4Real Forums: Social Studies

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Across Time and Place
4Real Forums : Across Time and Place

Topic: Social Studies

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mamaslearning
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Posted: Feb 27 2012 at 3:45pm \| IP Logged

Do you address world cultures outside of history studies? Culture is an important part of learning history, but what about current cultures? Do you do this mainly in the early years with a country or continent unit style study?

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Lara
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St. Francis de Sales Homeschool

guitarnan
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Posted: Feb 27 2012 at 4:07pm \| IP Logged

We've done this several ways - via unit studies, via geography studies, via world religions studies, through reading living books...

Your children are young, so a country unit study might be a good way to start. You could use library books, music and even art (look at it online or get books from the library) to round out the study.

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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.

kristinannie
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Posted: Feb 27 2012 at 4:47pm \| IP Logged

Here are my core books I am using for all 7 continents:

National Geographic Kid's World Atlas (along with a globe and some large laminated maps from Geomatters)
Around the World Art and Activities
Encyclopedia of Animals
Children Around the World
Around the World in 80 Tales
Wee Sing Around the World
Stories from Around the World

We spent about 2 months on the US (since we were easing into HSing) so we covered each region of the country. For the Southwest, we learned about deserts and Native Americans; for the Northeast, we learned about the Mayflower and the Statue of Liberty; for Alaska, we learned about dogsledding (Akiak and Togo are amazing books); for the Southeast, we learned about swamps. I would basically pick one major thing to learn about each region so the kids have something to remember it by. We learned about Aztecs in Mexico and the monarch butterflies that go there every year, we learned about Mayans in Latin America as well as about the rain forest animals, we learned about snorkeling and volcanoes in the Caribbean. I would get library books about the regions we were in. I could usually find some good stories and picture books about the regions. I also read passages from other books while they colored pictures I printed for free on the internet. We would talk about geography and do mapwork the first day. Later in the week, we would talk about animals. The kids loved the animal study so much that I started doing an animal a day from the region. They would color a picture of it and then they would make a little Who Am I? booklet (took this idea from an Amanda Bennett unit study I used for Canada) for each animal. They would think of clues and then try to "trick" Daddy when he got home from work. At the end of the North America Unit study, we had a fiesta and invited my DH's parents. The kids made decorations and we hung up all the maps, flags and animal pictures they colored.

We actually had a girl from Brazil that helped us with our Carnival at the end of our South America unit. It was a lot of fun!

I am doing science units in between each continent to cleanse our palate a little. It has really worked well for us so far!!! The kids remember so much and have a true understanding that there is a whole world out there! They already have several vacation requests that we can't afford.

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