Learning Titus 2: Our Trip Around the World

Thanks to an inspirational Mama on a Christian mommy board I belong to, I decided to tackle a big adventure with the boys this summer. A Trip around the World!

Not a REAL trip (although that would be amazing all on it's own!), but a virtual trip where we could learn about different countries around the world - how we are the same and how we are different. Give the children a chance to experience a very small part of another culture through a week's worth of activities.

There are a lot of amazing resources for this out there. Some of the best while I've been planning have been:

My Father's World Forums. MFW has a whole year curriculum material based on Countries & Cultures. Their forum has lots of great ideas and extentions to glean plans from!
Homeschool Creations. This amazing Mama has put together a whole blog with printables of her kids' adventures as they did a world tour. Lots of links and ideas for each country.

We started in the middle of May - as I was finding the kids losing interest and focus on the school materials we'd been trucking through during the year. It was time to change things up a little and do something completely different!

First, we did a global introduction - just learning about the world, maps, continents, and travelling. We bought a wall poster world map and put it up near our school area. (Running out of wall space!) I dug out my old student atlas and we flipped through it together. I asked if they could recognize any of the places we looked at. Other than Canada (yay), they couldn't really. Big kid started reading the names of the countries, then was happy to realize what he was looking at.

From the library, I got the book, "If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World's People" by David J. Smith. It's a cute book (although outdated slightly now), about what a village of 100 would represent for the world. We also watched a very short youtube video of the same.

I printed out 3 copies of a blank world map and we coloured & labelled the different continents. Each child got their own binder with page protectors to put all their projects and paperwork in as we go along. They LOVED that.

I made them think of a list of things they would need to take on a trip and they had to write the list down. It was possibly one of the first activities I've done with the boys where there wasn't groaning about having to write! Score!

One of the things they loved was a puzzle of sorts for the kids to work on remembering the continents.

I printed off a world map and cut it into the continents, glued to construction paper (colour coded to match the world map we coloured the day before!), and then contact paper covered it. Then I wrote out the names of the continents and did the same thing. They had to match the continents with the names.

Then, I went crazy. We did paper mache. What in the world was I thinking?! hehe.

Little and the paper mache globe

Middle with our final product: paper mache globe

The boys LOVED it - maybe TOO much. Middle kept saying how great it was and Big how fun it was. Little? Well - he was COVERED in glue, so I imagine he had a great time too.

Apparently, you can buy paper mache mix, but I didn't know that! I just made glue out of 1 cup of flour, 2 cups of water, and some salt (probably not enough salt actually). Then we dipped in newspaper strips and SLAPPED them all over a balloon. Once it dried, we used our entire collection of blue paint to colour it blue and glued on some felt continents I attempted to cut in semi-recognizable shapes.

We did a (brief) chat about Longitude and Latitude. I took the two smaller kids out geocaching on the weekend - and we found one out of 2! I actually think it might be the smallest cache we've ever found! Go us!

We asked everyone we knew if they could send us some postcards from around the world. Sadly - between a postal strike, and some well-intentions, we only got a few - one from Finland, some from BC, and a few from the states. It was exciting for the kids. I'd still recommend trying it if you are doing a world trip!

That wrapped up week #1 - our intro to the world. Onto our journey!