Second Book by Marcus - A Book About The World

Whenever M shows interest in examining the globe and our wall-size world map, I always sit with him to answer all his questions. But it was only when he began bombarding me with questions about country flags (read here) that I suggested we make a lapbook on this topic.

He was so keen that he wanted to do it all in one sitting. But I gently discouraged it as I saw it as an opportunity to introduce a lot more. In the end, we took a few weeks. 

It could have been done in a short few days really, but halfway through, my Macbook crashed and I lost everything I had prepared. I took a while to rebuild what I lost while we got distracted with other homeschooling themes. 

It was finally completed just before the school holiday ended! What really pleases me is how much we both have enjoyed the process.

The Step-by-Step...

We started with some introduction to continents, oceans and flags of the world. 

Next, he learnt to locate and name the continents and oceans. Here is a great link I found for this.

This was followed by his selection of ten countries to begin work on. For that, he drew and coloured the flags of these nations, looked at interesting facts that I had prepared and wrote down 2 to 3 facts that he can recall about each country onto his lapbook. 

Lastly, he was given a world map to name the continents and oceans by himself.

His Creativity...

I have wanted his input in every step. So for the front page of this book, I got him to suggest the book title, design and layout. 

He decided on A Book About The World and wanted a picture of a world map. Instead of printing a copy, he tried tracing from a map for the first time. 

The result was better than I expected!

Above: Just a selection of pages from the book.

The Rewards...
Upon completion, he can remember everything that he wrote about the countries.

He can reproduce the flags and even spell the names of the countries he worked on. 

He knows which continents these countries are in and can locate them on a globe. 

He is able to name all the continents and oceans. And he understands terms like equator, the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere.

~~~~

I am so delighted that I persevered despite the huge let down by technology (i.e. my laptop crashing!). 

Not only does it pleases him tremendously whenever he flips his lapbook; the knowledge learnt has boosted his confidence and fueled his interest further to learn more about the countries and cultures in the world.