TF Homeschooling: Country Unit

Our TF Homeschool (Two-Family Homeschool) group just finished an entire month studying a country. To read about how/why we decided to do this, please click here. I really believe that homeschooling is one big cooperative -- so this post will allow you to "steal" what we did and do this on your own in your house in a way that works for you. 

Firstly, some pictures from our adventures:

The delicious Bolivian food that we got to eat!

Thank goodness for Grama K. She helped some of my kids with their food. This is a German pancake! Yum!

One of the fun things about this project is that we did it with ALL the kids -- grades K thru 8. We simply changed it to work for kids at various levels. For example: the young kids had help with their speeches. 

This is me grading the projects. I'll share the rubric I used at the end of this post. 

Check out the "physical representation" that Ana made for Bolivia. 

Here are some videos from presentation day:

• Kari Physical Representation of Bolivia The kids all had to make something "physical" that represented their country. 
• Kari Bolivia Kari brought some fun things to show us.
• Ana PowerPoint Ana did an EXCELLENT PowerPoint which she added music to. 
• Isaac Canada His famous dry humor at work in this video!
• Abigail Germany I was so proud of Abigail for this speech! She is a lot younger than the other "bigs" but she did a great job! (Ana really helped her prepare which was so wonderful!)
• Bolivian Food Look at all the fun food the Kotysnkis made from Bolivia! They went on a two-week trip there over Christmas. (Hannah was born there and her parents were missionaries there.)
• Gabe Bolivia Gabe went first and did a great job!
• Little Kotynskis Discuss Bolivia Genevieve and Eoin went together on their project with Mama Kotynski helping them. 

If you are interested in "stealing" what we did for this unit, feel free to use this information below and morph it into a project that works for you. This mostly came from my head and browsing for some ideas online. 

You will be putting together a “folder” of a presentation for a country that YOU 

have visited. Included in this folder should be the following:

1.     Interactive notebook pages. These would include important things for your country such as landforms, food, culture, religion, time zone, holidays, What is the major industry in this country? What does it export? Import? etc. 

a.     1 page Abigail

b.     2 pages 5^th graders

c.     3 pages Ana

d.     4 pages Gabe

2.     A map featuring your country. 

a.     Abigail print map off and color and label. 

b.     Other kids draw and color your own map. 

3.     A Paper on your experiences within the country. 

a.     1 page Abigail

b.     2 pages 5^th graders

c.     4 pages Gabe and Ana

4.     A paper on the historical aspects of this country. Who discovered it? Explored it? Settled it? Established it? Were there native peoples there? Study the beginnings of the country, was it a colony, a territory, an independent state, a civilization? What is still there today that keeps history alive in the country. Expansion topic: Wars in which the country was involved. What is the religious history of the country. How has it evolved to the current religious practices?

a.     1 page Abigail

b.     2 pages 5^th graders

c.     4 pages Gabe and Ana

5.     A list of important vocabulary for your country. Learn to count in that language. Be able to say it to a parent. Include the counting words in your assignment but do not count them as part of your words. 

a.     10 words Abigail

b.     20 words 5^th graders

c.     30 words Ana

d.     35 words Gabe

6.     A drawing of your flag

7.     Provide an example you have drawn that shows the size difference between your country and a state in the USA that is comparable to it. 

8.     Make a timeline of the history of your country. 

9.     Print out a few photos to include in your folder that show some examples of what the country is like. 

10.  Create some sort of “physical” representation of your country. This can be something edible (example included below) or it could be a lego or playdough example. The sky is the limit. Come up with something interesting!

11.  A currency converting page: For this activity you will learn about the currency of your country. You will check the conversion rate and learn to figure it. Then you will get a merchandise catalog and cut out pictures of goods you would like to convert and show the difference in cost between the USA and your country. 

12.  Read a biography book of someone from that country--perhaps a scientist, explorer, or inventor. Maybe a politician or religious figure and summarize it in a typed paragraph. Should include either a handrawn or actual photograph of the person. Parent must approve the book/length.

13.  Calculate distance from the capital city to other locations around the country. Use a map and ruler. What is the population of the country and the capital city. What percentage of people live in the Capital city compared to the entire country?

14.  What are the demographics of the country? Identify the people groups. Come up with an interesting way to share this in your folder. 

15.  What is the weather like in the country? Does it vary from North to South or East to West? How vulnerable is the country to natural disasters? (volcano, earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc.) Come up with an interesting way to share this in your folder. 

16.  Find out what kind of government this country has. Write a compare/contrast paper showing this countries government compared with the US government.

a.     Abigail: skip this

b.     Fifth graders: a few paragraphs

c.     Ana & Gabe: five paragraph essay

17.  PowerPoint presentation on your country. Print out slides and include them in your folder. 

a.     Abigail: 1-3 slides

b.     Fifth graders: 4-8 slides

c.     Ana & Gabe: 9-15 slides

18.  Cook a dish from your country to share with the group. Take pictures of you sharing your meal with the group and include the recipe and experience in your folder. 

The following item must be done but will not be included in the folder. 

19.  Prepare a speech about your country.

a.     Abigail: 2-4 minutes

b.     Fifth graders: 5-7 minutes

c.     Ana & Gabe: minimum 10 minutes

In addition, you must choose 3 of the following six activities to accomplish:

1.     Visual board on your country. 

2.     Read a historical fiction book about the country.

3.     Design a travel brochure inviting people to visit your country. 

4.     Study the Art, Architecture, and Music History of the country. Come up with an interesting way to share what you learn about this. This can be a paper, a presentation, a PowerPoint presentation.

5.     Where is this country located with respect to other countries and the world. Learn what borders the country. Do a fact sheet for each bordering country and put it in your notebook. Include basics: Language, government, flag, capital, etc.

Make a game of trivia about your country. (This is great for Make-Your-Own GeoSafari boards. We always make several GeoSafari games to go with our foreign country studies.)

Here is the rubric I used to grade their entire project. Note that I graded them and then 

they also graded themselves using the SAME rubric! For the oral presentation part of the project, I used this online rubric that I found. 

Category	Exceeds  Expectations 21 pts possible	Meets Expectations  14 pts	Does not meet Expectations  7 pts
Task Completion	Wow! You did a superb job of covering all the requirements of the task with creativity and a great deal of attention to detail.	Visual includes most of the elements stated in the task.	Very little attempt to fulfill the requirements of the task resulting in missing components.
Attractiveness and Organization	Your finished visual is a work of art!  It is attractively presented, easy to read with excellent use of graphics.	Information is well laid out and easy to read.  Use of graphics enhances the information presented.	Information is presented haphazardly making it difficult to follow.
Content	The visual includes many interesting details and more than the basic information about the topic.	The topic is explained well and examples are given.	Information included is not complete.
Knowledge gained	Students are able to comfortably talk about the topic and answer questions about the material included in their presentation.	Students are able to talk about aspects of their topic and show that they have learned new facts about it.	There is an inability to share information about the topic.
Effort	You gave FULL effort.	You gave GOOD effort.	Your effort was POOR.
Attitude	You had a great attitude	You complained and whined a bit but mostly had good effort.	You were a big whiner.
Helpfulness	You helped your classmates anytime you could.	You helped your classmates some but not as much as you could.	You didn’t really care about others while doing the project.