Geography with Montessori Pin Flags

My own schooling in geography was woefully inadequate, so among the benefits of this rigorous study of geography that we've been enjoying is the fact that I'm finally learning my geography, too! Would you like to hear me recite the 53 countries of Africa?

I know, I know...it's much cuter when the seven-year-old rattles them off.

Obviously, the plan is to eventually cover the entire world, and we have been studying U.S. geography, as well, since the girls are interested, but seeing as Willow already has the names of the countries memorized, I'd like us to be able to physically locate them before we relegate Africa geography to regular practice and move on fully to new areas of interest.

I worked VERY hard a few weeks ago to build up enough of a surplus in my crafts/homeschool budget to purchase the entire pin flag and geography map collection from Montessori Print Shop. The prices are affordable enough to let me feel like I didn't have to do the design work myself to create my own pin flags and map keys from scratch, although I nearly reconsidered when I discovered that, although I could purchase all the  map keys I'd need as one bundle, I'd have to pick through the shop for nearly half an hour to find every individual pin flag set for every single continent and the United States--blech!

To use pin flags, you need a corkboard or foam core base, and a paper map to put on the base. The map package from Montessori Print Shop includes labelled and unlabeled, colored and blank maps. I printed and laminated one copy of the colored and labeled maps to use as a reference, and several copies of the blank labeled maps, because the girls enjoy coloring them in their correct map colors as part of their schoolwork.

To make the pin flags, you first need to print the flags (I did print ours in color, although coloring them in yourself would be another enjoyable, if lengthy, task). You cut each flag out, fold it in half--

--spread glue from a glue stick on one inside half of the flag, and also put a dot of Elmer's glue on both sides of a flat-headed sewing pin:

Fold the halves together, smoothing them over the pin--

--and repeat ad nauseum:

So far, we only have Africa and the United States completed, so I store both sets around the edges of the corkboard work surface. However, I do plan to eventually cut down a piece of corkboard to size, paint squares on it to delineate the area in which each pin flag set is to be placed, then cut a cardboard box to size so that the entire pin flag collection can be stored without poking anyone or getting in the way.

To play with the pin flags, lay the paper map flat on top of the corkboard work surface, and simply stick each flag where it belongs:

It's absorbing work, as you can see, and quite enjoyable. Although Willow has the names of the countries memorized, memorizing their locations this way, rather than in order along with the names as she recites them, will allow her to call up the location of a specific country without having to first get to it in the order of recitation.

In a more casual manner, as we organically begin to spend less time with Africa and more time with, say, United States geography, and the U.S. presidents, and Base Ten computation, we will also nevertheless begin to work on our ability to draw the continent of Africa, first by tracing it with dry-erase markers on a laminated map, and then by drawing it freehand with a model by our sides, and then by drawing it from memory.

Homeschool Field Trip: May's Greenhouse

We've self-toured around the research greenhouse at our local university numerous times (mental note: must set up an official homeschool trip!), but a field trip to a local commercial greenhouse, with a behind-the-scenes tour, lots of good home gardening advice, and a dozen or so enthralled children who could NOT be moved past the koi pond, was the perfect adventure for a warm Spring afternoon.

a machine that fills the pots with soil

a large room, warm and bright, where seeds are sprouted

the pond from which the children could NOT be moved--said the tour leader, "This happens every time"

flowers, flowers, and FLOWERS!!!

and, of course, souvenirs--flowers for one

and a new favorite little lovey for another

And then we went back home to garden, newly inspired!

Snuggling along with Geography

The other day, Matt got home from work and couldn't find us anywhere. All the lights were off in the main part of the house, but the car was in the driveway, but it was raining outside and so it was unlikely that we were at the park. At 6:05 pm I received his telephone call saying, "Where are you?"

"We're back in the bedroom watching a documentary, silly!"

Doesn't everyone watch How the States Got Their Shapes all piled together in one chair?

It's certainly a good way to homeschool!

We LOVE How the States Got Their Shapes, by the way. On a six-hour car trip yesterday, we were playing a game at memorizing all the states' nicknames; Willow was taking a turn quizzing me, and I got stuck on West Virginia.

"Momma," she said. "Here's a hint. Remember what they said about West Virginia on How the States Got Their Shapes?"

On How the States Got Their Shapes, they said that West Virginia is mountainous, explaining its nickname: The Mountain State. Willow quite loves a world in which logical deductions prevail and things make sense.

Midnight and Moonshine

She named this particular stuffed horse Midnight:

Her sister, however, named her Waldorf doll Sunset, which Willow also thinks is a lovely name, and which prompted her to announce that when she finally owns a real horse of her own, she'll name THAT one Moonshine.

Which would actually be a truly excellent name for a horse.

My Kid Can Recite All the Countries of Africa: 2012 International Fair

Having done it both ways now, I've decided that I like it much better when my children present a project that they've already been working on for their various homeschool academic fairs, rather than coming up with a particular project especially for each fair. I feel like their projects show more depth, and are completed in a much more relaxed and enjoyable manner when they're presented simply as a chance to show off an area of interest that's already being studied.

With that in mind, our homeschool group's recent International Fair was my favorite one yet--my kiddos have been studying Africa off and on for months now, so they knew right away what areas they wanted to focus their reports and presentations on, and what projects they wanted to elaborate on to display at the fair.  Honestly, the biggest debates centered around what NOT to bring!

We did not bring the girls' salt dough maps of Egypt, but Sydney, who intended to discuss the ecosystems of Africa and their respective animals, created a salt dough grasslands watering hole, and used some carved wooden African animals that my mother gave her for Christmas in the display:

I brought my computer, set it next to the girls' display, and streamed our favorite Africam webcams through it throughout the fair. Matt's special job was to keep a constant eye on the webcam, so that he could turn it off if the elephants that were lounging around the watering hole started to have sex again.

Willow discussed Egypt in her report, and brought a Styrofoam block pyramid that she built:

We did not bring our Montessori Puzzle Map of Africa (I was afraid of losing pricey pieces), nor the pin flag map (I was afraid of toddlers getting ahold of the sharpy-sharp pins); the main display item is our giant map of Africa, which has been so colored on, labeled, pinned upon, and outlined over the months that, while it may be unrecognizable in some aspects, it is certainly kid-owned.

Syd outlined the main ecosystems of Africa in drippy school glue mixed with acrylic paint--I should have laid the map on the ground for her to do this, in retrospect, and then the paint wouldn't have run:

See? DEFINITELY a kid-created project!

After the Biography Fair, when Sydney burst into tears in the middle of reciting Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," I have a horror of asking her to recite, so her oral presentation consisted of telling the audience about the ecosystems of Africa, already drawn onto the map, and some examples of animals that live in those ecosystems, with pictures of the animals already glued next to their ecosystems, and I still thought that she was going to cry for a few seconds there, before she pulled herself together and nailed it.

Willow has yet to cry during an oral presentation, so she prepared a special feat. I purchased the "Countries of Africa" rap from Rhythm Rhyme Results, and she practiced it over and over and over again--

--until she had memorized all of the countries of Africa:

Have I ever told you about my dark history of helping children cheat at their academic fairs? After college but before grad school, I had a job with Score! doing private SAT tutoring. Score! charged outrageous fees for this tutoring (One-on-one in YOUR home! All our tutors have the highest SAT scores!), which meant that all of my tutees were outrageously wealthy. Although you were supposed to arrange all of your tutoring through Score!, all the families knew that while Score! paid their tutors well, they didn't pay us nearly as much as they, themselves, paid Score! (seriously, families paid Score! something like 10x the average tutor's average fee, and I'm telling you, Score! already paid us well), and most families would ask for extra off-the-books tutoring at a price that surpassed our regular salary but also undercut what they'd have to pay Score!.

Of course, helping a kid with their English class is a different animal than helping a kid prep for the SAT, and in most of these families, "tutoring" a kid in a particular subject actually meant that you were supposed to just do the work for them. I tried to at least sneak in some learning, at least for the younger kids whom I tutored, but in one pretty common example, as I was in a child's playroom leading her by the nose through her multiplication homework, her mom walked in to consult with me about the appropriate punctuation on the poem that she was composing for her child to turn in for her next day's English homework.

I earned buckets of money with that family, "helping" their younger daughter with her History Fair project (I designed a display board that had a giant cardboard cut-out of an original-style Coca-Cola bottle on one side and a contemporary Coca-Cola bottle on the other side, and in the middle had a wheel you could turn so that one window would pop up a year, and the other window would pop up a trivia fact about Coca-Cola from that year. At least the kid helped me with the construction!) and their older son with his Science Fair project (I designed a giant poster with cut-outs from magazines of popular icons and images, he did an experiment at school in which he timed kids looking at the poster and then recorded what they remembered, and then we did this big 3D bar graph out of spray painted Styrofoam rods to represent the results of the experiment). I spent entire weekend days with these children, eating restaurant take-out lunches with them, taking breaks to watch "Full House" re-runs with them, driving them to the big-box crafts store for more spray paint and Styrofoam, getting paid by the hour. They went to a fancy-pants private school in Ft. Worth, Texas, and I kid you not, out of an entire gymnasium full of elementary school projects, there was not a single one that looked like a child had even been allowed to touch it.

And that's why I can tell you that my absolute favorite thing about our homeschool academic fairs is that it's perfectly clear from looking at the displays--

--listening to the presentations--

--and watching the confidence of the children as they talk about their areas of expertise, and the pride on their faces as they show off their work, that these are kid-owned, kid-created projects.

And that's so much more empowering for the kiddos.

A TARDIS on My Laptop Sleeve

I'm not going to show you a tutorial for the creation of my laptop sleeve, on account of I did it wrong. I was so afraid of sewing the laptop sleeve too snug that I accidentally sewed it too roomy, and so now I'm pretending like I did it on purpose so that I can also sew our family ipad a protective sleeve, and then I can store the ipad in its sleeve inside the laptop sleeve with the laptop--it's that roomy!

Fortunately, nothing can salvage a poorly-sewn laptop sleeve like a freezer paper stenciled TARDIS.

the TARDIS stencil, originally a BBC freeware image, most recently and easily located at Crafty Lil' Thing

the finished TARDIS, with BLAIDD DRWG ("Bad Wolf" in Welsh, because I'm THAT big of a nerdy fangirl) cut out and ironed on, ready to paint

painted and drying--I had to hit the crafts store for TARDIS-blue Jaquard fabric paint, just so you know how far I'll go

...aaaaaaaaaaaand FINISHED!!! 

There you go--an homage to my current most favorite TV show, my most favorite character and plot line on that show, and a laptop sleeve that I like a lot now, even though it's secretly way too roomy for my laptop.

And in the Blink of an Eye...

...she's six!

We celebrated our girl with homemade rolled beeswax birthday candles--

--on top of Momma-made blue birthday bundt cake with chocolate frosting and heart-shaped sprinkles (love those post-Valentine's Day sales!):

Life, indeed, is sweet.