Strive for Success Geography Classical Conversations Cycle 1
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We focused on geography this week. For a lot of families geography can be one of the trickiest subjects to conquer. I think it is trickier to memorize, not because it's difficult, but because it is more time consuming to work on geography than other subjects.
To work on conquering cycle 1 geography we did a mixed media art project. I created a stencil of Europe and Africa for the kids to use. They traced the outline of the continents, colored them, then added some fun mixed media to add details to their maps.
Materials you need:
Cycle 1 trivium table, tracing paper, poster board, good strength drawing paper, crayons, markers, colored pencils, shaving cream, school glue, food coloring, sand, glitter, brown sugar, puff paint, any other fun mixed media materials.
Set up:
Before everyone arrived I traced the black line map on my trivium table on tracing paper, I cut the tracing paper map out, then put it on poster board and traced the map on the poster board twice. One poster board map became a stencil the kids used. The other became a blank map to be used in a geography pictionary game. For pictionary you could also trace the map with wet erase markers onto a white board, then let the kids play pictionary with dry erase markers.
I covered my tables with brown painters paper. It's very inexpensive on Amazon.
I put the thick drawing paper, crayons, markers, pencils, and colored pencils out on the tables covered with painters paper.
While the kids are busy tracing and coloring their maps mix the shaving cream with school glue and food coloring. We used blue food coloring since this was going to be used for oceans.
After coloring their maps, the kids used puff paint for the rivers, and the shaving cream mixture for the oceans.
I put the brown sugar and gold glitter, along with some more school glue, at a table outside. These materials were for adding dimension to the Sahara and Arabian Deserts. Having this outside was a great idea! My garage is sparkly!
The finished products were a great.
There were a lot of CC tutors available at the event, so they each took turns quizzing the students where were ready on their cycle 1 geography after they finished their art work. Any child who took the time to sit down with a tutor and go through their geography got a sticker in their Strive for Success book (see previous post).
For the pictionary game use the map that is laminated, but doesn't have any markings on it. Divide the families/students into two teams. Team one chooses a drawer. The drawer picks a card, and has to draw that place on the map. The team mates must guess the place they are drawing to get a point. Then the other team goes. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. We will use this as a review game in class too!
