Our homeschool group's history/geography fair was this week which triggered a pinning blitz for me on pinterest. That netted some great ideas which tied in perfectly with the littles' geography studies.  

The first was our take on the Me on the Map project I saw several places. (based on this book)  The children cut their own circles from old cereal boxes so they are a little wonky but really sturdy.  They are going to make awesome manipulatives for some time.  

Konos has a similar project but they used envelopes in graduated sizes which fit inside one another.  A flip book works too.  Any way you choose to do it you begin with a picture of the child and his home then add layers (pages, larger envelopes etc) of the following: his street, city, state/province, country, continent, world.  

Then because I tend to overshoot they were so darn cute we made a set of continent cookies.  Actually this project was spearheaded by Moira and Aidan and was their contribution to the fair.  

The hardest part (I mean of course the hardest part aside from finding the project and deciding to make it the day of the fair. ; )) ended up being finding a set of continent templates that were the right size but still sorta to scale. Our world puzzle was too large.  We ended up using maps from montessorimaterials.org.  Aidan cut them and used them as a guide to cut the cookie dough. (recipe here)

They cookies held their shape well so the outlines stayed fairly true. We iced them in traditional Montessori colors and used this recipe which dried nice and glossy and firm.  They were a big hit and the kids were proud of themselves.  

You can totally teach geography without these.  Totally. But I think some version of the Me on the Map project is really worth the time to do to help give more concrete understanding of what are often really abstract concepts of place and scale. 

Wow.  This last week has knocked us out. So much packed into everyday. I have pictures of some really fabulous school and food projects, but am too tuckered out to link tonight after having made it all. : )  It's coming though, sometime after sleep and my husband's work shirts getting ironed.  If you have emailed me in the past several days, and heard me mention that, you might be thinking to yourself, "Good golly, is that woman STILL ironing?"  Well, no.  I haven't actually gotten started.  

We did get a new car worked out, had a history/geography fair, an Irish dance workshop, and a few sick kids.  Therefore the wrinkles are still waiting for me.

They're good like that. 

Grateful tonight for a set of littles who find life as fascinating as I do and are so easy to amuse, entertain, and educate.  Such an easy trio they are. 

edited to add: The bird song bird is here and only reasonable used it appears. 

We had a sort of slow rolling week productivity wise so I did the logical thing and picked a really tediously slow project to work on. : )  Due to my procrastination – and the fact that I have not tracked down the thread since we unpacked – we had accumulated 5 buttons that had fallen off various coats. Seemed like a good opportunity to teach everyone who couldn't how to sew on a button, starting with how to thread a needle.  This part took a loooooong time.  

  I did my best Jessica Hulcy impression and let them figure it out themselves with a minimum of grabbing away of needles, thread, or buttons. This, by the way, is the most important job of the home educator says Mrs. Hulcy.  She used to say that if she could give parents two things it would be a gag and handcuffs.  We jump in too early and too much.  We talk alot – explaining and correcting and offering tips ad nauseum.   She was right.  Standing by, quietly answering questions as needed, and allowing the time to work through tricky things is better than all the lengthy lessons we can offer.  They may forget what we say, but they remember what they figured out. You can't learn for anyone, after all. 

So, our coats are all in tip top shape now.  They know something they didn't. 

win – win