Expedition Earth: Russia

I have been lax in posting about our Expedition Earth adventures.  We are still trying to study a country a week to go along with the curriculum.  We have missed a week here and there.  I've tried to add a read-aloud story set in the country we are studying.  That hasn't always worked out for each country, but luckily we had a copy of the book Another Celebrated Dancing Bear which is a FIAR book.  We didn't actually read it five days in a row (we don't often fit in reading our FIAR books five days in a row!) and just read it once.  It is a nice story, but not incredibly engaging (in my opinion).  It did introduce some aspects of Russian culture that we later read about in some library books about Russia.  I would love to say we always do a special project to go with each country, but we honestly don't fit projects in that often.  I feel that I'm doing well if the boys complete their passports, color the flag of the country, fill out the info pages for the country, and can find it on the globe and name its capital.  Anything else is icing on the cake.  For Russia, I'd saved an idea in Pinterest that I wanted to use for an art project.  This project can be found on Art Projects for Kids.  I LOVE how our Russian cathedrals turned out.  I enjoyed sitting and doing this project with the boys and am pleased with how much time they each spent on their drawings.  In an effort to make a full disclosure, I will add that I did not think my youngest would actually complete this project as he was having a rough start to the day.........even to the point of going through two pieces of drawing paper and throwing a crayon across the room.  Yeah.  Loads of homeschool fun in THAT moment.  After a brief (ahem) bit of time spent thinking about things on a chair, he came back to the project with a focus and intensity that both surprised and impressed me.  My older son and I were done and had moved on to other things by the time my little guy got going.  He had requested a larger sheet of paper and wanted to look at the photo of St. Basil's cathedral found in a link in the directions at Art Projects for Kids.  He intently studied the photo and tried to include ALL the details in his drawing, even down to the statues in the foreground and the trees surrounding the building.  Wowza!!  You just never know............

Here are our finished drawings.........

First is mine.............so fun to take the time to sit and do this project.  I don't claim to be an artist, but the process was really enjoyable.

Next up, my oldest son's drawing.  I loved how he labeled the different details of his drawing with the name of the crayon color that he used (thus the "macaroni and cheese" steeples).

And here is my youngest son's drawing of St. Basil's.  CLICK HERE to see the photo he used as a reference.  His detail is really quite remarkable.

FIAR: The Story of Little Babaji

Technically The Story of Little Babaji is not a Five in a Row book.  Truly though, any book can be used the FIAR way.  Since I'm trying to align our FIAR books with the country we're studying in Expedition Earth, I needed a book set in India and this one fit the bill.  Those of you who are near my age may remember the original version of this story which was called Little Black Sambo.  In efforts to be more policitally correct and culturally sensitive, the newer version was written.  Most of the main story elements remain the same, however.

We did not do any projects to go with this book.  However, a few that would be good companion activities include this Taj Mahal coloring page (NOTE:  The Taj Mahal is not in the story, but is important to the study of India.) and this game from Homeschoolshare.  I actually printed and laminated the game for the boys to play but so far we haven't fit it in. The Homeschoolshare link also includes a bunch of other ideas for using this book.

FIAR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

During our second week of homeschool we "rowed" the book How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World by Marjorie Priceman.  We have been trying to over lap our FIAR books with the country we are studying for Expedition Earth, but I couldn't find a book to go with South Korea which we studied during our second week.  So.......since the season is right for apple-picking here in Iowa, I chose this book which I love so much!  The boys loved listening to it every day and retelling all the places the girl has to go to get the ingredients she needs for her pie.

I found a bunch of great printable activities for this book at Homeschoolshare.  However, as I am getting further into homeschooling (a veteran of over 3 weeks now........haha!), I am finding that doing every cute printable activity I find may not be the best fit for my two boys.  Which kind of stinks because I really like cute printable activities.  However, I am learning about their preferences and while I had visions of the awesome lapbooks we would complete for each book we row, I am finding it hard to fit in time for all the extras.  And truthfully, I don't think their experiences with the books will suffer if we don't do a bunch of paper and pencil or cut and paste activities.  Please know that I LOVE the idea of lapbooking and still plan to incorporate it into our learning, I just haven't found the right balance yet.  However, I wanted to add a link to the wonderful resources for this book from Homeschoolshare.  That site is truly a treasure trove if you haven't already discovered it.

So, instead of having a cute lapbook to share here, I'll share some photos of our first "field trip" to a local apple orchard where we picked our own apples.............

A few days after we picked the apples we made an apple pie out of them.  And BOY was it yummy!  I used this recipe which I've made in jars (SO cute and fun), but just made a regular "big pie" with it.  I really like the syrup coating on the apples with this recipe.

FIAR: The Story About Ping

During our first week of homeschool, we "rowed" the book The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese.  I have loved this book for a long time and it was great to share it with the boys.  My oldest son had heard it before, but my youngest hadn't.  This book gave us a good chance to talk about the consequences of behavior since Ping decided to hide out to avoid a punishment.

On one of the days we did an art project and tried to draw Ping.  I found a great website with lots of easy step-by-step drawing instructions for drawing a variety of animals.  CLICK HERE to go check out that site.  My little guy was in a bad mood when we did the drawing project, but did a nice job.  He colored over the top of it, so it's hard to see his drawing.  I thought SC and I did a decent job with our little "Pings" as well. I think my Ping has been eating a LOT of fish!  haha

We also did a sink and float experiment to explore the concept of buoyancy, which is represented in the story.  I used a sink and float paper from Homeschoolshare.  Before we did the experiment I had each boy fill out their predictions about whether each object would sink or float, then we tested the objects to see if our predictions were correct.  They enjoyed this experiment very much.  I think we'll be doing a lot more of these in the future!!

Since the story of Ping is set in China, we also "traveled" to China in our Expedition Earth curriculum this week.  The boys were so excited to build the Great Wall of China as a special project.  To do this, we followed Erica's directions and it turned out great!  We used one whole box of Project Bricks plus a bit out of a second box.  We have plenty left over now to build a pyramid or castle.  I ordered the first box from Amazon, but found the second box at Hobby Lobby in the hobby section.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the Wall being mightily defended by an army of LEGO mini-figures.  One of the attackers was a LEGO gorilla wielding a banana for a weapon.......not much threat to security there!

Expedition Earth!!

I am excited about a wonderful geography curriculum that I'm planning to use with both boys this year.  It was created by Erica at Confessions of a Homeschooler and is only $15 to download.  That is a bargain!!

Using this curriculum, we will explore a different country each week.  There are different levels of activities, so I feel that both my first grader and fourth grader will be adequately challenged.  The most fun of all will be learning together about our world.  We went to a "big" library in a town about 20 miles away the other day and came home with a load of books.  In addition to getting books about the countries we'll study the first three weeks, we got books about deserts and ancient Egypt to supplement our World of Adventure curriculum.  This photo shows our living books all ready to be explored.  Can't wait!!

For the Expedition Earth curriculum, I've made up a binder for each boy where they'll keep their work related to the countries we study.  Their binders look the same on the outside, but are a bit different inside.

Each binder has a passport in the front pocket.  We'll "stamp" each country into our passport as we move around the world.  In the photo below you can see the passport sticking out.  Erica suggests using dividers and tabs for each country, but I felt that was a bit cost-prohibitive for us given that I'd need 62 dividers between the 2 boys.  So......I am going to print a colored map of each continent (included in the curriculum) on white cardstock to use as dividers.  I'll probably add tabs to just those sturdy pages for each continent.  Then all the papers for that continent will be filed behind the map.  You can see the Asia map in the photo below.

Erica has included a details page for each country as well as a black and white flag to color.  Below you can see the info page for China in my youngest son's book.  I forgot to take a photo of it, but my older son's binder has a more detailed "report" type of info page for each country instead of the one shown here.  I won't make him write a detailed report for each country, but I will have him use his more detailed note page to occasionally write a report, maybe I'll let him choose one country per continent to write up as a report.  I want the focus of our geography study to be on the joy of learning, without bogging them down too much with "busywork".  My youngest son has a flag coloring page behind each country page.  He likes to color flags, so I don't think requiring this for each country will be a problem for him.

In the back pocket of each binder is a full-size sticker page that I printed (from the curriculum) with the flags for each country.  The boys will attach these flags to their passports at the end of our "trip" to each country.  These could easily be printed on regular paper and glued into the passports.  I just happened to have sticker paper on hand.

Finally, I am going to try (as much as possible) to choose a picture book read-aloud each week to go with the country we're studying.  I'm planning to use a FIAR format, reading the book aloud each day and doing an accompanying activity (which might just be a brief discussion about the theme or illustrations).  I'll post my book selections as we go along. 

Is anyone else using Expedition Earth this year?  I'd love to hear your take on this wonderful curriculum.  I forgot to mention that Erica has a ton of suggested resources to use as well as internet links for each country so you can really provide your children a rich experience without a lot of preparation on your part!  I also like how she has included prayer cards to allow your family to pray for the people in each country during your "travels".  It's just a really well done curriculum and I highly recommend that you check it out!!