We just recently switched churches. This new church has a missions focus each month where they study a different country and the missionaries who are there. I'd like to incorporate this into Eli's schooling. My problem is that I'm not even sure he understands what a "country" is, let alone what "another country" is, iykwim. Any suggestions? And if you know of anything specific that wouldn't be over his head, here are the countries for the next couple of months: October- Germany November- India December- Dominican Republic I guess I'm just afraid that all of my ideas are going to be over his head.
I don't have any suggestions, but I'll be watching. Trying to get a 3 year old to understand that Daddy is going to another country seems to be hard!
We did that in our co-op a while back! We would teach a four-week "unit", and then there would be a study on a country with talk on missions between every 5th week. It was REALLY nice! I wouldn't worry too much about his understanding about a "country". Just show him on the globe where HE is, and where the new country is. They live far away from us, and they do things differently there. They speak a different language, and eat different foods. Maybe they have VERY different religious beliefs, etc. YWAM Publishing puts out a great series called "Christian Heros Then and Now". They are missionary biographies that are written for children. They also have a series written for the very young child, but I'm not too fond of those. (But who know? You might like them!). You might find one of those about a missionary going to your "target" country. We read about Amy Carmichael, who went to India around 1900. Later, we learned that the Indian pastor we support works in the same area of India. So we speculated that, if Amy hadn't been a missionary 100 years ago, would Pastor Stephens be a Christian today? Did Amy lead someone to Christ, who lead someone else, etc. until 100 years later he came to know the Lord? It was a good way to show my kids that TODAY'S choices have ETERNAL results!
http://www.preschoollearners.com/ this site has early geography units. Hope this will help. There is some on Germany and India.
Hi I guess I've never really explained the concept of "country" to my son, but he definitely understands the concept of here/far away, and he understands the globe and can locate many, many places. I think it just comes from exposure (exposure, exposure!). I would go for it. If you are interested in doing (maybe one?) literature based unit studies along with your country studies, Homeschool Share has some freebies. Germany- Berlioz the Bear with free lapbook. My son LOVED this unit; you can see pictures of his lapbook at my blog India The Story of Little Babaji. We are going to use this one later in the year. My son already loves the story, and I bet yours would, too. Dominican Republic Cocoa Ice -- and you can study CHOCOLATE along with! Hope you find something useful! I know reading the story each day for the week and doing the activities really helps my son learn his geography; he associates the book with the location (forevermore!).
Thanks for all of your suggestions. Those unit studies look great. I'm sure I'll be using them. And thanks for the encouragement. I have trouble straddling the fence between going over his head and underestimating him.
My daughter is 3, she knows what another country is since we are living in another country from our own. It kind of came naturally to her. We have friends from all over the world, so I made flashcards of different countries for her and we started with Europe. By now when she looks at the flag she says "This and this person lives there". I think you should go ahead and teach him, then you'll see how much he understands. I found from experience, that even if some things are above her head I just mention them casually, and then in some time (weeks, days or months) it just clicks
There's a series called First Step Nonfiction, and they put out books called Where is My Town, Where is My Continent, and two or three other titles. They are for K agers.
Even when my oldest was 7, he had an interesting concept of the USA: My dh was on a business trip in Nevada. So we looked up Nevada, and saw where it was on the map. Then I had him draw where it was. He drew an outline of the US--and did quite well with that. Then he labeled the things he'd heard about. So on his map he wrote New York, Florida, Nevada (where Daddy is) and Disneyland! Disneyland was it's own state! :lol: Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread!
My kids knew California (where Aunt Lisa was living at the time), Florida where G'ma and G'pa goes every winter, and Texas where my brother Michael lives. Fortunately, all three are rather easy to recognize and locate on the map. Oh, and Phillip could show you where Mexico was (at age 3) because we had raised Monarch butterflies, and he knew that his butterfly flew to Mexico. But I would guess that he didn't realize that Mexico was a seperate country.
My boys know Pennsylvania is where the rest of our family is. Except for their uncle and cousins in Australia. Which they can also identify on a globe. But I really don't think even Eli understands that Oz is a different country. I guess it doesn't really matter at this point. Pretty much everything in K is retaught at other times anyhow, right?
Jack can pick out Oklahoma, Nebraksa, Texas, and Arkansas pretty consistently. Kuwait....may be a little hard to comprehend! Oh well, by the time I get him to understand, dh will be back.:lol:
if nothing else you can print up pictures about the countries and study the people and animals of that country, he may not get teh concept that its on the other side of the globe and hes on this side but it will come back to him as he gets older and studies them in more serious studies. I had to deal with lighter side of learning things with ds10 and the states history because my brain said OH MAN if I teach ALL this now then when he hits hs level he will be bored and then how will I get his 'required credits' in appropriately? So I said okay, I will teach it at a fun learning level, still doign reports and right now working on our first ever LAP BOOK on Columbus and his voyages! I have to bring him in and let him see pictures of others so they can see what I am talking about, cause trying to explain it I am getting weird looks haha! He is having fun so far gathering and setting his presentation though just the same! I am looking at books about the people we are studying with him as well as he reads some of them on his own because he likes history stuff. sorta lighter side of history lessons too? hope that helps somehow
I explain countries as pieces of a whole. You could start with something he does understand, like a pizza. The whole pizza is the whole world. Cut it into 7 slices and they represent the continents. Then cut it up even further to show countries within and continent.
Well I'll offer a thought although I have no nifty links. But here is my thought. . . We have always taught geography this way using maps and missionary stories etc. Perhaps my kids just think differently because we are the 'foreigners' here and so understanding different cultures is not really difficult--they live it. But when my oldest dd was 5 I thought it was over her head to talk about this stuff. . .and to an extent it was but I plugged on. Now she is in 3rd grade and has a really, really good geography base knows pretty much where everything is except in the US (which we haven't studied yet) and well, I guess that's a long way of saying even if it seemed over her head, I was later surprised by how introducing it initially has sparked an interest and advanced understanding in the concepts.
