Geography and Globe-making

I added in one additional unit before jumping into our Story of the World history curriculum: geography.  This seemed like a great time to discuss the world, since at the end of the last week, people were scattering all across the globe.

Since Hulk and Goblin are still kindergarten/ preschool age, we did a very simple geography unit, focusing on oceans, continents, compass directions, and how to read a map.  I used a lot of free resources from around the web as well as a couple books we had around the house.  The biggest necessity for teaching geography is a big colorful world map-- as soon as I put our map on the wall, the kids were hooked.  They wanted to know everything about it.  Their questions were my jumping off point, and most of our unit formed simply from that interest.

We started our studies with one of my favorite projects to date: a paper-mache globe.  It was messy, a lot of work, and we didn't do a very good job of it in the end; but it was soooo fun, and the kids loved doing it (well, the parts they did do and didn't leave to their over-worked mommy).  I followed some simple instructions combined from a few websites, such as Enchanted Learning  and this museum website.  There are a number of different versions to be found.

I used a punch balloon to get a decent round shape (regular balloons tend to have their own shape rather than being spherical).  We made up some glue, dipped newspaper strips into it, and draped them around the punchball.  We coated the punchball 3 times (Athena did most of the first coat, Hulk did a little of the second, Goblin did some of the third, and I did whatever was left).  I put the ball outside to dry for a few hours between coats, and left it outside to dry overnight when the last coat was done.

The next day, I drew on the continents freehand with a Sharpie marker.  The kids painted in all the landmasses (Antarctica white, the rest green), then filled in the oceans with blue.  They got a bit overzealous and attached Australia to Asia, but other than that, they did a very good job with their tasks.  The whole thing could have used another coat or two of paint, but I was pretty tired and frazzled from policing little ones with paint-covered fingers, so I declared it complete, and we left it outside to dry another night.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: the punchball (being a lot thicker than your average balloon) did not pop after the paper mache dried, so we left it there to use its handle to hang our globe.

And voila! Our finished product:

It might not look like much to anyone else, but we had a ball (pun intended) making this little beauty, and everytime I look at it, it makes me smile from the memories. 

--Little Miss Crazy