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

13 FREE Books for your Kindle

Don't you just love FREE ? Last week I found out about a great Facebook group for Homeschoolers called: Free Ebooks for Homeschoolers.  I found these great books on there and wanted to share them with you.

Last year on Tuesday's Treasures I shared with you about a wonderful set of books I had discovered by Joy Berry called Help Me Be Good.

Click on the pictures to go to Amazon.

I love these little treasures and I'm even more happy that a few of her books are FREE for your Kindle

 These two are from her HELP me be good Series


These are from a new series from Joy Berry


Here are a couple of Children's Bibles



Last but not least a couple of Homeschool Books


What are some of your great finds for your Kindle ?
Blessings
Chareen

Please Note: Though free at time of posting, prices may change at any time. Please verify that the “Kindle Price” is $0.00. If you see a price for “Prime Members” or “read for free”, then the book is NOT free any longer.

** Updated with one more Joy Berry book :)  so it's 14 FREE books for you 

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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