I am glad to post something related to homeschool…life got a little serious for a while.
We are taking a break from regular school work for December. This is a busy time of year for us and I thought it would be nice not to have a lot of school work to do…that is why we started in July. For December we are going to work on a Christmas Around the World unit study. I think the kids will have fun with this and I’ve enjoyed putting it together for them. We are also going to Disney soon and so I based the study around the countries in Epcot…almost. I could not find anything about Christmas in Morocco. We will do the map work for Morocco but I also added Egypt since there is plenty of information on Egyptian Christmas traditions.
My study is not original and I borrowed from several sources. The sources are linked here on Pintrest. I will also try to include the direct links for those who do not use Pintrest. I also want to thank my friend Beth G for sharing resources and personal experience on the countries of Norway and Mexico. I pulled maps of off National Geographic MapMaker. I could not add their map maker to my pintrest board since they do not allow pins…interesting. I have used their map maker a bunch this school year and the maps are customizable.
Yesterday we made our Christmas folders to keep everything together and we made our passports. The passports contain a form for a write-up of each country, a stamp and a final write-up for the favorite country visited. I will take pictures of them in each “country” and they can put together a scrapbook to go along with their passports. They colored and cut out the passport cover page and then glued it to construction paper. I used needle and thread to bind their booklet…a stapler would be easier but mine manages to disappear all the time. Of course “Nobody” took it…someday when I catch up with Mr. Nobody I will want to know how he got toothpaste on my ceiling…!
For each country I found coloring pages for the kids to do while I read to them about each country. They listen best when their fingers are busy. We will make an ornament or craft to go along with each country and a recipe (hopefully a recipe!).
Resource books: Coloring book, Read Aloud resource 1, Resource 2, Great free PDF resource. If you did not want to purchase any books the free pdf is great. For every country in the unit is a coloring page, write-up, craft ideas and recipes. Some of the recipes are in metric units, you will need this converter…unless you are a math wiz!
In another post I will list each country, recipes, crafts, and pictures. Soon!
November 30, 2012 at 11:13 pm
That sounds very fun and interesting! What ages do you think this would work best with? I think I’d like to do something like this next year . . . thanks for the idea 🙂
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December 1, 2012 at 8:13 am
My kids are in first and third grade. They are pretty good writers at this point. You could always switch the passport to a drawing on the country instead of a write-up for Kindergarten or those who are not ready for writing assignments. All of my material listed is for K-5th grade. Hope this helps!
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December 12, 2012 at 3:00 pm
I plan on doing something similar in a few years adding cookies from around the world. LOTS of fun!!
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December 19, 2012 at 10:46 pm
I’ve nominated you for the 2012 Blog of the Year Award! Check it out at http://futureflyingsaucers.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/blog-of-the-year-award-2012/
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