{Global Adventurers Club} {Resource List} {Country Themes}

I am an Australian living in the USA, my family lives all over the world. I love to travel, I love music and food from all over the world. I am homeschooling 2 super-fun kiddos. I want them both to know all about the big wide world, and how small it really is!

So if you wanted to hang out and talk about travel and learning and fun stuff, we would chat and I'd make you a cup of coffee and share some websites and ideas...maybe our kids would play... this is like a digital version of that!

Our learning style is strongly thematic, unit based and wildly embraces children's natural curiosity. We get experiential, we go places, we try things. We relate a lot back to the current theme we are working on. This ecclectic approach works for us, it may not work for you... fair warning, right? You should know then, that most of our Global learning happens country by country. This is how I do it:

1. Gathering

I begin with a sort of long distance planning so I can begin gathering. This works about the same way with all our thematic learning, but in terms of our global learning, the long distance planning involves having a list of countries we intend to learn about. Having this list helps a lot, because I when I come across "something cool", it goes in the gathering file. "Something Cool" might be a magazine article that I save, or an interesting travel website about the country, or perhaps a new resteraunt with cuisine from an upcoming country is opening- that kind of thing. I take notes as I gather as much as I can, because I have two young kids and no memory for anything anymore.

When I begin gathering for the countries on the list, I can do things like find out if friends or family have ever been to any of those countries, or may be visiting in the near future. I don't mind asking friends to pick up a few things on their travels. I ask for small things....post cards, small market-y things, their left over change in the country's currency... that kind of thing. Or I can always ask for a photo show and tell when they come back!

As I am gathering, I can keep an eye out for community happenings and calendars of events. I check online, and keep an eye on local free magazines. In my "gathering" mode, I always have an eye out for things that may help or serve the learning that we are doing.

2.Planning activities

When we begin a unit study on a particular country I try to make sure that we have a learning activity that engages each sense. This is what I have found helps support my kiddos in thier natural curiousity! My two kiddos are at an age where we can be very hands on with what we do.... for example, instead of just looking up in a book about the national costume of a particular country, we can create a dress up costume just like it, or we can dress a doll, or make a paper doll costume.

I love international food, so we try and make a meal from the country we are studying. (I have a list of cookbooks in the global resources section.) We plan a trip to the local international grocery store for cooking suppplies, and I encourage my kiddos to be a food adventurer... Sometimes this works better than others I have to admit, and often when we taste food from another country sometimes sweeter is better- we try to make a dessert! Often that is a "way in" to the food of another culture. Also if we are cooking a foreign meal at home, having my children help prepare the meal helps them to be more willing to give it a try!

I keep an eye out in our local community for events, celebrations and festivals of all kind. We live in a small city, but it's big enough to have a wide variety of cross-cultural experiences. Many international festivals are celebrated in some way or another here. For example, the Mexican community here celebrates "Dia de los Muertos" or Day of the Dead, a festival honoring the dead, that begins on November 1st- it sounds grim, but it's a whole lot of fun! A local art center hosts a gathering each year, alongside Mexican community members, and there is music, craft, and food that celebrates this unique look into another culture.

3. Share

Although we home school independently, we have always enjoyed sharing parts of our global learning with our friends and family. Mostly because I think it's fun! We've invited friends over to share in some of the activities we are doing, we go places with friends, and now we are working with the home schooling co-op that we belong to, sharing the fun of being a world citizen... Check out the Global Adventurers Club here.

© Anna Noack-Brown 2005-2009.