For Traveling Tuesday we focused on South-East Asia. Specifically Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. I found that having the directions too open didn’t work so I gave the boys a specific worksheet to fill in. Questions such capital, currency, industry, language, religion etc were asked.
At the beginning of each new country we would discuss what the children already knew about the country. Xavier surprised me with his broad wealth of knowledge. I am constantly amazed at the wide genre of reading he does.
I also required some basic filling in of maps of the countries (as well as one of South-East Asia) Malachi and Mariah astounded and thrilled me with their enthusiasm and diligence one Tuesday. For the ENTIRE day, well into the night they traced maps. First from the photocopy onto tracing paper and then they traced onto paper, coloured and labeled. These maps are of an exceptional quality. After creating maps of the above countries they continued on to do maps of Australia and the African continent. They were totally engrossed in their work, they came to own it:):) This is what education is about, the connection, real learning.
For this study we lacked books; primarily we used the Geographica, and Children Just
Like Me, (unfortunately they only covered Vietnam). The internet was a resource for maps. We borrowed some books from the library (see Xavier’s Term 4 booklist) but they were rather lacking, or perhaps its their frustrating way of cataloging. I visited the travel agency and picked up catalog’s for notebooking which were used a little.
Interestingly the children didn’t mind the worksheets which was something rather different for us. I’m not certain how much was retained, although I do believe they got a general idea and the mapwork gave them more of an idea than prior. I’m sure there is much more we could have done in this area but frankly I didn’t have a huge lot of energy.
