Summer geography: part 1 (structure of the earth)

Dd and a friend have been doing some hands-on geography over the summer. We started with the structure of the earth. Using plasticine we made globes in various coloured layers to represent the layers of the earth (there was a little bit of freestyle' involved, but I think dd got the gist). The girls also made cardboard 'earth dials' of the different layers. (I'll add the link if I can find it). We've been using The Kingfisher Geography Encyclopedia as a background read.



Making the 'earth dial'

Cutting the plasticine earth in half

Ta da!

East Head Spit: Checking out the geography of the South Coast, August 2014

A few weeks back we took a field trip to the south coast to check out some seaside geographical features. Ds2 will be taking IGCSE Geography next year, so I took him to the same place we took ds1. East Head spit is a great place to see firsthand, a sand and shingle spit, salt marsh and sand dunes.

I confess it was nice to grab my old camera back from ds1 for a while and play with the black and white feature.

The World Cup as a geography project: Part 1 Resources and Links

Not being a fan of football, I've resigned myself to the fact that for the next few weeks I will be bombarded by football-themed *everything*.

But...a nifty home educator would never let an educational opportunity slip past them.

Here are some educational links which we are planning to use to turn the World Cup into an educational geography project. (Thanks to Sarah from alittlebitofstructure for some of the links)

World Cup chart (free download) 
(There are lots of these on the internet to pick and choose from, but this one seemed fine.)

If you want the poster larger than A4, save the PDF file from the link (click on the little floppy disc icon in the bottom right hand corner). Reopen the file in Adobe from wherever you have saved it. Click on print and under the heading page sizing and handling you should have the option to print it as a poster. Click on the 'poster' option. You can fiddle with the settings, but basically you'll end up with four sheets, each with a part of the poster on that can then be stuck together.

World Cup Group bookmarks from Activity Village
We wont be using them as bookmarks, but they make great headings for displays. We'll most likely use them alongside a world map (see below)

Megamaps - world maps to print out - poster size if you want
If you don't have a world map, this is a great place to print out outline maps. There are lots of options for different sized maps - from a single A4 sheet to maps spread over 64 x A4 pages!

World Cup for Kids (Activity Village)
Lots of football and country-themed activities and printables. We wont be using the football ones, but there are plenty of different things to choose from.

Country Passport (Activity Village) and My country passport study printables
For writing basic info about the countries studied

Alternatively, to save time, you can download Activity Village's World Cup flags bundle for the small price of £3.95 here which has all the 390+ free PDF files in one zipped file.

Brazil-themed activities for World Cup
Click on the link on the page above and it will download a PDF with lesson plans. Links within the lesson plan take you to various resources, including a powerpoint presentation about Brazil.

Brazil- issues about homelessness
More geared towards classroom activities, but might have a few useful ideas for discussion.

Brazil in the school
Brazil resources, PDFs and photos.

World Cup Project book (choose World Cup Project Book from the page of downloads)
Word document to fill in for each country.

A big year for Brazil
Not listing this particularly for the memorisation of maps, but rather for the mini videos that are here and because (if you scroll down) there are some good starting points for discussion about advertising, moral issues around the World Cup etc.

I'll be adding to these if I find any more geography-related links that will be useful. If you have any other ideas, please post them in the comments.

The Rainforest, with links

A while back I was trying to tie in dd's desire to do more science, with ds2's ongoing geography learning. I came up with rainforest (and soils - see previous post) as suitable topics that I could engage them both in. Dd has more of an interest in animals than anything else. Below is her rainforest layers poster: 

The rainforest layers printable (top left of the top picture) was the nicest and simplest one I could find. It can be seen here.

I printed out Rainforest food chain items which we laminated and velcro'd onto our felt board. I think I got more satisfaction from laminating than the kids did from the 5 minutes they spent arranging the food web, but that's kinda how it goes sometimes :)

[For info: This is the link to the food chain printable, which I found via this resource here. The latter has other Rainforest printables, worksheets etc. that might be of use if you happen to be doing Rainforesty things.]



In addition to all the rainforest stuff, ds2 did a mini-poster on The Nile and the Aswaan Dam, which was a spin off from the geography book he is using. He will be starting IGCSE geography in September, so I'm trying desperately to do the more projecty stuff now before we get to the hoop jumping.

Smoothies and other recent activities

Today, somewhen in between watching Supermarket Sweep ( boy did that bring back memories!) and Jamie's (probably not) 15 minute meals on TV the idea suddenly came to us to make smoothies. So we hauled out the 3-yr old frozen raspberries from the bottom of the freezer and bought yoghurt from our favourite corner shop.

Lots of sugar later, plus addition of some very pippy blackberries (this year's), a glug of milk and a couple of unripe bananas, and we had something resembling a spontaneous smoothy. Not quite Jamie's 15 minute meal, but good enough.

Meanwhile other things have been going on. We (sis and I) cleaned the bird table and seed holders and tried to mend the table  roof with a bit of brush fence and a staple gun. It's been months and months since we last fed them, so it may take more than a wonky new roof and dried mealworms to tempt them back from the neighbours' gardens.

Ds1 has now finished all his archaeology for the year. His last mission was a geophysical survey of a local park in sub- zero temperatures. I guess he's still keen. The group leader said he was 'welcome back anytime', which could be because there aren't many adult volunteers willing to freeze their wotsits off in a field for no apparent recompense.

There could, however, be an alternative reason. The leader did comment:

 'I've taught some very uninterested undergrads and it's a pleasure to find someone keen and who asks sensible questions'

( a small SMUG HOME EDUCATOR MOTHER moment to add to the collection).

Over the past few eeks dd has spent a little more time on her bat lapbook. I did say to her that simply printing out photos from Google was all very well, but how about actually doing some of the bat information content of the lapbook? We arrived at something I'd like to call a compromise. Some might call it a mother's too knackered to argue solution.

The boys have started Conquer Maths (have I mentioned that before?) All seems to be going smoothly. Ds2 discovered that there is a very good reason why you should do the different sections in order when he unexpectedly encountered algebra in the geometry section.

Ds1 is still plodding through IGCSE Geography and Chemistry. The former is proving the most difficult of the two due to his general 'dyslexic' tendencies. We are encountering difficulties that I had not foreseen and that seem, so far, impossible to work around. I'll be writing a separate post about this in the near future.

Spurned on by me browsing USB microscopes and wondering if we can afford them, dh got out our microscope.  He'd neglected to inform me he'd fixed the light on it 18 months ago (I'd been waiting all that time, not daring to nag about yet another thing that needed 'fixing'.) Anyhow, he found a way to fix the web cam to the microscope so we could get a picture on the pc. It needs to be refined, but it looks cool :)

Dd has received a package from her new penfriend in Israel. The package contained lots of sweets which was dd's idea of a perfect delivery! We're yet to receive a package from the recipients of our last worldwide culture swap ( a mini winter swap) but hopefully it will arrive soon.

And now, onwards to Christmas!
(Our first sprinkling of snow, last week)

 

Samurai Warriors, Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury

Saturday last week. Ds2 is 'doing' Samurai at the moment and this exhibition/demonstration came along just at the right time.


Spot the odd one out...


Pick a weapon, any weapon:



Reminds me of something from a Right Guard advert

This is how you kill 'em:

Or you could do it this way:

Samurai in action:

Bare Butt-erfly Sandwiches topped with Beagle Beans

Today, carrying on with our Darwin and Evolution theme, we - or should I say ds2 - made South American Comida. What has this to do with Darwin? Well seeing as the Darwin geezer popped off around South America in The Beagle, there is a tentative link to this dish of beans, tomatoes and squash. Honest. Well that's what the book said and I'm sticking to it.

Are you impressed that we are still working on our P -P - P ..ok I can't say the P word.
Our P word that has 'ject' at the end, which from now on I'll call our THEME. Does theme sound better? I can't remember what I decided last time I wrote about this.

[I've just noticed something interesting about the P word: If you take away the P and replace the 'O' with an 'E', you get another interesting word: a word that best explains what my kids usually do when I say to them we are doing a 'P' word.]

Anyway, are you impressed that we're still doing Darwin? So am I. I'm not sure what it does for our autonomous education status, but I guess we got to a point when something had to give. And whatever it was has left some space for Darwin.

Chopping butternut squash (all fingers intact)

Cooking (no fingers burnt)

The finished result!

Anyway, The Beagle has officially now got as far as The Galapagos Islands, and the sticker is about to go on the map (when we find where The Galapagos Islands actually are - yeah I know, somewhere near South America...). So here I am, with baited breath, preparing my mind, body, and what's left of my soul, to grab the Galapagos DVD and shove it in the player. Ok, so it was the cheapest dvd I could find about the Galapagos Islands, so I'm hoping it isn't so incredibly boring that the kids will hate watching it. I must confess that David Attenborough and his fossils DVD was starting to grate on all of us after a week of viewing the series. Though I guess it was interesting to see how Mr Attenborough looked back in the late 80s...he seems to be ageing much better than this mother of 3. Hmm...I suppose never having been pregnant or given birth gives him a significant advantage.

So what else have we been up to? Oh the usual. We visited the sailing club during the week and as it was too blustery to sail we spent some time 'butterfly hunting' instead. We're joining in with the Great British Butterfly Hunt of The Independent newspaper. See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/uk-butterflies/
I've just added our sightings to the map. The best one I saw was the Speckled Wood butterfly, really pretty (unfortunately this isn't on the list to add to their map). We saw loads of Peacock butterflies too, more than I've seen for ages and ages. I didn't tell the kids to do it, or even ask them, but once they saw me looking at the poster and filling in a chart with the butterflies, they joined in too. I'm sure that's something John Holt talks about in his books (not the bit about butterflies).

We've also been doing the usual fire-lighting, storm-kettling, and marshmallow melting.

Hmm..my touch-typing is a bit skew-whiff today. Having twice replaced the 't' s in the word 'butterfly' with 'g' s (which puts a whole new slant on the word!), as well as just typing 'tough-typing' instead of 'touch-typing', I'd probably better finish off now...

[Before I go, I must let you know that I've just this minute Googled the word 'comida' thinking it would be some specialised word for a particular type of stew. NO! It appears to be the Spanish word for food! Ho hum. I knew there was a reason why I didn't like this 'Evolution for kids' book that we're using. Why don't they tell you things like that? There I was thinking we were making some exotic dish and all we've made is South American FOOD!]

Oh and if you're wondering why I have put such a strange title for my blog post, I have no idea. I just got fed up of trying to think of wonderfully creative titles and thought this one sounded interesting, even if it bears only a slight resemblance to the blog post.

Darwin does it for home education...

Have I mentioned before that we've been having a bit of a Darwin/Evolution theme recently?

Seeing as it's his 200th anniversary I thought we'd make the most of any workshops, tv programmes, books etc. Well we went to the Darwin exhibition at The Natural History Museum in London a few weekends back. There was huge amounts of stuff to be seen just in the museum, let alone at the exhibition, and the kids were really good. But it was a long day...a long weekend.

Watch out! There's a scary scorpion behind you!

The entrance hall of the National History Museum

Pose for your mother outside the museum then...

And again...

Ooh go on, humour me, just one more photo...

Alright then..last time.

Yep, that's the Darwin guy!

(Ok, we've seen him, can we go home now mum?)

We've also been working on a -shhh - 'project'. I kinda hate the P word, cos it sounds all big and important and, yes, so unachievable.

Well in reality it's not so much of a P thing, but more of a lapbook thing. I've resisted the lapbook stuff before, thinking that my kids would see past my attempts to make something 'educational' as something more palatable. But...I thought for this Darwin/Evolution theme that we'd give it a go. After all, I'd spent a fortune on books from Amazon, even bought a couple of DVDs. It seems a waste to just look at them sitting on the shelves. So this was my lounge on the first day of our lapbook thing:

I think on days like these you just have to grit your teeth, forget about the mess, and accept that you're going to have a lot of clearing up to do at the end of the day. And - most importantly - you have to accept that there might not be alot to show for all that mess. Why does so much mess equal so little product? Answers on a postcard...

Of course there are some home educators who do this sort of nice structured thing every day (in a more controlled, table sort of way). As you may have guessed from my blog entries so far, I'm not one of them...

So, how did we start these lapbooks on Darwin/Evolution? Well, first a large piece of stiff paper folded into a wallet/book shape. Then we photocopied bits and pieces out of books and then the kids started sticking in.

We're working our way round where Darwin travelled on The Beagle. Tuesday we looked at The Beagle and all the equipment and crew that went on it. Today we read a chapter about Ecuador and Uraguay, and Fossils, and then the kids watched a fossils DVD by David Attenborough. (Ok, big tick of box.).

Am I sounding smug? Oops sorry. Those who read my blog will know that our bursts of educational activity are just that - bursts - and when they happen I feel compelled to write about it. It's not smugness...it's giving myself a teeny tiny pat on the back (well if I don't, who will?)

What you mean I'm meant to enjoy this??!!

oh, ok then if you insist...

Quiet children! Now then, I'm going to point at the map with my nose.

Can any of you find Ecuador for me?

[Edited on 6 April to correct spelling of David Attenborough's surname]

The Water Cycle, as you've never heard it before

We recently bought an 'Eco dome' in the Argos sale: it's a sort of tiered bottle garden, but with added scientific stuff (well I believed the blurb). Anyway, thought I'd combine it with a bit about the water cycle and was wondering how I could gently introduce the subject to the kids without the tedious fill-em-in worksheets and printouts that seem to be typical of most 'educational' web pages.

Anyway, I found this marvellous page, with not one, but two 'water cycle' songs, and a little Evian video set to 'We will rock You' by Queen, which tickled me and is well worth a watch.

There's also all the usual water cycle print outs and animations, but we'll probably skip those.

http://www.geographyalltheway.com/year7_geography/flooding_rivers/water_cycle.htm

I've added the songs as widgets to the side bar of the blog for a while, so you can have easy access! Enjoy!

Treasure maps, ds2 knits, and 'when is a school not a school?'

Well we seem to be regulars down at the sailing club. Each week I've been taking along an activity for the kids (and anyone else who turns up). It's usually just something I leave on the table, a little temptation for them to dip into if they wish. This week I took some old paper, all yellow-brown with age, and pens and paints, along with an atlas and a few books on pirates and explorers. It didn't take long for the kids to be painting treasure maps, rolling them up and setting off to the West Indes with their fellow pirates. Hmm..did I spot a bit of geography there...And no adult intervention at all...

It looks like there will be a regular nature group of some sorts at the sailing club: a monthly Saturday one for all children, and a weekly one for home ed kids to join in. There is so much conservation work to be done around the site - plenty of bramble clearance and apparently lots of plans for the woodland area - so we'll not be short of things to do. I think the only difficult thing will be trying to curb all that adult enthusiasm: we don't want to scare the kids away! Among the plans is a session to make some lanterns and have a torchlit procession around the lake for Halloween/Bonfire night. It sounds wonderful! A big project will be mapping the other, smaller, lake: the kids will have to go out on boards/boats to explore the unknown territory. I think they'll like that idea {g}.

Ds2 caught me knitting at the sailing club and wanted to have a go. He was making quite a good job of it, but got a bit bored after a few rows. Maybe I should teach him how to crochet? It grows much faster and it's not so easy to drop all your stitches!

Today the kids tried out an afternoon session at a local Montessori school which is opening up some of it's primary lessons to home educating families. Ds2 had a great time, primarily because he got to use some technology in the music session (always a bonus for techno-head like him). Ds1 wasn't quite so enthusiastic, but then even the shrug and a grunt in response to my questions was more than I was expecting. Thankfully they are in different groups for music, so they got a chance to do something independently. I guess this is one of the main problems with home educating kids that are close in age: they get to do pretty much everything together, whether they want to or not, and tend to get pretty sick of each other's company.

I think we'll be signing them up for this session for a term. I'd happily sign them up for a few sessions, but finances just don't make it feasible (I haven't yet worked out how I'm going to afford to send them for this one weekly session yet!). It's a bummer when such good opportunities arise and there just isn't the money around to make the most of them. I need to find a good money-making scheme.

Ds1 was funny as we were leaving the Montessori school.

Ds1:'Is this place a school?'
Me: 'Well kind of, but it's very different to a normal school'
Ds1:'Oh. So if I went here would that mean that I'm going to school?'
Me:'No, it's just like when you were going to piano lessons. You're just coming here for a few hours and you'll still be home educated'.
Ds1:'Oh that's alright then. I don't want to be a child that goes to school'.


Ds1 has decided he wants to buy a nintendo ds lite. I'm surprised cos he doesn't normally fall for peer pressure stuff, but this is definitely motivated more by his mates and fashion than his desire for technology. Now if it was ds2 hankering after a nintendo I could well understand it:given the choice he would be permanently plugged into his gameboy advance or the computer lol! So, ds1 has decided he is going to sell his ELC wooden castle and knights to make some money towards it. It'll be wonderful if he does sell it - not only will he make some money, but there'll be alot more space in their bedroom! Don't suppose anyone out there wants to buy a castle do they?