20 Best Tips

Geography Notebooking Sheet / Travel Diary

Here are two geography notebooking pages to help you in your geography studies. 

country geography notebooking page

Country Geography Notebooking Page ~ Jot down some notes on the country you are studying: square miles, longitude/latitude, natural resources, religions, languages and more. It also has space to add a picture of the country you are learning more about.

country fact sheet notebooking page for geography studies

The Country Fact Sheet {or travel diary} can be used for any country {I left the country name area intentionally blank}. There are several boxes on the page to record information about the country being studied: Facts about the country, someone famous from the country, famous landmark(s), and other fun information about the country. There is room for children to draw their own pictures, add clip art and journal answers on the page. Click here to print/download the Country Fact Sheet.

So you can see how we used it, I scanned in a completed one for the country of France. Ok ~ not quite completed and sorry the picture is a little dark {grins}. The handwriting is a little funky because Laurianna is trying to be artistic and make fun letters…and then gets distracted halfway through…

Before we started the country fact sheet, I pulled out our atlas and jotted down a few things that I wanted to cover. For famous people I chose Claude Monet. Famous places ~ Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. As we worked through our atlas we filled in some of the blanks and then the girls wrote a sentence or two about the other areas. I googled the places we were going to cover and created some ‘clip art’ for them to cut and paste onto the notebooking sheet.


 
When we are done, this page will go into our geography notebook for the girls to review later in the year. Here are a few more printables and resources to help you out as well.

 

Preschool Alphabet Worksheets

Each week along with our letter-of-the-week learning I’ve been posting the cut and paste worksheets that we do for each letter of the alphabet.

To make it easier, I’ve put the whole lot of them into one big ol’ PDF file so it’s handy in one place.

‘Cause I’m nice like that.

Here’s the entire document and you’ll also find it linked in the left sidebar under “Preschool Printables”. Just click on the thumbnail graphic to print it off!


Feel free to print them off, and if you’d like to link back to this page, that’s fine too.

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Traveling France: Week 1

We’re squeezing in geography and normal school time as best we can, due to the ‘s’ word.

{standardized testing}

Our study of France has been a little bit here, a little bit there ~ and we did get it all in this week. Just maybe not exactly like I had planned it. Rather than tell you how it all worked out in real life, I’ll give you the ‘how I intended it all to be’ instead. :)

Monday

  • Geography song (kids are singing it to me while pointing to the countries on the map)
  • Locate/map France using wall map and atlas
  • Find France on the globe (which hemispheres, what continent, etc…)
  • What countries (and how many) border France
  • Bodies of water around France
  • Read a few chapters of The Little Prince

Tuesday

  • Geography song
  • Read story from 80 Tales Around the World
  • Rivers in France
  • Highest point (mountain) in France
  • Completed map activity (click on thumbnail below)

Wednesday

  • Geography song
  • Flag of France worksheet (click on thumbnail below)
  • Type of government in France
  • Landmarks in Paris
  • Read a few chapters in The Little Prince

Thursday

  • Geography song
  • Children Around the World and worksheet
  • Virtual journey
  • Played some online games via French embassy

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using

Visiting the Netherlands: Week 2

This week we started reading a new book, Boxes for Katje, and focused a bit more on a few artists, Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt. We also are learning more about Corrie ten Boom and reading a book called Keeper of the Angels Den about her life.

My mom is talking to the girls about her too, since she was a secretary for Corrie for a few years and Corrie ten Boom married my mom and my dad. The girls think it’s great to look through scrapbooks and see pictures of Holland and everyone way back when.

Here’s a peek at how our week looked:

Monday

  • Review geography song
  • Show where Netherlands is located on a map
  • Talk about capital of Netherlands (Amsterdam and also Hague as seat of goverment)
  • Type of government in Netherlands – visit royal website
  • Read Boxes for Katje and talked about time book was written

Tuesday

  • Review geography song
  • Talk more about how WW2 effected the Netherlands
  • Started reading Keeper of the Angels Den – a book about Corrie ten Boom. We love it!
  • Talked about Holland’s geography features

Wednesday

  • Looked at art from both van Gogh and Rembrandt and compared their styles.
  • Picked one of the paintings by van Gogh to copy using watercolors (Sunflowers)
  • Talked about the process of creating Delft porcelain (we have some at our house from our trip to Holland)
  • Had some gouda cheese. We like it sliced thin on toasted bread (our Costco carries a great brand)
  • Continued reading in Keeper of the Angels Den

Thursday

Resources we used:

Websites we visited/used:

We’ll be moving onto Germany over the next few weeks and continuing with our reading of Keeper of the Angel’s Den. I’m hoping to get some fun pictures posted soon too of my trip to Holland several years ago. I also have some pics of Corrie ten Boom to post too – especially the ones of when I met her….ok, I was one, but still! :)

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Visiting the Netherlands: Week 1

Both of the girls were looking forward to our time in the Netherlands because my mom is from Holland and Laurianna visited there when she was just a little baby. I will have quite a few video links in this post and next weeks post and also share some of the fun things we did ~ including learning a easy Dutch prayer that we are saying at dinner time. It was one that I said growing up, and it’s been fun listening to our oldest three say it each night now.

Here are the words (and a little video clip) of the prayer we learned: “Dank u wel, Here Jezus, voor dit eten. Amen.” {translation: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this food. Amen.}

The minit books that we are working on are not for a lapbook, but the girls enjoy doing them so we are putting them on a piece of cardstock and adding them to their geography binders. There are quite a few video clips at the end of this post – sorry if the page takes a bit to load for you.

Here’s a peek at how our week worked out:

Monday

  • Introduce new geography song
  • Locate and map the Netherlands (both wall map and minit book)
  • Use the globe to find the Netherlands
  • Read Hanna in the Time of the Tulips

Tuesday

Wednesday

  • Practiced our geography song
  • Read Hanna in the Time of the Tulips again
  • Talked about the life cycle of a tulip (cards for a minit book)
  • Watched a video clip on windmills
  • Started our windmill craft
  • Learned our new prayer in Dutch (video clip above has pronunciation)



Thursday

  • Practiced our geography song
  • Finished up our windmill craft
  • Watched several video clips about the Netherlands (courtesy of Matt Lauer’s trip around the world)
  • Kept practicing our Dutch prayer and Dutch phrase: “Ik hou van jou” ~ “I love you” (see video clip above for pronunciation)


Resources we used:

Websites we visited/used:

Intro to Netherlands with Matt Lauer: some great info on how flowers get around the world and quick facts about the Netherlands


Continuing around the Netherlands (this clip has a bar at the end and some people drinking)


Video clip on windmills (via NBC and “Where in the World is Matt Lauer”)


Clip on the Anne Frank House:


My Notebooking Sheet for flag of the Netherlands
: The handwriting on the top is a font of my mom’s handwriting, which just reminds me of Holland. :)

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Beginning Consonant Cards

Our printer has been on the fritz lately and I really wanted to try these out before posting them…but since I’m pretty sure they will be fun, I figured I’d share them even before I get to play along myself at home!

These are beginning consonant cards to use with your tot/preschooler and are designed to help identify the beginning consonant sound in words. There are 3 pictures provided for each consonant (with the exception of ‘x’ – go figure). I do have them printed off and am going to laminate them to make them a little more sturdy

Match the pictures to their beginning letter sound. You can also use the picture cards to practice identifying objects with your child.

You can download and print the pdf by clicking here for the printable. Be sure to download the long and short vowel cards that I posted as well!

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