Around the World

Our family loves to travel. M loves looking at pictures of different places around the world, and she has become more interested in airplanes ever since my husband started working toward his pilot's license. I also wanted to work with M more on letters and letter sounds. It all seemed to fall together perfectly to plan an "Around the World" version of a letter-of-the-week curriculum. As I started brainstorming, I decided that I didn't have enough topics to make it all the way through the alphabet. I'll take a break around the time our new baby is born, and we'll wrap up the alphabet with an "All About Me" theme. Some of the letters are a bit of a stretch (so many "A" continents!), but here's the preliminary plan:

Intro - Basic Geography and Maps

Letter A - Africa (extra Egypt activities)

Letter B - Biomes

Letter C - Continents

Letter D - Desert

Letter E - Europe (extra Ireland / St. Patrick's Day activities)

Letter F - Flags

Letter G - Grassland

Letter H - Habitat

Letter I - Ice (Antarctica)

Letter J - Japan and Asia

Letter K - Kangaroos in Australia

Letter L - Lakes

Letter M - Mountains

Letter N - North America

Letter O - Oceans

Letter P - People of the World (Diversity and Cultures)

Letter Q - Queens and Royalty

Letter R - Rainforest

Letter S - South America

Letter T - Tundra

*NOTE: I will update this post with links for each theme as we go. I will not be going in alphabetical order. I am trying to group the themes by category (all of the continents first, followed by biomes). I'm trying to roughly follow a similar order that Montessori schools would use to present letters, but it won't be exact. You can see more detail on how Montessori programs introduce letters here. M is already familiar with most of her letters, so I'm not overly concerned with the order we go in.

Each day we'll do some basic activities to prepare for the day (look at the calendar, check the weather, etc.). The week's activities will be based on the theme of the week and the letter of the week. I will be using mostly Montessori-inspired activities, including assembling continent boxes. I'm only planning on about 2 hours max of planned activities, and then supplementing with play time and field trips. I'm also going to start using "workboxes" that I'll fill with quiet activities that M can work on independently. I'm hoping that I can get her in the habit of being able to amuse herself for short periods in preparation for the new baby.

I hope you'll join us on our journey!