France ~ The Eiffel Tower

 

So I figured it was about time I shared some more details on our recent trip to France. You might remember the Madeline post! This time we visited the Eiffel Tower. One of the most visited and well known structures in the entire world!

As is always the case with our group activities we have a large age range of children, from five up to fourteen years in fact so it can at times be a little tricky putting together something that will work for the entire group.

This time the information presented was pretty much the same for everyone but the output from the various age groups was much more appropriate.

As you can see here we had a simple tracing exercise for the youngest of the children and the middle to upper primary group completed a question and answer sheet after chatting about and watching a short informational video on the Eiffel Tower.

I actually struggled to find a video I was truly happy with, either my searching abilities this time around needed some work or there just isn't much out there in the form of short documentary style videos about the Eiffel Tower.

After watching the video and a having brief discussion the oldest of the group wrote a short informational report about the Eiffel Tower. They were given a list of questions to answer within the report. As a group we worked through all of the topics and discussed as necessary or when various points were raised.

I do enjoy working with older kids for this reason. We generally are not a group of one teacher and several students. I am simply one of them, together in that group all learning what we can, asking questions, sorting through the information and coming up with something that works for each of us.

I have included these Free Eiffel Tower Printable Worksheets as a download at the bottom of this post.


For a bit of fun we all took a ride on the Eiffel Tower Elevator. Well as close as we could get to a ride whilst remaining firmly planted here in the living room.

I love the view you get from this angle though, it is well worth watching.

There are quite few different Eiffel Tower Crafts out there on the web. I knew I needed something simple due to time constraints and the wide variety of ages of kids that I was dealing with.

In the end I went with the Straw Eiffel Tower Craft as it gave some level of flexibility, was simple enough for young ones and the older kids could add their own flair to it.

I googled a template and printed it on light weight card as I knew there would be loads of wet glue being added to these during the process. The template itself is really just to use as a guide so it doesn't need to be too particular.

I just love how even with such a simple activity they all came up with their very own different ideas.

When it came time for the older kids turn I gave them a great deal more choice with materials. There were of course the straws in varying colours, but I also laid out buttons, beads, pretty little paper flowers and other small bits and bobs envisioning them all having a grand old time turning their plain template into a beautiful rendition of the tower.

Alas, they all, but me, chose the straws. Oh well you know what they say about never working with children ;-) hahaha!

And that was our visit to the Eiffel Tower.

Would you like a copy of the Eiffel Tower Worksheets I shared above?  Please use this link to download a copy for your personal use.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Looking for more French themed activities? Visit My Pinterest Board

Follow Our Worldwide Classroom's board Country Units: France on Pinterest.

France ~ Madeline

We are visiting France with our micro-school friends over the next few weeks so I hope to be able to share a few glimpses of some of what we all get up to.

First off for my group was Madeline with the younger kids.

No visit to France is complete without the reading of Madeline.

I decided to look online for an audio visual as opposed to me reading. In the end I went with this one I found over at You Tube.



I put together a quick and simple sheet for us to chat about the book and for the kids to record some of their thoughts.

You can find the download link for this at the end of the post.

We had some interesting discussions about what life might be like in a boarding school and found it quite funny how Madeline's hospital stay was for ten lengthy days!

I found a cute, simple little paper craft activity to do.

Whilst we coloured our little Madeline's we watched this longer animated version of the book. It's quite cute and pretty funny!


   

We only had an hour having fun with Madeline and could have most definitely spent a great deal more time reading about and watching all of her adventures.

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Would you like a copy of our reading response sheet? Please use this link to download a copy for your personal use.

Happy Homeschooling
Kylie

Come on over and join me at

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Google + 

Looking for more Madeline themed activities? Visit My Pinterest Board
Follow Our Worldwide Classroom's board Book Units: Madeline on Pinterest.

Cultural Geography Through Literature

Travel and Literature, quite simply these are two of my favourite things!

If I could be off traveling the world with my children right now I would be, wouldn't we all?!

Today we just opened one very exciting package that may just be the next best thing.

A special delivery from our new friend Crameye! He is going to be sharing his adventurous worldwide travels with us through his writing.

*I received he complete set of Series One from The Adventurous Mailbox, all opinion expressed from here on are purely my own and those my children.*

I have to say that I am most impressed with the attention to detail that The Adventurous Mailbox brings.

Even the shipping box, is sturdy, fully printed both inside and out and was addressed to include each of my three children personally.

Inside were three letters, one each for the kids and again personally addressed. Truly we haven't even looked at anything yet and I'm impressed already.

A little Crameye sticker is used to hold the letter closed. Inside, again addressed to the child, the letter goes on to explain just a little about the package they have received.

It also includes a card with their secret code to access Crameye's World, an online kids area where they can play games, win prizes and learn even more about the world around them.

The books come in yet another hard cover slip binder. This is such a huge plus for me, it means we can always keep the set together and can find them on our shelves quickly and easily.

Series One contains a set of 8 books, covering the countries of Finland, Taiwan, Brazil, Thailand, Greece, Tanzania, Peru and Peru Too. Currently there are plans in place to expand this range to 40 books.

Whilst we've looked through the package and so far genuinely like what we see we have decided to hold off making a start on reading about Crameye's adventures until next week.

I am going to use these as a read aloud so that all three of my children can experience this adventure at the same time.

But, sshhh, don't tell the kids! I couldn't help myself, I had to take a glimpse inside book one to see for myself what it was like.

Let's just say that I'm pretty confident that the kids are going to enjoy these immensely, they are absolutely written to the primary ages, but I also feel that lower high school kids will probably enjoy them also.

The writing style is really quite funny, frank, down to earth and clearly written by your average 12 year old boy (or there abouts because I don't actually know his age). Even though I only got a few pages in, I had already had a good giggle or two.

On top of the Adventurer Package of books and access to Crameye's World, you can also choose to add as an optional extra, access to The Teachers Lounge, where you can access lesson plans, printable resources and worksheets to use alongside the books.

I am really looking forward to getting started with these and the additional lessons from the teachers lounge.

I'll be back soon to share my kids reactions to the stories and lessons, so be sure to keep an eye out for those.

So, what are the costs involved I hear you ask?

Set One of Eight Books currently sells for $79 (USD)
Teachers Lounge Access is $20 (USD)

However The Adventurous Mailbox has offered a pretty neat deal for you to grab your own copy for your family.

The Adventurous Mailbox Homeschool Promotional Deal

Using the coupon code HSadventure at checkout, you will get the Teacher's Lounge for free (originally $20/must be in shopping cart for coupon to work) as well as $10 off the Adventurer Package Series One Books.

So, basically your family would receive the Adventurer Package (like the one I have just shown you) plus full access to the 100s of lessons in the Teacher's Lounge for just $69.00 (USD). The coupon code is valid until June 30th 2015.

Visit The Adventurous Mailbox site.

I'll be back soon to share the details of our adventures with The Adventurous Mailbox.

Happy Homeschooling,

Kylie

Book Adventures: The Glorious Flight

We recently spent some time learning about the History of Flight.

In particular the first man to fly across the English Channel, Louis Bleriot.

This is an interesting story, although it didn't have the kids on the edge of their seats. It's slow and methodical but we all learned a great deal about flight, perseverance and Louis Bleriot.

We completed several of the lapbook components found over at Homeschool Share. A huge thank you to all that contribute over there. It is a fabulous resource.

When Lego Lover saw what the younger crew were up to he was fast to jump in and ask for his own copy of the lapbooking materials. He has always had a keen interest in flight so I wasn't surprised when he asked to do this one.

Here's a closer look at some of the mini books.

We found and labeled all of the parts on an airplane.

We had some fabulous discussions about trying your hardest, 'getting back up on that horse' so to speak and perseverance with the pack of quotes that are included. We found many ways to relate these quotes back to ourselves so now when someone looks like giving up we jump in with a reminder about Louis Bleriot and his perseverance.

We found France and England on the globe, looking at the English Channel and coloured a small map to go along with that. It took Bleriot thirty six minutes to cross the channel back in the early 1900's.

The kids used google image search to find various images of "ways to travel'.

You simply cannot read this story without looking more closely at the History of Flight itself, this timeline is included in the lapbook materials.

I found this short clip on You Tube - The Animated History of Aviation. It is very well done. Albeit very short and you need to be watching very carefully to see all of the details.

This You Tube Clip is done by a boy for a school project, it's not too bad for covering this in just a few short minutes.

Our cute little popstick plane magnets were a hit and oh so simple!

One of the books we used along with The Glorious Flight was How People Learned To Fly put out by Lets Read & Find Out Science. This covers the history of flight from a scientific viewpoint but is aimed at and written for children. As always with this series it was a great addition to the theme.

Once again I displayed whatever items we have on hand to go along with the current topic/theme. The kids did a quick run around and found any planes we had, which wasn't many so they decided to put one together with bristle blocks.

Whilst not one of our most exciting Book Adventures we sure did learn a great deal.

Please visit my Pinterest Board for all of the links to the printable materials, crafts and other Glorious Flight activities.

This post is linked up over at:

World Wide Wanderings: Japan Wrap Up

We wrapped up our Japan Unit by all coming together to complete the lapbooks with all of the little bits and pieces the kids had been working on.

Designing the covers for their lapbooks. The only requirement here was that the cover image at least had to relate to Japan in some way. They ended up with maps, some Mt Fuji scenes, sushi, flags and carp fish.

Most of the kids have never completed a lapbook before and it's been awhile for my kids too, so doing it all together was a good exercise for them.

The covers from my kids lapbooks

And the inside finished pieces. We may add a couple of photographs, especially of the crafts they did since they won't fit inside a lapbook.

Look how proud they all are of their finished work, grins from ear to ear!

For something special, we took the kids out to a sushi train, they loved it and it got them trying even more sushi varieties too!

My Japan Board on Pinterest
Mini Booklets from Homeschool Share

• Pangea

• If The World Were A Village

• Continents & Oceans

• Countries Visited By Continent

                 Asia
                       Japan

              South America

World Wide Wanderings: Japan Day 2

 Day two of our trip to Japan was filled with just as much fun and learning as our first day.

I have no idea why we've waited years to get this sort of small group fun happening. It is so worth the effort. If you've been thinking about doing something like this I encourage you to give it a go. I'm sure you will love it and have as much fun as we are having with our World Wide Wanderings.

We began the morning with an art and mapping project combined, that I found via Pinterest, which uses oil pastels, water colours and their memories from last week. The finished maps look amazing.

Sara took everyone through a Shinto Creation Myth, which got them all thinking.

Lunch, of course, was none other than Sushi rolling and Japanese Green Tea. Joh brought along her gorgeous authentic Japanese Tea Set. Everyone had lots of fun with this, not to mention quite a bit of a mess. There's definitely an art to rolling sushi!

Tracy took everyone through the Boys Festival of flying wind sock Koi fish. This was such a fun activity, the wind socks looked amazing decorating the BBQ area, it was sad to take them down.

We will all gather once more to wrap up our last couple of items for our travels through this amazing country.

 I am linking this post to

My Japan Board on Pinterest
Mini Booklets from Homeschool Share
Mapping Activity from Ellen J Mchenry 
Boys Wind Socks from The Crafty Classroom

• Pangea

• If The World Were A Village

• Continents & Oceans

• Countries Visited By Continent

           > Asia

                 > Japan

          > South America