Mar. 26, 2006 - Our kitchen table is now sporting the world map....
One of the changes that I wanted to make with our homeschool is to get more use out of our maps. They've been on our school room wall for over a year now, and frankly, they haven't been used much other than in discussions here and there about a particular location. I have friends that have maps on their kitchen tables too, which is who I got the idea from. Last night I bought 2.5 yardsof semi-heavy weight clear vinyl at WalMart, which will cover the map and hold it in place. It cost me all of $4.50. Right now I've got the world map on there, but plan to rotate occasionally with the U.S. map. I may use some poster putty though so the map won't slide around if the vinyl gets moved.
Tonight at dinner was EXACTLY the kind of dinner conversation I was hoping we'd get from having a map right there in front of us all. We talked about many different places around the world. For example, the other day we had a nice young man come spray our home for pest control. He had recently returned from a mission for our Church to Cape Verde, which is an island off the west coast of Africa. I'd never even heard of such a place (it was he who told me where in the world it was)....So tonight we found it on the map, along with many other places.....like when my 10 yr old found Rome on the map, said she didn't realize Rome was a place in Italy and how "cool" it is that Italy is shaped like a boot. Then my hubby then proceeded to tell her more about how huge the Roman Empire used to be. Or when my 6 yr old said, "mom I found C-H-I-N-A, what country is that?" :) I'm hoping having maps right in front of us during our mealtimes will spark even further conversations like this that are both meaningful and educational. 
Along with adding the map to our table, I cleaned off all of our educational placemats and put them out too. Then a while ago I ordered more educational placemats online...I got one on the human body, sign language and musical composers. There were many more to choose from, but at $3 a piece, I couldn't go overboard.
Last night I went to the copy store and made $17 worth of copies of things that I want to do in unit studies for the rest of our school year. I really feel like I've slacked off and like I need to get back up to speed of where I originally wanted to be. We really use the unschooling approach with our girls under A Thomas Jefferson Education principles of learning, but I feel like they could use more from me at this time. At the beginning of this school year, I had planned on using Teri Ebert's "The Four Year Plan" as a resource and idea guide. This year (year 3) is for studying wold geography, English/communications, earth science and The Book of Mormon. So I'm planning to catch up our studies on world geography, do a unit on the five senses, zoo animals, and ocean animals for both my older girls (10 & 6) and do a calendar unit and a Spring unit (mainly for my 6 yr old). I got these unit studies from a place I found online yesterday called learningpage.com I'm really excited about the animals units because we're planning a surprise trip to Sea World (San Diego) in the next couple months. So hopefully with the unit study, the girls will have a bigger and better appreciation for the animals that they'll be seeing.
Comments
Mar. 26, 2006 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Sweetie
I LOVE the map idea! Do you mind if I steal it? What a wonderful thing! I can see it being a great way to remember missionaries, too - mark their locations on the map and pray for them during the dinner prayer... oh, sorry, my mind is working now! lol
