Archive for the ‘
Geography ’ Category
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
As I mentioned on Friday, ED has been working on her world geography. She has spent a couple of weeks going over the 7 continents again and working with some Montessori 3-part cards I made for her. They are probably available elsewhere, but I wanted both small cards to place on each continent and some larger ones so she could work on word-matching.
As she sang the 7-continents song (that I mentioned on Friday), she looked at the animal cards for each continent and placed them on the proper continent.
She did this with a large world map we have:
Another day, she identified and set out the satellite photos we have of the continents (they were free, but are no longer available where I got them a few years ago). You can probably google continent satellite photo and find photos you can print out.
Once she was pretty familiar with the animals on each continent, I brought out the Montessori 3-part cards. I printed out two sets of each and cut out the animals and word labels. She had to match them to the picture.
At the end of the week, I challenged her to match the word to the picture (without the control card)!
We also brought out all our plastic animals and she spent a couple of days sorting those onto the world map as well:
She also did a sticker activity of the world animals. We got a set of 12 from Oriental Trading:
If you are interested, you can print out your own world animal cards. They come both as large cards and as smaller versions of the same cards. I’ve been doing this activity with the kids since they were about 3 years old.
Here are the free 3-Part Montessori Cards — Animals of the 7 Continents:
If you found these useful, I would love to hear from you either here or over at my Homeschool Den Facebook Page! That’s also a great place to go catch up on some of the posts you might have missed lately. I keep a running list of all our posts there.
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Categories: Geography, Homeschool Den, Montessori (general info), Preschool (Age 4), Preschool and Toddler Activities, Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2), Rain Forests | Tags: Free Montessori 3-Part Cards, free world animals cards, Montessori geography activities, preschool geography activities, world animals cards
Friday, May 17th, 2013
While my older kids were learning a lot about the location of the specific countries of Africa, my preschooler was working on world geography again. I thought I’d share some of the activities ED has been doing the past week or two.
As always, we started out by singing the continent song. It’s to the tune of Frère Jacques:
While we sing the song, the kids always point to the continents on a Montessori world map. (What makes it Montessori is the specific colors used for each continent.)
Then, they place the continent label onto the correct spots on the world map. If the child needs it, there’s a control map so she can compare the labels with the words on the map.
I made this pin map years ago and we have used it so, so much. But when I went to link to the website where I got our map, the link no longer worked. 
So… it’s not perfect, but I made a Montessori world map that you can download for free.
There are two to choose from… one has country borders, the other doesn’t. Also I included the continent song so you can print it out if you want it.
Click here to download the free Montessori World Pin Map Packet:
Early next week, I’ll share a couple more of her geography activities and another set of free Montessori printables.
Tuesday, May 14th, 2013
We have been playing a couple of wonderful geography games in our homeschool. We have the Africa version, but you can also buy these same games in a version of Europe, Asia, or the Americas.
The first is a card game called WorldWise Geography (Africa) I got for just a couple of dollars (it’s a different version that the one I linked to. It looks like the game has been updated a bit.) We didn’t play it quite like the rules indicate, but the kids loved it so much they asked to start school with it (and the other geography game) each day last week!
Each card has a country on one side and the neighboring countries or bodies of water that surround it on the other. We played with the map side face up and each person looked to see if they had one of the neighboring cards to place on top. If not they could place a wild card or super wild card or would draw from the pile.
The first couple of times, we played with are cards face up so we could all help one-another (to make it less competitive). This game was great for my kids (ages 7 and 9), but it is much too complicated at this point for my 5 year old.
The other game we played is a wonderful board game called 10 Days in Africa. In this board game, each player is give 10 cards. Each person has to take a trip across Africa by going from country to a bordering country. If you have a jeep, you can travel to any other country. And, if you get an airplane (let’s say a green plane), you can travel from one green country to another green country by plane. You cannot end your trip with a jeep or a plane ride.
There are three draw piles and three face up cards to choose from when it’s your turn. You can discard onto any pile. Each play should always have exactly 10 cards (you just can’t see all the cards in the picture below because we were trying to figure out how to make the trip work!)
Here is a winning trip:
I can’t recommend this game enough for your homeschool or for a family game night. It’s really fun and educational!
We also have this same game for Europe — 10 Days in Europe… and there is also 10 Days in Asia, 10 Days in the Americas, 10 Days in the USA. Just choose the geography you’re interested in learning and you’ll be building your dream trip too!
Monday, May 13th, 2013
We are winding down our school year and will be bringing our Africa unit to a close in the next week or so. The past couple of weeks we’ve been reading about East Africa. We’ve read about a number of countries and then learned a bit about the Maasai people. The Maasai are semi-nomadic people who live in Kenya and northern Tanzania. They have quite distinctive customs and dress and live quite close to the game parks. Here are a couple photos from wikimedia of a woman and children with beaded necklaces around their necks:
We read about the Maasai warriors and learned about the rite of passage boys undertake to become a warrior. The Maasai warrior’s shield is on the flag of Kenya:
Many years ago, my Mom went to a conference in Nairobi. While she was there she went on a safari and bought a Maasai beaded necklace. After my Mom has passed away my Dad gave the necklace to me. I took the necklace down from the wall and let the kids all try it on:
After spending quite a bit of time examining our necklace and the ones in the books we had on hand, the kids set about making their own… while I read aloud:
The kids have also worked quite a bit on the geography of East Africa with our pin map.
We used the flags of Africa from Montessori Materials to create country pins for our pin map (African Flags-page 1; African Flags-page 2). You can print out a map of Africa from our Africa Learning Packet:
I have a couple of wonderful geography games we’ve been playing, but I’ll save that post until tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
It has been quite a while since I talked about our African Unit. I think the last time I wrote, I shared the history pages I made about the Ghana and Mali Empires. We had also learned about some famous Africans such as Sundiata and Mansa Musa.
The past couple of weeks, we’ve been learning more about contemporary Africa. We’ve been doing a lot of reading from Journey into Africa: A Creative Study of History, Geography, Animals, and People from a Christian Perspective. We tend to use mostly secular resources, but this book is wonderful. It has lots of maps, photos and illustrations. Some of the chapters are written as if we are being led by a tour guide.
The past few weeks we’ve read Chapter 5: Overview of West Africa — which included a bit of history, a discussion of the Gambia, begging, housing and roads, West African Arts — masks, drumming, kente, the Ashante, West African food, schools and children’s activities and we finished Chapter 6: Nigeria which includes photos of the outdoor market, women with goods on their heads, an outdoor prayer area for Muslims in Nigeria, Nigerian artwork and children playing games with groundnut shells. It explains about Nigerian Ethnic Groups and includes recipes to try at home.
We played a couple of African games The first one called Queah originated in Liberia. Four pieces are set on the board for each player. Players take turns moving around the board and trying to capture the other player’s piece by jumping diagonally over their opponent’s piece (see the directions for Queah here).
We also played Pombo. It is a Ghanaian version of American jacks. The child has seven stones. He/she tosses one stone in the air while trying to pick up one of the rocks on the ground. He/she must pick up the stone and catch the other before it hits the ground. If he/she is successful, then she tries throwing the stone again and trying to pick up two stones.
You’ll find more Traditional African Games here.
I’m about out of time so I’ll have to come back tomorrow to tell you about care package we got!!!
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