This year we will be "traveling the world" and learning about many beautiful countries and their cultures. We follow the history and world studies rotation by Well Educated Heart and it has added so much depth and beauty to our homeschool! The WEH rotation is a 1 year tour through American History as its spine, and includes connections to other countries according to the American topic of the month. Every year you circle back and layer on top of what you have learned the previous year. You can checkout the rotation HEREand I also recommend exploring her website for all the other delicious offerings she has available, especially the WEH Philosophy of learning!
The countries listed for Month 1 of WEH are China, Asia, India, Scandinavia and the countries of the South Seas. We don't do all of the countries per month but will just be choosing one to dive deep into. Month 1 is technically September, but I decided to get an early start and stretch this month's topics into two months. I plan on "visiting" one country per month and our first stop took us to India for the month of August.
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Finding India on the glob.
World Culture Resources
We are using a mix of different sources for our studies. Here are a few of them:
These were the books on my list for India. We did not get to read Our Little Hindu Cousin and Kari the Elephant, but I plan on having my oldest read it next year as a personal read when we circle back through the rotation again.
We started out our studies by finding India on the globe which the girls thought was fun, and we choose the book The Secret Garden as our read aloud. I never actually had the pleasure of reading this delightful classic as a child, so it was so much fun to meet The Secret Garden for the first time along with my girls! We choose this book because the main character, Mary Lennox, was from India, and there is Indian terms and language sprinkled throughout the book. I also created some resources to go along with our secret garden book that included copywork, word searches, art and more. I plan on releasing this Secret Garden Enrichment Guide later this school year and will update this post when I do!
Another thing we did was lookup India in our book Window on the World. This book is a prayer resource that develops cultural, political, and geographical awareness through a Christian lens. It's full of true stories, maps, and easy-to-use prayer points that take you into homes around the world. You get to see how children live, what they like to do, where they go to school, what they eat and wear, and what they hope and dream. We would read a little from from this book during our Morning Time, and refer to the prayer list to know how to pray for India. I also just discovered the prayer guide by Voice of the Martyrs which we will also be using.
I also had my girls look at the India section in several books from the "Cultures & Peoples" list.
Then we started our Notebook pages for India, drawing and labeling India on the map. We referred to the books from the "Maps and Atlases" list for this. I had them trace the map of India from the Maps of the World book by YWAM publishers on to watercolor paper. On a different day we came back and labeled some places on our maps.
During our Morning Time we would enjoy a story and artwork in the India section of My Book of Delights.
For some History we read about the missionary Sundar Singh who traveled all over India to tell people about Jesus. We read his story from the My World Storybook and then did a notebook page on him with what we learned. We then and added him to our history timeline by Homeschool in the Woods.
The highlight of our India Study was when my friend from church invited us over to enjoy an authentic Indian Meal! It was perfect timing! We enjoyed hearing about her time in India and looking through her pictures from her trip. And the food was AMAZING!
Another day we did the Flag Profile Page from Traveling the World and added it to our notebook pages. I printed it on watercolor paper so my girls could use watercolors!
We really enjoyed the Taj Mahal art project by Lily & Thistle's Art Makes Me Smart. We watched the YouTube video provided by her on the Taj Mahal and also watched her watercolor instructional video to make our paintings!
Lastly, we learned about the Bengal Tiger. I had them watch the video provided by Traveling the World unit and instead of using the provided Animal Profile page, they painted a tiger in their notebook and wrote the animal profile information on there too. We also watched a video on the tiger provided by Traveling the World.
This is my notebook page. I try to make it a point to notebook along side them to demonstrate learning is a lifelong pursuit... and I enjoy it!
And that wraps up our adventure to India! Next up in our travels is Sweden for the month of September!
