Continent Boxes

In an earlier post My Kids (2-4 yrs) and Geography I promised to share our Montessori inspired continent boxes with you. 

 

The continent boxes are part of the Montessori Geography Curriculum. They're filled with information and various items representing specific regions of the world.

A look at our shelves.

On the top are a few books, a mini globe and our Flags of The World puzzle (the flags are kept in the little box on the top shelf). We left only two flags in the puzzle to mark the countries we most recently "visited."

Our Continent Boxes, Little Passports suitcase and Around the World Toob landmarks with cards for matching.

I was worried how Antarctica would show with white on white, but it's perfect.

I traced the continents from our World Map and then cut them out on foam paper with a sticky back to adhere them to the boxes. 

Europe

Europe contains pictures I found of currency, art and landmarks online. I laminate and color code anything I print with cardstock.

I'm also starting to collect dolls from around the world to add to each box.

Africa

Contains Toob animals and pictures. 

The paper on the bottom has Egypt Activities from Little Passports. 

Asia

Pictures from Google - color coded and laminated. Pictures of animals in Asia, famous places and some origami that my son created. I added more paper and the origami instructions so he can make more. (My daughter was playing with our chopsticks that are usually included in here at the time of this picture.)

 

My son and I explore a new country each month. And while we have many items at home to add to our boxes, I'm waiting until we get to those specific countries before adding them.

 

What do you think?

Early Geography: Land, Water and Air

If you've been following along the last two weeks, I've been helping my daughter with her interest in Geography. We started here and here, and this was our next step:

In this basket are three bottles: one with water, one with sand and the other empty. These bottles resemble the three constituents of Earth: Land, Water and Air.

 

We started by discussing each bottle while looking at the labeled photos. Note: this is a great activity to do outside. My daughter and I have spent much time outdoors exploring these together already.

Ideally, I would have a sandpaper globe, but our mini globe is working just fine:)

I printed the cards for sorting here from The Helpful Garden's blog.  

My daughter (in her new favorite PJ's from her brother) enjoyed examining each photo. She talked about what she saw on each one and then together, we determined if the picture was showing something on land, in the water or in the air. 

This was a previous activity we did with land water and air.

From the Learning with Safari Ltd Toobs post.  

Following the child is so important.

I never would have guessed I'd be doing these activities with her at this age ... she's just showing me the way :)

Simple play for teaching position words

Starting Geography with my son was easy; he was 3, and he was already fundamentally aware of his environment and the world around him. See where we started for him here.

 

My daughter, on the other hand, is at a young age for developing an interest in Geography (most likely due to her brother's love for it). Here is were we're starting with her - it's so simple and so much fun for her:

 

A box and an object is all you'll need.

We used a Paper Mache box and a little dog.

And we began basic terms for an object's position in the environment (top, bottom, low, high, in front, behind, inside, left, right, etc.)

Using the Montessori 3-part lesson:

 

Place the object on top of the box.

1. State, "The Dog is on top of the box."
2. Take the dog down and ask her to put the dog on top of the box.
3. Ask, "Where is the dog?" 

We did the same thing for behind, in front, inside and on the side.

She loved it!

 

She is developing language and understanding of her personal space and the relationship of things around her. This is prepping her for further understanding world geography. (Baby steps, here.)

 

If you're curious ... our next step is a Land, Water and Air activity to help her understand that Earth is comprised of three major constituents: Land, Water and Air. Post to come.

 

We did a little work with land, water and air in my last post: Learning with Safari Ltd Toobs.

 

 

My Kids (2-4 yrs) and Geography

My children love geography.  

 

It started with my son at age 3; we were in the middle of a Solar System unit study when he became very curious about Earth. I introduced Earth by starting large and simple: Earth is made of land and water. Later, I purchased an Usborne Book to help teach (Usborne are my favorites) and included a map of the world.

 

Next, I introduced continents. We started by singing a 7 continents song to the tune of "Are you Sleeping?" Here's my daughter waking me up to this song at 25 months:

 To extend on our continent work, we referenced another book we own: 

I printed animals from each continent and laminated them for matching, and sometimes I'd bring out Toob Animals for matching:

 We just took our time on each continent - sometimes up to two weeks - as there were many new animals to research.

When my son and I found the Hug A Globe at our local learning shop, we had to have it. My son still sleeps with this at night.
 

On the bottom of our world map is a list of countries and their flags. My son wanted to look at the flags every day. I had no idea where to go with this, so I researched it ...

For Christmas, when he was 3.5 yrs old, we purchased the Flags of the World, and a miniature globe:  

My son now knows 10 country flags and their dot on the map.  

I did a Google search and printed flags for matching. I didn't know if he would enjoy this as it seemed so simple. However, simple can be very rewarding.  

Now that we were on to flags and countries, I wanted to extend on this and explore each country a little deeper. I thought it would be fun to try Little Passports.

 

This just makes it easy on me ... they send my son information on a new country each month. And, slowly but surely, I'm now able to focus on putting together continent boxes.

I am in love with how these are turning out and will post about this, and open them up for you to see what's inside, very soon!

 

How are you exploring Geography with your little ones?