The Pinay Homeschooler: continents

Showing posts with label continents. Show all posts

There's nothing like... AUSTRALIA (Part I)

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Hello everyone!! It's been a productive week so far :) I'm so excited to share with you our little adventure to Australia, the homeschooling way. 90% of the ideas here comes from my son, so I am just giving him what he wants. For him, this is just play pretend but little does he know that he's also learning!

So to start with, here's what I made and prepared for him: 'My Adventure Book (Australia/New Zealand)' which I will launch tomorrow, so please watch out for it :) and his pretend passport. The passport is not that fancy. I simply printed a cover page out of the coat of arms of our country and put titles on it. I used maroon cardstock as a cover because it is the color of our passport. The information page is also based on our passport and the rest of the pages are just blank. Sorry if I have to distort the information to keep my son's privacy :)

And since we need VISA for Australia, I made Visa and immigration stamps (entry and exit) to make our little adventure more "believable". These are included in My Adventure Book package.

I made a map... just the outline and printed it in a brown cardstock. This way, Mavi will be familiar of the shape of Australia and the flag was just from a random Google search. The figures are from Safari Toob, and I included a coral and scuba diver to represent the Great Barrier Reef.

Before setting out for an adventure, we talk about Australia in general. I have that in My Adventure Book which includes important facts and information about Australia, the flag, the state map and biomes map.

Okay, I so made him prepare his luggage / backpack for this trip :) Made sure that he has his book in his back including his passport. Promise to next time, take a photo of him with his "paraphernalia" :)

Set-up: On the first day of his adventure, upon his arrival in Australia (reference to his My Adventure Book) first thing is to travel across the country to see the famous landmarks. So I place the cards (see Landmarks of Australia/Oceania) around the house for him to "pretend" that he's visiting the different places. The exact location of these landmarks are included in My Adventure Book.

(Click the picture for the link)

As he discover the cards of the landmarks around the house we discuss what is so special about the place and the activities that we can do there (like in Great Barrier Reef we pretend to go scuba diving). I made sure that before we embark to another landmark, we review it's location on the map so that he'll be aware of how far these landmarks are from each other.

We got so tired after this activity so I told him that it's time to "fill up some forms" regarding his trip and he'll do the rest of the activities the next day. In reality, I wanted him to work on the activity sheets LOL.

Example of the sheets that's included in the book are:

Landmark locations. Mavi here is identifying the locations of the landmark. I only have 5 landmarks in the activity sheet as I don't want to overwhelm him. If you want more, you can use the Landmarks of Australia/Oceania Nomenclature Cards for further study of the other places.

Favorite Place. Out of the 5 landmarks, he has to pick his favorite place, draw them and explain why he likes it.

The flag. And of course, there's the flag. We discuss the meaning of the country's flag and its colors. You can also check my Australia/Oceania Pin Map and Nomenclature Cards for further study of the other flag in the Australia/Oceania continent (not just Australia).

(Click the picture for the link)

And lastly, while we rest, we watched a couple of Youtube videos about Australia and the places we've learned so far. Here are the links:

Sydney Opera House

Uluru/Ayers Rock (in the Outback)

Great Barrier Reef

The Pinnacles

Kangaroo Island

I have to say that at the end of the day, my son has absorbed all the things that he has learned on this 'pretend' adventure. He can name 5 landmarks, describe what is Australia, its flag and the colors and the biomes (though we still have to dig deeper on this). Learning about a country is so much fun if you play pretend of really going on an adventure on that place :)

Next we'll do animals, biomes, food and famous people and crafts/paintings of the Aborigines. And please do come again tomorrow or follow me on Facebook for the link of My Adventure Book (Australia and New Zealand)... just one of the many series I'm going to publish before the year ends :)

Thank you!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
All Things Beautiful: History and Geography

[REPOST] Continent: Australia

Sunday, July 21, 2013

EDIT: Thank you so much to my reader Tracy for pointing out incorrect details of my animals. I have already corrected it and updated the link. Caiman doesn't exist in Australia.. and it's actually a mistake. It's supposedly crocodile but I got confused with my animal figures :( And all the while, I thought BBQ ribs originates from Australia and they actually think of it as American food! Thank you so much! I am so happy to learn all of these as well.

My family will be on vacation in the next few days and I have been cramming these days due to preparations. Aside from that we spend most of our days outdoors because of football practice, thus the lack of updates and post.

Last week, we worked on Continents, and the subject was Australia. Was very happy that I found these books from the library. My son loved the books for they had a lot of photos that made an impact on my son. The books provided pictures of the people and the culture of Australia, which was very very important in our unit lesson.

Now the materials I made were: the maps, flags, postcards and stamps. I also skipped printing the currency because my son isn’t interested with it at the moment.

My son also created the Australian flag out of cardstock (with a little assistance from me). He knows by heart the number of stars on the flag LOL.

I printed cards for the landmarks and foods in Australia. We were supposed to make Pavlova, but since we’re not really a fan of sweets and pastries, I rejected the thought of making it in order to save time and money :) Instead, we made BBQ ribs!!

Then he started drawing each cards. Can you guess each of it? There’s an alligator(caiman), the boat in the Sydney Opera House, the Cockatoo, a Dingo and an Emu.

Also, I made control cards for the animals in the Safari Toob Down Under for matching game. You can download it from here. Images were googled and if you wish to share it, kindly redirect them to my blog or on this post for the link. Thank you!

We plot the animals on the map where they’re mostly seen in Australia.

And to complete our unit lesson, I purchased the Kangaroo Nomenclature Card from Montessori Print Shop.

The next time we do Australia, I promise to add more materials and age appropriate activities. For now, I think these are okay :)

Linking to:

Animal Figures and Cards

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Oh how much my son loves these!! He loves to sort all our figures according to continents or arrange them alphabetically. Now I made these pocket containers for my continent cards (animals) according to their Montessori color code.

I got my figures from Safari Toobs and Schleich . I place everything on a basket and my son would just sort them accordingly.

Here's how they look like, showing 5 animals per continent.

Each continent set has 11 animals on it and my mission this year is to complete my figures so I can have all the animals representing each continent.

Continent animal cards and other FREEbies are available at Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Spring Carnival

Continent Study: Europe Part II (FREE Picture Cards)

Monday, May 6, 2013

Map and Flag Study

Our continent study usually starts with maps. This is my poor man's version of Wooden Puzzle Map (Montessori). My son loves working with puzzles so I painstakingly made this one for him.

Then we work with flags. Since I can't seem to find a cork-board so we can pin our Europe Pin Flags, we used plasticine to let our flags stand on the map :)

Here's a closer look of his work.

We also worked with the European Flag Nomenclature Cards. He liked identifying the flags of the countries where we have lived and visited.

I asked him to pick three flags he like the best so we can paint them. He chose the flag of Ireland, France and Serbia.

I love how he is serious when he is working.

Now for the freebies, you can avail this flags of Europe file for coloring purposes. Click the picture to download the file.

Culture/Lifestyle

These books are amazing! We totally love reading it as my son and I learn about families living in certain countries of Europe, learning about their countries and their lifestyle.

And with that, I also wanted to share photos I collected from the web, showing some of things you need to learn about Europe. Just click the picture for the link.

Landmarks

Here, I used my Landmarks of Europe materials. My son loves listening to my stories of how we travel on the mainland and the places we have been to as seen on the photos and on our learning materials. The rest of my Europe Continent Study materials can be found here.