Not really geography, and (honestly) not really homeschooling - I just thought it'd be a great opportunity to create a learning environment from something else going on in our lives. Here's my question - I know some of you do geography on your own (ahem, Sandra!!! :lol: ) and just put together little units on individual countries. Do you have any links to share? Where do you start, and what kind of info do you usually include? I'm looking for info on a country that includes things like weather, lay-of-the-land, culture, economics including costs of living, food, jobs available, what most people do and what they earn, government concerns including religion, opression vs freedom, education, parenting, etc. I've googled and that's just overwhelming. I need a place to start. Might decide to have the kids put together a lapbook or something... might not. Thanks!
That's a great idea, but we live in a tiny town with a tiny little library. They do the interlibrary loan thing, but it's a headache for me to get over there most of the time. I need to do some updating with them and connect to their system online - that will make it easier on me. But, most of what I need is going to be the current, day-to-day, practicalness of being in, visiting, or living in a place - things that I feel like can quickly be outdated in books, and might be easier to keep updated online. I tried wikipedia, but there's so much stuff and I didn't quite have my mind wrapped around the order it was going in, and it's in different voices, and doesn't really speak to what I want to know... it was just too much and too disordered to be helpful to me. I'm sure that once I get started I can find a groove; I'm just a little overwhelmed and having a hard time getting started.
I start with the library. I see what books they have on my chosen country and choose the books that look like they would be the best fit. I don't specifically go through a list of all the different elements to cover in each country. In general we focus on the culture of the country. Here is an example of what we did for China.
One of our co-op teachers used "Eat Your Way Around the World" with a classroom. She prepared a sample food item for the kids to taste, they located the country on a world map, colored the flag, learned important details about each country, heard song clips or music from online sources, etc. Also, A Trip Around the World reproducible book from Carson-Dellosa Publishing was used in one class as a guide to learning about a country. Check out edhelper.com and their country studies (under country theme units/Geography). MT3
Get GeoScribe from the History Scribe folks, I LOVE that....has all sorts of stuff on Country reports - great notebooking resource. Also, Highlights has those Top Secret Adventure books. If you call them they will let you buy the country information books without all the rest of the stuff. We started doing them, then they just were too much financially. Slowly we amassed the rest of the set. I love them. They have such good information in them. So awesome. Another resource for Maps and things like that is www.worksheetworks.com . Sounds to me like you'll have to do a lot of the research and stuff on the internet, but there is sooooo much out there. Also, if you google "Juvenile Fiction CountryName". And a lot of times you find some good books that are fiction, but talk about the people and culture. Edhelper - someone already told you about that. Also www.schoolexpress.com has units...I know they're not free anymore, but they are not expensive, I believe. Hope this helps!!!
How about social justice issues. www.compassion.com has tons of info on a huge number of countries - including things like poverty stats, how poor people live, what they eat ect. But really, it's a great resource. They even have an online copy of their kids magazine that has activities to engage kids in thinking about what the world is like. It's not depression either. They focus on the good that is being done, so it won't discourage your kids. But maybe it will ignite a passion in them to care for the poor ones in our world! I love this organization - can you tell?!
Travel agency? I got some brochures last year for Australia. They were beautiful, and had lots of interesting info (plus nice pics if you wanted to cut them up )
Hm...I don't think I'm the Sandra you tagged, but it did catch my eye I don't really have link information, but I can share one of my favorite resources - guide books, like Frommer's, or my recent new (but not terribly cheap) love - books written for people actually moving wherever. I think you can get guide books comparatively cheap at book sales or even used from Amazon - the publishers like to have a new edition each year. But the "Where to live" or books for people moving there are newer to me, and they seem a little different. The really good ones sell for a decent price used, too. That said, a few months ago, I got a couple books on living on London. *I've* been fascinated, never mind the kids. Okay, the kids like the maps: maps of vehicular routes, of train systems, bus systems, maps of neighborhoods. The things that have captured my imagination are the local taxes, postal service, etc. Close enough to the US system to grasp the function, but with some small (but very interesting ) differences. And, although the one book is really about the municipal area of London, there are frequent references to if you live in the city, it will be this way, but if you choose to live elsewhere in Great Britain, it will be this other way. We've followed up by looking at different neighborhoods, parks, etc, online. It's been interesting, and my kids clearly do not consider it school. More like mom's interesting but not really relevant quirky topic. Another thing we've been doing - none of this is a coherent "unit," but it is all bits & pieces strung together -- I have my computer home page set to list current and predicted weather for our town. In the past, I've added other cities, cities where we used to live or friends/relatives lives or we visit periodically. But a few months ago, I added London and New Delhi to our list, and I'll just make conversation by saying, Hey! Today here it's XX degrees, and in London, it's XY degrees. It was a little sobering for a while to repeatedly have hotter days here than in New Delhi! I recently obtained a couple world atlases, so I'm sure we'll be looking up whatever we're talking about now.
I just wanted to throw something out there about it not being homeschooling. I think it could count towards your homeschooling. It could fit in a history class or English class or whatever. Definitely if you have to count hours, I would count this time. Just a thought.
This sounds fantastic! Off to check it out now! Might be right up the alley I'm looking for, anyway.... Thanks, everyone. I guess I didn't say so in the first post, but really I can't spend any money at all. Was thinking some of you may just have sites you go to for current info on a country, like when you're thinking about vacationing there or something.
I'm sorry! I thought you were looking for the types of things to have the kids search/answer; the actual outline of the study. Here's a couple of websites for you then. http://www.kidinfo.com/geography/the_world.html http://kids.yahoo.com/reference/world-factbook http://www.factmonster.com/countries.html http://www.travelforkids.com/ http://www.multcolib.org/homework/cntryhc.html This one has TONS of sites! I am going back to look at InfoNation- which says that you can pick two nations and the site will compare them for you. Also the recipe one... HTH, MT3
