World Exploration- A Unit Study

I am using the list of explorers in the Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide as a place to get started. We'll incorporate some elements of a unit study on maps and navigation from the November/December issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. Plus, in true FIAR style, we'll be reviewing some of the titles we've rowed that go along with our theme. I wanted to make sure we hit the explorers this year and the kid's voted on it being our next unit last week. So, here we go!

This will provide us with some fun activities as we find out what the land was like where our explorers traveled.

These two are a great reference for historical time frames and the explorers themselves in some cases. We used the maps today to mark the route of the Vikings.

New to us this year- I bought volume 3 of Story of the World so I could use the read aloud portion of the curriculum. I hope to get a few activities based on exploration out of it as well.

We'll be doing some work on navigation and mapping. This little Discovery Channel book I picked up at our little consignment shop. It'll be fun to listen to the Jim Weisse CD on explorers.

We'll be making a modified version of the Viking warship- I'll give a shout out to my sister in law for giving me a stack of Chick-fil-A books. Great crafts in there and we have some other civilizations as well. Too bad we don't have a Chick-fil-A of our own around here...

Great deals on Columbus resources. Love picking titles like this up at our consignment shop and the library sale.

Last but not least, I'll be using the History Pocket resources for our notebooking- after our Native American unit I am not eager to start another official History Pocket giant construction paper notebook. I'm going for using the papers in a simple 3-pronged folder. Don't tell Evan Moor I've had it with the pockets!

Kendra introduced me to the Homeschool in the Woods History Time Traveler unit on explorers. Wow. This is tempting. Check out the sample download from the unit and you'll see what I mean!

Google Earth Lessons - a great resource for using Google Earth as a teaching tool

Google Earth Lesson on Sir Frances Drake's circumnavigation of the world

I sure hope you all have investigated Google Earth. It is crazy awesome to work with and so exciting to use with kids. In fact, they love it so much they choose it if they are given free time on the computer. So fun!

I will be sure to update you as we go along. Come and join us in the journey!