Samut Saring Ceylon - Tweak or twist?

Tue 23 Sep 2008 - Tweak or twist?

If you are doing Sonlight Core 5, I am sure you have the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer somewhere on your desk. The Explorer is excellent! It is an in-depth study of countries in the Eastern Hemisphere. A lot different from the earlier Sonlight Cores we have gone through, it paved the way for my children to be more adept in looking up facts in Geography and History of the region. But ironically, they have finished reading most of the History Books, Readers and Read-Alouds from this Core and yet, this is the only one of the few books left to be completed. We have yet to explore and conquer it.

What is taking us so long? I realized early on that a lot of the exercises in this workbook are fill-in-the-blanks type of activity, which is a far cry from what Vibrant Bea and Fuzzy have now been accustomed to, that is oral and written narration. But we proceeded with it at a very slow pace and we wouldn't want to skip this chance of surveying the countries in the Explorer.

Until recently, it seems like it will take us forever to cover the whole book. My mind is already thinking on how we can even start Core 6 if we go on like this. It took me awhile before I got the Eureka! moment I have been waiting for. I realized their love of learning through lapbooks, notebooks, mind maps and such kind of activity. My kids are highly visual learners and tweaking this study might help a bit. So I made several changes in the approach. Instead of having them research and answer the exercises individually. I teamed up both kids to make a project. They will still have to look up information, of course, from World Book and Wikipedia. Instead of filling up the blanks, I told them to design and make a poster ad endorsing the country under study. Somewhat like a tour agent selling a package trip to New Zealand. That clicked! Now I am amazed by how faster they have finished the lesson as compared to merely looking up facts and filling in answers.

So the New Zealand study took just more than a week... and here is the result. It is quite good.They used a map, minibooks, downloaded photos, a blend of lapbook cum notebook activity on a poster.

Now, they are busy preparing for their presentation as a form of narration. In one of our family nights, they will act in a role play as tour agents orienting tourists (played by us, the parents) about New Zealand.