20 Best Tips

Exploring Egypt: Week 2 {Mummies and More}

Oct132009
October 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment

This week we narrowed our focus a little bit and used the book Mummies & Pyramids by Mary Pope Osborne along with our studies. The highlight of the week? Mummifying apples! The kids were so excited to do this experiment ~ but we’ll have to share the results with you next week!

Monday

  • Quick review about what we learned about Egypt last week
  • Sing our geography song: Northern Africa
    Learn about the flag of Egypt {worksheet below}
    Independent reading {pick from the bookshelf ~ see carousel below}
Click on thumbnail to download pdf document

Tuesday

Wednesday

  • Review geography song
  • Read chapter 3 of Mummies and Pyramids ~ Egyptian religion. Talked about the different gods and goddesses {Horus, Osiris & Isis, Bastet, Thoth, and Bes}.
  • Visited King Tut One site ~ kids spent some time playing games and exploring the site

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Read chapter 4 in Mummies & Pyramids
  • Visit Time for Kids site on Egypt
  • Mummified an apple – fun science experiment!! I’ll be sharing more details on this later with you all.

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using


{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Africa, Egypt, Geography, Geography Printables Leave a Comment

Exploring Egypt: Week 1

Oct62009
October 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

We started out our tour of Africa by studying the country of Egypt. Honestly, it can be rather daunting planning a ‘quick’ tour because there is so much to do and cover. From pyramids, to mummies, to pharaohs, and the list goes on. Needless to say this isn’t an exhaustive list and there will be two more weeks to follow this post

Monday

  • Introduce new song about Northern Africa
  • Use atlas and globe to locate Africa and Egypt
  • Mapping activity
  • Independent reading {pick from the bookshelf ~ see carousel below}
Click on thumbnail to download pdf file

Tuesday

  • Review geography song
  • Learn about some new geography terms: delta, desert, oasis
  • Learned about the Nile River: originates in Ethiopia, flows South to North, talked about the Nile Delta
  • Watched Mystery of the Nile IMax movie on Netflix ~ available to watch instantly

Wednesday

 

Thursday

Resources and Websites

Books We Recommend


{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Africa, Egypt, Geography, Geography Printables Leave a Comment

Our Studies of Italy: Week 2

Sep292009
September 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment

While there is so much more that we could do in our studies, we kept it fairly simple this week. In all honestly, Italy is a place we could spend waaaaay more time learning about ~ ancient Rome, the Roman empire, Pompeii…the list goes on! We started our study of Italy last week and that post also has some other great links and resources, so be sure to check it out!

Here are the things we focused on this week and some links we liked and used.

Monday

  • Quick review of last week’s studies: capital, major cities, geography features {i.e. Italy is a peninsula, Sicily is an island}
  • Took a virtual tour of Italy
  • Geography song about Eastern Europe ~ point out countries while singing
  • Color & learn about the flag of Italy

click thumbnail to download the pdf flag activity

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Read Michaelangelo by Diane Stanley
  • Had fun trying to paint while laying on our backs {a little messy and tricky…poor Michaelangelo!}
  • Stamped our passports, put our papers in our notebooks and packed up since our trip to Italy is done!

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using

Photobucket

{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Europe, Geography, Geography Printables, Italy Leave a Comment

Our Study of Italy: Week 1

Sep232009
September 23, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Our last stop in our tour of Europe is Italy. We found some great {and fun} books to read this week and Laurianna decided toward the end of the week that she wanted to learn more about the Colosseum…until she found out more of what went on there ~ and then not so much anymore!

Monday

  • Geography song about Eastern Europe ~ point out countries while singing
  • Locate & map country features
  • Color & label map of Italy {see map activity below}
  • Use atlas to learn more about Italy

click thumbnail to download the pdf map activity

Tuesday

  • Review geography song
  • Major cities in Italy and the capital of Italy
  • Visit National Geographic for Kids site: Italy
  • Story from Around the World in 80 Tales

Wednesday

  • Review geography song
  • Geography features ~ seas/oceans around Italy, island {Sicily}, peninsula
  • Read Katy and the Mona Lisa

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Read Papa Picollo
  • Watch some videos about the colosseum on YouTube

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using

{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Europe, Geography, Geography Printables, Italy Leave a Comment

Learning About Spain: Week 1

Sep82009
September 8, 2009 by 3 Comments

We didn’t quite squeeze in all of Europe last year, so we are continuing our tromp through Europe with Spain this fall. There is so much that we could cover and literally spends weeks upon weeks studying the country, but we’re trying to stick to a two-week study of each country.

Here’s a look at how we spent our first week of learning about Spain.

Monday

  • Introduce geography song about Eastern Europe ~ point out countries while singing
  • Locate & map Spain {wall map, atlas, and globe} ~ find capital and major geographical features
  • Use atlas to learn more about Spain
  • Read The Story of Ferdinand
  • Color & label map of Spain

click thumbnail to download the pdf map activity

Tuesday

click thumbnail to download the pdf map activity

Wednesday

  • Review geography song
  • Geography feature ~ Pyrennes Mountains
  • Read about Picasso and visit website @ his art {talked about cubism and looked at some funky art}
  • Read Story of Ferdinand again
  • Watched video collage with Picasso’s art

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Read about Ponce de Leon {the kids were so sad he died from an arrow hitting him}
  • Story from Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Spain

Resources and Websites

  • Time for Kids Spain – Includes a sightseeing guide, history timeline, native lingo, fact file and teacher’s guide
  • Travel for Kids – gives some great suggestions for actually traveling Spain with kids along with books that are recommended by regions in Spain
  • Spanish Explorers – Ponce de Leon, Cortez, Magellan, and more
  • Mr. Picasso Head – hilarious online ‘game’ where kids create their own Picasso-like work of art
  • My Kids Art – talks about Picasso and his life


Books We’re Using

Photobucket

{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Europe, Geography, Geography Printables 3 Comments

Country Flag Card Printables

Aug182009
August 18, 2009 by 21 Comments
world flag cards for matching

I’ve been working on this printable for far.too.long, and FINALLY sat down this weekend, got productive and have it ready to share with you all! :) I put these together to help our kids identify the flags of the various countries we’ve been studying during our Galloping the Globe studies {with a few extra countries thrown in for good measure}.

There are 35 countries represented on the cards with two cards for each flag so it can be played as a ‘memory’ game. The set also contains 6 cards that represent 6 of the 7 continents {Antarctica is excluded} so the cards can also be sorted by the continent the country flag belongs to. Country name cards are also included for your child to match the names of the countries with the appropriate flag.

Since I don’t know every flag and what country it belongs to *ahem*, I included a key at the end of the document to help you all double check your answers. :)

 


 

 

I hope that a few of these resources help you all out ~ let me know if you all have any questions or have problems with the download.

{ Leave a Comment }
Filed Under: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Geography, Geography Printables, North America, South America 21 Comments