Around the world resources

Because we have an extremely limited homeschool budget AND because we are so very blessed to live directly in back of our town's library, we plan to use the library extensively during our world studies this year. I have actually gone so far as to make "books to order" lists on i-Cal for the entire year. I told you I was a planner. Nevertheless, there are quite a few resources that I've purchased because they are a) not in our library system, b) some are consumable and/or c) we'll use them for all or most of the countries we visit.

ART: We plan to study the famous artists of the countries we visit and also use Global Art by MaryAnn Kohl. Have you seen her books? She has many and they are full of good, do-able ideas.

MUSIC: we have Wee Sing Around the World. It comes with a CD (or cassette, in our case) and very simple sheet music. Since a wonderful friend (thank you Lorie!) gave us a piano keyboard, I'm thinking of attempting to teach Z-Man to play some of the songs. This may or may not happen, you understand. We may just listen to the song from each country and I'll be fine with that.

As we study famous composers from some (not all) of the countries we visit, we'll try to find a broadcast on Classics for Kids, a great radio show with a large archive that you can listen to online. Here, you can click on a country to see who lived there. There are also printable activity sheets and games. Very cool!

BIBLE: In addition to our regular Bible reading program (right now we're using the Bible Study Guide for all Ages and we love it,) we'll also read a little bit about some of the missionaries that have served in the countries or regions that we're studying. Since we loved Wisdom and The Millers, I bought Missionary Stories with the Millers at our Homeschool Conference. I also borrowed Hero Tales (thank you Sharon!) and found Hero Tales volume 2. Since Z-Man is a pretty sensitive kid, these will be read-alouds so that I can edit on the fly if need be. 

  

Another book my kind friend loaned me is Window on the World. This is a fascinating book with great photos that lists people groups from A-Z, tells what they primarily believe, how they live, all kinds of facts about them and how to pray for them. We also have From Arapesh to Zuni: A Book of Bibleless Peoples. I'm sorry to say that there are many people groups in these books that I have never even heard of. So we'll all be learning a lot this year!

   

GENERAL: Atlases and lots of them! Mostly children's picture atlases. Oh, and this well-illustrated DK book about children, which I really like, and a fun coloring book:

  

Here are a few I'm still planning to get:

    

And finally, since I went a touch overboard on science this year, I think I'll save that for another post.