Awesome Geography!

Today at school we did the coolest activity ever for learning the continents of the world! I noticed that my kids (all but 2) did not know the continents at all and were having a hard time remembering how to locate them on a world map. So last night I printed 30 pictures of things that exist pretty much only in each specific continent. The pictures were photo paper that is also a post-it note. It's called Post-It picture paper. You can get it at Staples or any office supply store. So anyway today we talked about each picture and where you would find it in the world. Then the kids would stick the picture right on to the map until the map was covered with pictures. It's cool because you now can't see the lines on the continents, instead you just see pictures where the continent is, so the kids have something meaningful to attach the word "Africa" or "South America" to. Now when they hear "Australia" they think of "kangaroo, platypus, koala".

The coolest thing was when later there were 2 kids that weren't finished completing a world map at their desks. They were kids that still didn't know the continents very well. So my student teacher sat with them out in the hall to help them. She asked one, "Okay do you know where Europe is?" And he said, "Europe...OH!! That's where all the castles are! Europe's right here!" And then the other one had to find Australia and he said, "Oh yeah! That's where that little furry guy swims with the flat nose... I can't remember what he's called! It's right here!" When she told me about that, I was like, "YES!" It totally worked!

And then something funny happened tonight at my Spanish class I'm taking at PVCC. We had to find somebody in the room and ask them how many continents are in the world in Spanish. So the guy I asked said, "um...5? no wait - 6! ...no...8? wait...is England a continent? What about Europe?" I started laughing uncontrollably and said, "SERIOUSLY??? You really don't know how many continents there are????" He thought it was quite funny too.

Oh yeah and one more thing. My kids are convinced there are coyotes outside at recess. Every day they stand at the edge of the field, peering through the fence, desperate to catch a glimpse of the coyotes they "hear" running in the woods. They're so weird.