Showing posts with label Geography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geography. Show all posts

Friday 17 January 2014

Discover Downunder {Review}

Today it is with great excitement I share a new geography book with you. As you know I have a passion for the Charlotte Mason method to home education and am trying to incorporate a more hands on delight directed approach in our home school.  Michelle from Homeschooling Downunder has written and compiled an Australian geography book titled Discover Downunder.

We have had the priviledge of traveling up to Queensland by road a few years ago, and I can attest to one thing this land is big!  I really love this quote from the book

“Australia is a land filled with great big things. There is the Great Barrier Reef, Great Artesian Basin, Great Dividing Range, Great Australian Bight, Great Victorian Desert, Great Sandy Desert, and the Great Ocean Road. Our mainland has the big rock—Uluru, the biggest salt lake, the biggest coal port, the biggest fence, and the biggest group of feral camels. We even made our own big tourist attractions like the Big Banana in NSW, Big Pineapple in Queensland, and Big Lobster in South Australia—just to name a few. And one of the very great big things about Australia is how diverse the geography is.”

You can compare our size to the USA and Europe over at Australia's Size Compared.

How we use Discover Downunder
There is no planning or preparation needed when using this book.  We simply sat down together on the couch opened it up and started reading.  This is truly a living book resource whenever we read Iit Sir N asks to read some more.  It is aimed at children but I have enjoyed reading it out loud.  I am learning alongside Sir N.  Each topic is shared with a personal touch so you feel like you are being introduced to it by a friend who is sharing the very best things there are to know about it.  It is living, breathing and interesting. Each chapter is knitted together to form one big picture of Australia.

I will continue with this book this year and will be purchasing the notebook pages (discovery pages) to use along side from Homeschooling Downunder.

Contents
  • Introduction to Australian Geography
  • Maps
  • Climate Zones & Seasons
  • Mountains
  • 10 Geographic zones of Australia by State, Territory and Sea
  • Lakes, Rivers & Wetlands
  • Snowy Mountains & Renewable Energy
  • Mining, Volcanoes, Earth Quakes
  • Wildflowers & Agriculture
  • World Heritage areas
  • Our Country
  • Vocabulary definition list

Discover Downunder

  • ISBN: 9780980505734
  • Dewey Number: 919.402076
  • Publisher: Homeschooling Downunder
  • Publication date: 2013
  • Pages: 32
  • Author: Jo Lloyd, Amanda Bauer, Belinda Letchford, Cliff Lloyd, Anna Marsh, Fiona McDonald and Michelle Morrow
  • Illustrator: Tim and Sarah Morrow, Michelle Morrow, Bethany Morrow.
Cost
  • Book $20.00
  • Postage $6
  • eBook Discovery pages $7.95
  • Book and Discovery pages Set $34.95
  • Available from Homeschooling Downunder
(Prices are in Australian $ and correct at time of publishing.  Please verify prices before purchasing)

Our Thoughts
We are immigrants to Australia so I'm always on the look out for a good reference book.  We love using this book and are slowly working our way through the 26 chapters.  It's so easy to read and understand and is broadening our understanding of Australian geography in easy conversational tones.

Connect with Michelle
Thank you Michelle for the gift of Discover Downuder to our home we look forward to exploring more of Australian geography in our homeschool this year.

Blessings
Chareen

PS you can download the Australian Book Traveller for FREE



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Wednesday 8 January 2014

Winter Olympics 2014 Unit Study Resources


It feels like the other day that we enjoyed meeting the Australian Summer Olympic Champions at Federation Square and studying the Summer Olympics .  This year it's time to take a look at the Winter Olympics.

The very first Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France in 1924.  This event is held every four years. The 2014 Winter Olympic Games host city was selected on the 4th of July 2007 and is Sochi, in Russia.  There will be 98 events in 15 winter sports.



"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well." Olympic Creed
At the Library

To Print

On Pinterest

On YouTube

On the WWW

Russia




Winter Olympics Resources Round-Up Have you found any good resources to use to teach about the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics ?? For more resources the Schoolhouse Review Crew (15 January 2014)  are sharing their favourite resources for the Winter Olympics

Blessings
Chareen

"The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." –Olympic Charter



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Wednesday 6 November 2013

If You Were Me And Lived In ... {Review}


This year Sir N and I have decided to recommence our Expedition Earth Journey.  It was such a blessing when a month ago Carole P. Roman mailed me four beautiful books from her If You Were Me and Lived In ... series.  I received the following four books
  1. If You Were me and Lived In... Mexico
  2. If you were me and lived in... France...
  3. If you were me and lived in... South Korea...
  4. If you were me and lived in ... Norway...

All four of these books are beautifully written and aimed at an elementary age range of pre-K to eight.  All the books follow the same  format which Sir N found engaging and I found a pleasure to read out loud to him.  These books are as the series title states an introduction to the cultures of different countries.  As a South African born New Zealander now living in Australia I can appreciate the subtle differences in culture and Carole has done an excellent job in helping children see that even though people are people all over the world there are certain things that make a country and it's people unique and that is their culture.

Inside each book
  • The country is introduced by way of a map with the capital city clearly marked.
  • Where it can be found in the world 
  • An interesting fact or two about the country or it's capital city.
  • The different names of boys and girls
  • An introduction to the language and money
  • A significant landmark
  • A common cuisine
  • Children's games
  • Historical fact
  • Pronunciation guide 
Here is a YouTube clip with a sneak peak of the inside of If You Were Me and Lived In ... Mexico


What we did
Each book follows the same format so  I will share what we did with one country as we did the same with all four.
  • I gathered some extra book resources from the library.
  • Filled in our passport
  • We read the book once each day and talked about a different aspect of the culture we had learned about
  • I had some minute books we filled these in with information from the book
  • When we read about the food eaten by the french, we read up in a children's cook book and then made some of our own.
  • We coloured in a French flag
  • Labeled a map of France finding the  Bay of Biscay and the capital city of Paris. The book had a full page map of France with a star indicating the capital of Paris.  I liked the map because it was not full of the normal clutter of maps. We did find reading the labeling of the map a little hard as it was a dark colour on a dark background.  I think this could be eliminated by using a more contrasting colour like white or bright yellow in order to see it clearer. 
  • Filled in a fact sheet about France

Details
If You Were me and Lived In... Mexico
Paperback: 26 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 22, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1480209627
ISBN-13: 978-1480209626 
Kindle $ 0.99
Paperback: $8.99

If you were me and lived in... South Korea...
Paperback: 28 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 14, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1481062344
ISBN-13: 978-1481062343
Kindle $ 0.99
Paperback: $8.99
If you were me and lived in... France...
Paperback: 26 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (May 2, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1481032003
ISBN-13: 978-1481032001
Kindle $ 0.99
Paperback: $8.99
If you were me and lived in ... Norway...
Series: A Child's Introduction to Cultures Around the World
Paperback: 30 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 12, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1481979949
ISBN-13: 978-1481979948 
Kindle $ 1.99
Paperback: $8.62


All in all we really enjoyed these books.  I found the pronunciation guide very handy and Sir N loved how each book had it's own unique symbol on each page. You could use these books independently with very young students to introduce them to the country.  If you were reading these to slightly older students they would make an excellent spine to your study.  You could use each double page spread as a theme of the day and expand the lesson with extra books from the library or information from the internet. Sir N's favourite item in our shipment was the inflatable ball globe that arrived.  He loves finding the countries on it.

Connect with the Author
Blessings
Chareen


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Monday 5 August 2013

Day 1 - Geography Curriculum

Good Evening to my fellow Australian friends and good morning to my round the world friends welcome to the Schoolhouse Review Crew 5 days of ... blog hop.

The theme for my 5 days is Curriculum Choices. My aim is not to list every single resource out there (That in itself would be almost impossible as the Internet is an ever changing place). My aim is to give you some ideas to start you off.

Today's theme is Geography

Over the years I have found that this is one area that is mournfully neglected in the home school community.   There are a few ways of teaching this interesting subject after all everything that has ever happened in history happened somewhere in our amazing world!

Incidental Geography 
One way is to do incidental geography. This is done a couple of ways.  One is to have a world map on which you mark the countries you learn about in history or your current read aloud. Sonlight uses this method. Another is to pick a continent and do it the traditional school way which is to start memorising the countries and their capitals. It's all simply a matter of drill work.

Books
There are some really great books to work through here are some I've used

The Geography Puzzle is a fun thing to build and learn the countries and capitals of the world.

Pinterest is one of my favourite Geography resources
Mapping 
  •  Megamaps.  I love this website.  You choose the size (as small as one page or as large as 7 feet accross) and then print on A4 sheets of paper to create the map of your choice.  Best of all it's FREE!
  • Wondermaps from Bright Ideas Press.  Love this.  You add Geography skills to any lesson.  You can chose from historical to modern day maps.
  • Uncle Josh's Outline Map Collection has over 260 printable Maps.
 Curriculum


Expedition Earth

Sir N and I are currently working through Expedition Earth: A Journey through God's World. This curriculum was written by Erica from over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. We have been working our way slowly through this download watching YouTube clips, cooking and extra Notebooking pages. Sir N is enjoying it so much that he calls it our Travel School.


Trail Guide to World Geography


Trail Guide to World Geography  This particular package is my all time favourite.  You can purchase this as a book or an eBook download.  This little big book is chock full.
If you do this book with your children they will have covered geography from A-Z in three years.  You do each section once.  Once in primary school, once in middle school and once in high school. Each time your student does a year they go deeper learn more and practise more.
Each level is a complete 36 week school year course.  The teachers manual comes with everything you need to successfully and comprehensively teach geography without any prior knowledge of the subject.  There are also student work books available for each grade level.

On the www
Milk and Cookies has the most comprehensive collection of Homeschool Geography resources I have seen on the web.

Homeschool giveaways has an excellent resource list of printables too


FREE on the internet


What are some of your favourite resources ?

Tomorrow I will share with you some of my favourite History resources.
Blessings
Chareen

Summer Blog Hop
Be sure to hop on over to the crew blog to read more posts from this series

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Friday 2 August 2013

Global Art {Review}

Sir N loves hands on things to do but I'm not very good about finding things for him to do.  So when Global ART became available to review on the crew I jumped at the chance.  This book is published by the award winning publisher of early childhood resources Gryphon House.

I was very impressed with how well it was packaged for posting. When the book arrived it was in perfect condition.  I have really enjoyed using this book and it has made a wonderful addition to our library at home. 

About
Title: Global Art
Pages: 190 pages.
Cover: Soft
ISBN:9780876591901 
Authors are MaryAnn F. Khol and Jean Potter.
Illustrated by Rebecca Van Slyke.
Publisher: Gryphon House
Item no 18827
Cost: US$16.95

  • I love the fact that each page is dedicated to one craft activity.  
  • It is concise and easy to follow. 
  • Each chapter is dedicated to a continant
  • Icons on each page indicate the experience level needed, art techniques used and planning and preparation time needed.
  • Indexes in the back: Alphabetical Activity List, Index of Activities by Country or Continent, Index of Terms and Materials, Activity by Preparation Index,  Activity by Experience Level Index, Activity by Art Medium Index
Global ART equips us as parents to use the medium of art to teach our children about the people and wonderfully diverse cultures that come from all over the world today. Each activity is concisely presented with a list of materials needed and the process to follow in order to accomplish the activity.  There is a globe printed on the page with a star indicating the country being learned about. There is a short Did you know? segment featuring some interesting historical/culturally relevant piece of information below the name of the country on each page. I really enjoyed reading these and so did Sir N.

All of the projects I have looked at so far or planned to do with Sir N have been easy to set up and do and most of the time the supplies needed were easily obtainable.  There have not been any activities which have needed super expensive bits and pieces.  Some art projects were achievable with what we had on hand in the art supply cupboard and some did involve planning and the purchase of a couple of items.  For example the project on page 169 (Silver Wind Chimes) needed aluminum foil pie plates of different sizes.

A sample of what we have done

Today Sir N and did a Dream Time painting together. The supplies were all available in the art cupboard - pencils, paint and white paper.

First we read the short cultural note which told us about Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. I then read the short instructions. We divided up the page into quarters and drew four pictures in each quarter.

We took some time and looked up some Dream Time pictures on Google to see which colours are often used. Put paint on the palette and started to paint our dots.  It was a communal effort and I'm quite pleased with the outcome so far. Sir N really loved painting the snake.

Connecting with Gryphon House
  1. Blog
  2. Facebook
  3. Twitter
  4. Pinterest
I have really enjoyed using this product from Gryphon House it has lived up to all my expectations and more.  It has inspired me to look at what other products they have and was amazed to see that they have a dedicated section for Home Educators. I would encourage you to take a look at the great products that are available from Gryphon House.

The Crew have been using this book and The Homegrown Preschooler for the last month.  Be sure to pop on over and read what my crew mates have to say about their experiences.

Blessings
Chareen
This post is linking with the Virtual Refrigerator over at A Glimpse of our Life. Come and share your childs art with us this week.

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Tuesday 30 July 2013

TT - A Country Far Away


A Country Far Away
  • Format: Paper back
  • Number of Pages:32 
  • Publisher: Fontaine Press 
  • Publication Date: 
  • ISBN 10:0980876028 
  • ISBN 13:9780980876024
  • Author: Nigel Gray 
  • Illustrator: Philippe Dupasquier 
This book is an incredibly clever book.  It is one story which illustrates a first and third world country at the same time. Each page is divided into two. The top half illustrates a third world country and the bottom half illustrates a first world country and running through the center is the story.  Its the story of a typical family and what they do every day but the pictures show how it is done.  The Book Depository says "A remarkable and delightful book that shows how children are alike the world over, while at the same time celebrating the rich and interesting diversity of their ordinary lives." and I must agree. This book is well worth having on your shelf.


Blessings
Chareen
Every bed of Roses

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library. Grab the button for your post and add a link to your post below. I would love to read about your treasures. 


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Tuesday 23 July 2013

TT - Children from Australia to Zimbabwe


Children from Australia to Zimbabwe
  • Format: Paper back / Hardback
  • Number of Pages:64 pages
  • Vendor: 
  • Publication Date: 
  • ISBN 10:1570914788 
  • ISBN 13:9781570914782 
  • Author  Maya Ajmera & Anna Rhesa Versola
  • Illustrator: 
This book is beautifully illustrated with photographs from all over the world.  Each country is featured on a double page spread featuring a map of the country, photographs of children and families in traditional dress, photographs of everyday life, the flag, general facts and the names of other countries with that letter of the alphabet. This is a beautiful book and lovely to read and look at.



Blessings
Chareen
Every bed of Roses

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library. Grab the button for your post and add a link to your post below. I would love to read about your treasures. 

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Tuesday 16 July 2013

TT - A Child's Introduction to The World


A Child's Introduction to The World
     
  • Format: Hardback
  • Number of Pages: 96 
  • Publisher:Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc 
  • Publication Date: 
  • ISBN 10: 1579128327 
  • ISBN 13: 9781579128326  
  • Author: Heather Alexander
  • Illustrator: Meredith Hamilton 
This book is an interesting addition to your geography learning resources.  The inside cover contains a paper globe and stickers which are referred to throughout the book.  The first thirteen chapters deal with geographical information in narrative format.  From here you go to part two of the book which is a mini introduction to the seven continents and the countries and it's people.



Blessings
Chareen
Every bed of Roses

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library. Grab the button for your post and add a link to your post below. I would love to read about your treasures. 


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Tuesday 9 July 2013

TT - The Geography Book


The Geography Book
Activities for exploring, mapping and enjoying your world
  • Format: Paper back / Hardback
  • Number of Pages: 112 
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc 
  • Publication Date: 
  • ISBN 10: 0471412368 
  • ISBN 13: 9780471412366  
  • Author: Caroline Arnold 
  • Illustrator: 
I am very impressed with this book.  It is neatly organized and well presented with plenty of hands on activity to help students practically understand what they are learning. It's a great read aloud and the lessons build upon one another. The book has an extensive index and glossary following it's 38 lessons.



Blessings
Chareen
Every bed of Roses

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library. Grab the button for your post and add a link to your post below. I would love to read about your treasures. 


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Tuesday 2 July 2013

TT - Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography


Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography
  • Format: Paper back / eBook
  • Number of Pages: 68
  • Vendor: Queen Homeschool Supplies
  • Publication Date: 2008
  • ISBN: 
  • Author:  Charlotte Mason
  • Revised by: Sandi Queen
  • Illustrator: 
Last year I decided to search out for Charlotte Mason geography resources and discovered that Charlotte Mason had written a geography book.  On my travels to search out this book I discovered it online and then to my delight found the Queen Homeschool Supplies had revised it and they were now publishing the book.  Unfortunately I could not purchase it here in Australia. I recently discovered that it is now being offered as an eBook. 

The book contains 41 lessons and are written in narrative form.  There are illustrations, poems and some lessons are complete with mapping assignments.

Blessings
Chareen
Every bed of Roses

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library. Grab the button for your post and add a link to your post below. I would love to read about your treasures. 


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