Geography Club: Italy Unit

Ciao!  

We recently took a "trip" to Italy in our Co-operative Geography Club. With its rich, historic culture, Italy captivated us.

Here's a look at our travel log...

Geography Club: Japan Unit

Last month, I had the privilege of taking our Co-operative Geography Club on a "trip" to Japan.  We had a wonderful trip and even "brought back" a few crafty souvenirs.  Here's our travel log...

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As a brief living-literature introduction to Japan, we read Grandfather's Journey together.  Then, the Littles (babies-5 year-olds) were dismissed to explore the book further in their book club as the geography club "unpacked our bags" to tour Japan.  

Co-op Plans for 2013-2014

Every July, all four of us co-op mommas get together for coffee to discuss the upcoming school year and our hopes and dreams for our co-operative learning.  (OK, so if truth be told, we spend 95% of the evening just chattin' about nothing/everything and only 5% of the evening ACTUALLY planning co-op...but, fellowship is important too...right?!) 

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We meet once more in August to solidify our plans and tie up any loose ends before the BIG DAY...our first co-op meeting, which usually happens the first or second week in September.  

You may well remember that last year, we created a Geography Club, of sorts.  We chose to use Galloping the Globe as our main curriculum and supplemented with Eat Your Way Around the World and other homespun activities.  Every other week found us learning about one country of the world, its culture, religion, and people.  At the end of the year, we had a wonderful spring program at which each co-op family highlighted their favorite country from our "travels."

Co-op Spring Program 2013

This past Saturday marked the culmination of a wonderful year of cooperative learning.  Our Geography Club hosted a 5th Annual End-of-the-Year Spring Program.  The 2012 program theme was such a hit, we decided to repeat it again this year.  Each family chose one country that we had studied collectively this past year and presented our experiences to our extended family and friends in the form of an informative booth.

Geography Club: Eat Your Way Around the World

I just HAVE to tell you about one of the resources that we have been using for our homeschool co-op geography club!

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It has been such a big hit around our house. Eat Your Way Around the World, by Jamie Aramini, is a recipe book designed to be an enrichment companion to Geography Matter's Galloping the Globe Curriculum. As an international recipe book, it can be used with ANY world geography program but is organized to reinforce the countries included in the Galloping the Globe book.

Geography Club: Peru

A few weeks ago, our Geography club gathered for a morning in Peru.  Out time together began by coloring a Peruvian map and flag for our Geography notebooks.  Next came a game of Four Ecosystems, a geography version of the classic game Four Corners.

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Geography Club: Argentina

We packed our "bags" and headed to South America for our geography club...Argentina to be exact. After a brief look at the map to see where Argentina is in relation to our last South American country, Brazil, the Deputy's wife led the kid's in a pop quiz style trivia game.  She asked multiple choice questions about Argentina in order to see what the kids did or did not already know about the country.  She did not reveal the correct answers as she wanted to encourage the children to listen for the answers in the morning's discussion.

Galloping the Globe Review

Awww...it was our bi-weekly co-op today...a brief pause in the crazy busyness of our homeschooling week. We always love getting together with the gang to learn in a larger, significantly more animated setting. As I mentioned last week, our group has chosen to do a geography study this year. We will be using the digital download version of Galloping the Globe by Loree' Pettit and Dari Mullins and published/distributed by Geo Matters.

We have been enjoying the curriculum so much, I just have to take a quick minute to tell you about it...

Galloping the Globe

Although, we are strictly using it for group geography lessons, this well-organized, unit-study style curriculum includes sections that focus on geography, historical biography, literature, language arts, science, and Bible. With the exception of math, it is an all-inclusive curriculum.

Geography Club: Mexico

After three years of hosting a book-club style homeschool co-op, we co-op moms decided to take a different route this year and focus our efforts on world geography themed units.  We will be using Galloping the Globe by Loree' Pettit and Dari Mullins and its companion book, Eat Your Way Around the World by Jamie Aramini as our core curriculum and supplementing with several living literature books, crafts, and activities.  

We will be meeting twice a month.  Each meeting, we will look at a new country within the current continent we are studying.  Due to some scheduling priorities, we will not be hitting every single country on the continents that we will look at this year.  But, are going to do our best to highlight many of them.

We have begun in North America with Mexico.  I invite you to join me over the coming school year as I share our themed units.  They will be ready-made and easy to implement.

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Mexico

  

I began the morning by explaining that "geography" is the study of the world.  I used a set of geography circles to depict the different elements of geographical study...city, state, country, continent, world.  We will continue to use these circles to help the children see the relationship between the countries and continents, as this is sometimes a difficult concept to grasp.