Geography Corner

So Christmas is over and we are nearly through the January birthdays so I am in planning mode!  I looove planning for the new school year and rearranging our learning space.  I think it must be the teacher in me, I was always a planner!!

We will have a big focus on geography this year as my kids are slightly geography obsessed.  So it made sense to set up our geography area first. This set up is mostly for Liam and Samuel.  Liana does geography at our Home school group and is way beyond this.  She can pretty much locate most of the 196 countries and know about 50% of their flags too.

We have a subscription to Little Passports this year.  We will be receiving the World Edition for Liam and the Early Explorers for Samuel.  Each month I will change the table to focus on the continent that matches our Little Passports country.  I plan on using a lot of the ideas from Living Montessori Now for Sam as well as some extension activities for Liam.

The first month is a general introduction, so our table is focusing on the continents and oceans.

Here is a look at our table

We have our World map to track Sam and Sofia (from Little Passports) as they travel around the world, Our Montessori inspired continent 3-part cards,  our Little Passport suitcases, A world pin map - one side is colour coded for easy matching and the other side is plain to make it a bit harder.

Then we have our felt continents map complete with labels for the continents and oceans.  Through the year we will keep adding things to this map like landmarks, animals and flags for the children to locate on the correct continent.

So there you have it, our geography corner.  Next on the list is our science corner!

Truth in the Tinsel - Week 1

We had great plans for our first week of Christmas activities and then we were hit with a gastro bug on Sunday night.  One by one we fell, and by the end of the week Nathanael was the only one left joining in the activities.  So  we didn't even begin most of the activities and we got a bit  behind with our Truth in the Tinsel ornaments but Nathanael and I had a catch up on the weekend so we are ready to go again Monday morning!

One of the plans we had was to introduce our Blessing Buddies.  I stole this idea from Ang at Home.  Unfortunately we didn't get around to actually doing any of the acts of Kindness we had planned due to being house bound and after the first two days of hiding them I kind of ran out of steam. So we have put this idea back on the shelf to try again next year.  Sam and Nathanael did enjoy finding them on those two days though!

Day 1 - Candle

The first TinT activity was making a candle and talking about Jesus as the light of the world.

Day 2 - Crown

The next day we talked about Jesus as king and made some crowns to hang on our tee pee.

Day 3 - Zechariah

Day three we read the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and made a Zechariah head.  Nathanael was quite pleased with his finished product!!

Samuel decided to paint a picture of Zechariah instead of making the ornament and Nathanael decided to join him.

Then we checked out the Nativity sensory box, which I discovered is a really bad idea to have out when I don't feel up to supervising.  We spent today vacuuming up the peas and beans that have been carted around the house all week when I was too sick to care!!!

Day 4 - Angel

Today we read all about the angel Gabriel and Nathanael made a paper plate angel.  Poor Liana and Liam were both sick in bed by now and didn't join in any of the activities except on the first day  :(

Samuel decided against the craft again ( he really isn't that interested in making crafts, unlike his brothers and sister) and instead decided to paint a swamp monster!!  All the while loudly singing Christmas carols as shown in the first picture!!

Day 5 and 6

We were all out of action and spent the days watching Christmas movies and generally just doing as little as possible!!

Nathanael and Liam managed to get in some playdough time with our sparkly playdough and that was as Christmassy as it got!!!

Day 7

Nathanael was happy to play catch up today and had a great time finishing off the last three ornaments of the week with mum all to himself!!

First we read Mary's story and made a Mary paper doll.

Then we got out the water colours and Nathanael painted Mary and Elizabeth while I read the story to him

And finally, we read Mary's song and decorated a CD with glitter glue and sparkles.

Our Truth in the Tinsel tee pee at the end of a very long week.  Hopefully we will all be back on our feet this week and all of the children will get to join in some fun Christmas activities before we go away!!

Playgroup - We're Going On a Bear Hunt

We're Going On a Bear Hunt is such a great book, we have used it a few times for playgroup and each time it is received with enthusiasm.  Today was no exception.  We had heaps of fun painting, gluing and hunting for bears!

After reading the story we headed off to prepare for our bear hunt while the big kids hid all the bears outside.

The children had fun re-enacting the story on our sensory bear hunt table. It had grass, a river with frozen fish, ducks and even a crocodile!  Some brown gloopy paint for mud, soft, fluffy shaving cream snow and a forest for our little people to traipse through.

There were bears to be found in the rice box along with lots of digging, pouring, sorting and even eating of the rice thanks to Nathanael!!!

We made pictures of bears hibernating in caves.

Of course, a bear hunt wouldn't be complete without a map to help find the bears!

And finally, some binoculars for those hard to find bears.

After all our hard work preparing, we headed outside to hunt some bears...........

Samuel, checking the map to find out where they are hidden.......

Now, where are those bears?

Quick, over there!!!!

We found the bears, then hid them and found them and hid them and..........................

Another great day of playgroup!!