Do you need a comprehensive learning resource about Ireland suited for preschool, pre-K, kindergarten and lower elementary? I have one for you! Our Ireland Country Study learning pack contains many learning materials and extension activities that you and your students will love. Below is a list of printables and activities included in the box and how to use them.

Montessori Inspired Europe Continent Study for Kids Part I

With our recent trip to Spain, I decided to do a brief Europe Unit for Vito while he still can't stop talking about his plane ride and how fun it was to go to places.  The activity trays I prepared for him are designed for kids 5 years and older.  This is the first part of our unit and most of these are introductory lessons to maps and flags.  I've never had a Europe Unit with him before so I kept this simple and we'll be doing more in-depth activities as he progresses.

Montessori Inspired Animal Continents Activity Sheets

I am so happy to share our Animal Continents Activity Sheets.  Mavi helped me assemble this learning material for identifying the different animals that thrive in each continent.  We’ve used the Antarctica and Asia sheets already and I can’t wait to try the rest with Vito.

FREE European Countries Fact Cards

There are amazing shared printables this week! Before I go there, let me share with you my FREE European Countries Fact Cards that we used in our European Study Unit and The Study of Northern Europe. Mavi loved these cards, he keeps on reading them and learning about the currency, highest mountain, longest river etc. of 16 European countries.

Download your copy now!

The Study of Northern Europe

Mavi and I are looking into the different regions of Europe and we started with Northern Europe (of course, that’s our location!).  So as not to be overwhelmed, we only focused on 4 countries:  Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden.


So to learn about Northern Europe we have the following activities:

Learning the Timeline of European History

I am so excited to share with you our approach on learning the timeline of European history. As I mentioned earlier, my son is obsessed with world history, especially with the events in Europe and Asia (his home continent!) so while he is at it I grabbed the opportunity to discuss the great history of Europe. To achieve this, I created these beautiful timeline cards which contain bold pictures (because kids are attracted to pictures) and include a brief description of each event in history.  I thoroughly researched these and handpicked the major events that were included in the cards.  We were always reading the books of the Story of the World series, but most of the events in the cards were not included in the book.

Europe Continent Study for Grade Schoolers

We are revisiting our Europe study, this time I’ve decided to take it by regions.  But before we dive into that, we reviewed some of the things we’ve learned in the past years.

Europe Continent Study: European Regions

Here’s a new study for this year, learning Europe through its regions.  Here I was showing Mavi the divisions and the boundaries in the map.  I bought this map years ago at Montessori Print Shop.  So we’re doing a color code here based on our map in Europe in a Nutshell.  Blue for northern Europe, red for western Europe, green for eastern Europe and orange for southern Europe.

Learning History of Ancient Europe for Kids

If you’ve been following us in Instagram, you should know by now that Mavi is obsessed with world history.  It all started with his fascination with Horrible Histories and then he started to borrow books from the library.  That’s why I purchased the Story of the World books to feed his interest.  We’ve been reading it for awhile and almost done with Story of the World Book 1: Ancient History.

I wanted to share with you how we study world history at home.  Aside from our previous lessons of Ancient Egypt, Mavi wanted to learn about the history of Europe.  So this is where we are focusing as of the moment.  These cards are included in my Europe in a Nutshell learning material.

Hands-on Learning on the European Regions

Mavi is into geography once again and we are revisiting the Continent of Europe.  My approach for this year’s study is to look at Europe through the different regions.  It’s easier to understand and internalize facts when they’re into smaller groups than attacking them as a whole.

So I created these label cards for northern (blue), western (red), southern (orange) and eastern (green) Europe.  The color coding is based on our map in Europe in a Nutshell.  The mini flags seen in the photo is from Flags of Europe printable.

EUROPE in a Nutshell

My son’s favorite continent (according to him)! is finally up in My SHOP! I am so excited and happy to announce that I’ve completed our Europe in a Nutshell learning material and is now cooking in the printer, to be laminated and will be used in a couple of weeks for our Europe study!  Mavi just loves my Nutshell Geography series and can’t wait to try it with Vito in the near future!

Europe Study Part III (FREE Volcano Cards)

And this is the last part of our European Study series. You can read Part I and Part II here.

So first we had Major Rivers of Europe.  We used this printable Major Rivers of the World to look at the longest rivers in Europe, traced how long they are and how does it affect the economy of the people.

Here Mavi is plotting the location of the rivers.  We are also identifying the countries that some of these rivers flow through.  The map seen on the picture was randomly "googled".

 

We also talked about the active volcanoes in Europe.  My son was really really interested on this one as they were having lessons about it in school too.   To avail the FREE file of Volcanoes in Europe please click the image below.

 

We used a map again to plot the location of the volcanoes.  He discovered that were a number of active volcanoes in Italy and got a little bit scared that we used to live near it.

           

 

 

  

We also did a few math activities one of which is relating Euro to Montessori Golden Beads.  We talked about how each Euro bill corresponds to Golden Beads and using the currency we played pretend shopping :)  Of course the little guy was the cashier to practice simple mathematics like addition.

Here he is counting the total cost of Mommy's purchases.

                   

And lastly, the subject that I've been wanting to revisit for the longest time, Artist Study.  Using the books and cards that we have we talked about the famous painters in Europe.  We did a couple of Artist Study a few years back and worked on Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Picasso and Degas.

I've always wanted to try Monet.  My initial plan was to bring him to the park so we could paint the flowers there in the field, but lately the weather has been really really bad so I guess that has to wait.  Instead, we painted the Poppy Fields of Monet using a  picture card as a guide.

I told him that Monet is an impressionist, that his paintings look like blobs or blurry and that it doesn't give you an exact detail of the subject but just an impression.

And here's our first try of painting like Monet :)

 

And here's Mavi's rendition of Monet's The Poppy Field.  What do you think?

 

And that concludes our Europe Study series.  Hope all of the series of post I have for this lesson have given you enough idea to start your Europe Study as well.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky
History and Geography

Europe Study Part II

The second part of European Study includes the animals and their habitats, the landmarks of Europe, the culture, the foods, the people in history and the natural resources that can be found in this continent.

For the first part of this unit study click here.

Animals of Europe. I make use of the existing materials that we have including the cards and the animal figures which I got from Safari Toobs and Schleich.   Here we talk about the animals and their habitats, how they differ from the animals in other countries like Asia, how they adjust on the weather, what they eat, how they survive etc.  (click the image below for the link of the file)

Below, after identifying the animals that lives in Europe, we sort them according to their diet (herbivores, carnivores and omnivores).

           

Afterwhich, we also discuss their habitats, which animals live in the forest, rivers...  as seen on the picture Mavi draw a forest for the wolves, deer, bears and lynx. 

Landmarks.  We are fortunate to have visited most of these places, thus Mavi was easily interested learning about them.  I showed him some pictures from our travels, talk about how these landmarks are important and what made them icons. (click the image below for the link of the file)

Seen on the picture below, Mavi traced the places we've been in the map.  I showed him pictures of the Euro trains that we used as a means of transport in the mainland Europe.  Aside from this, I also showed him pictures showing the culture and practices of the different countries in Europe.

And additional activity I added was a matching game.  Here Mavi matches the landmarks to the country flag of their location.

           

And I whipped a little bit of spelling practice as well.  We use the moveable alphabet to name the flag of the country they represent.  Oh my! He worked on this all by himself.  You can get the flags from here.

          

Here's something new for this year, our Natural Resources cards which we used to talk about the treasures from nature that can be found here in Europe and that are used for human consumption.  To know more about this file read about it here or you can click the image below for the link of the printable.  (click the image below for the link of the file)

As we discuss, it happens I have an antipasti (olives and garlic) and showed it to him.   Once we discussed all of the natural resources, he decided to draw these resources as well. See photos below.

          

And a little more discussion but we didn't really focus on these are the foods and the people in the history of Europe. The only he's interested about is the food which he is very much familiar with because we mostly have them at home like the pasta, paella, baguettes, crepes, churros and gyros.  We sometimes visit the Coco Market at the park to have a taste of some European cuisines and the Spain and Greek dishes are always a favorite! (click the images below for the link of the file)

           

For the materials seen on this post visit:

European Study Printable Materials

Natural Resources of the World.

For our previous European Unit, click Part 1 and Part 2.

Next we'll study some of the famous artists in Europe, Math using Euro and more!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky

Europe Study Part I

My son has specifically requested that we have Europe Study this month.  I guess the interest was brought about by the celebration of St. Patrick's Day this month in which they created the Irish flag in school and were plotting Ireland in the Europe map.

WARNING, this post is flooded with photos, as I would rather describe the activities we did in pictures rather than writing a novel about :)

Before anything else, if you are interested to read about our 2013 Europe Unit Study, please click this link.

For the resources and materials:

   - Flags of Europe (includes all materials used here except the puzzle flags)

   - European countries outline / solid black

Now for this years unit we started working with mapping and flags.  I printed the large flag from here.  The site allows you to print the maps in different sizes you.  I chose a bigger version so we can label the countries clearly.

 

Oh and Mavi has an audience while working :)

 

       

Next we work on the flags.  Here on the pictures below Mavi is identifying the countries and their flags. 

I also created these flag puzzles for Mavi to worked on.  I just printed these flags in big sizes and cut them to pieces for him to assemble.

         

Of course, the 3 part cards of the European flags is a must :)

 

Mavi also worked on these flag matching activity.  Here he's matching the flag to the name of the country and the capital city.

Identifying the country's flag was a breeze but he is still new to identifying the capital city (except for the countries we've visited and stayed).  We'll be working on this a little more.

            

And last activity for the flag works is assembling European flags using pre-cut craft papers.  Early on I selected a few flags that he will work with.  I cut out the pieces needed and mix them together.  The challenge here is for him to look for the pieces that goes together to assemble a certain flag.  So you can see in the picture below he was able to make the flag of Ireland and Spain, and about to assemble the flag of Germany.

          

More activities coming up next!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Natural Homeschool's Montessori Linky