My Thoughts on Expedition Earth

*This is not a sponsored review.* I bought the digital download of Expedition Earth several years ago and never used it. I found it in my files last summer when I was planning our homeschool year and thought it would be fun to use with Mercie, Silas, and Titus. I wanted us to have a "together" subject, or "family school" as we call it. Mercie is 6th grade, Silas is 4th grade, and Titus is 2nd grade.

We loved Expedition Earth. It has been a really fun year, full of crafts and books, learning about other countries. In all, we will have "visited" 29 countries (we still have three left - New Zealand, Antarctica and The Poles and we skipped two countries). Expedition Earth consists of two downloads - the Teacher's Guide and the Student Workbook. I bit the bullet and printed out the entire Teacher's Guide and three copies of the Student Workbook and I am *so glad* I did! It was wonderful to have everything we needed already printed out and in binders. I put the Teacher's Guide in page protectors in a 2-inch binder. I put the Student Workbooks in 2-inch binders, as well, but I wish I would have put them in 3-inch binders! Our binders are overflowing!

I put 8 dividers in each binder - one for the world, one for each continent. Behind each divider, I put an empty page protector to put all of our flat crafts, postcards, fold-outs, and anything else flat that went along with that continent. Then I put all of the worksheets for that continent behind each divider and page protector.

The go-along books I used with Expedition Earth are:

• A Trip Around the World
• Another Trip Around the World
• Galloping the Globe
• Children's Atlas of God's World
• Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography
• Children Just Like Me

Planning was super easy. Each week, I would go to the library and get books for the country we would be studying the next week. If we couldn't find any or there was a book I really wanted that the library didn't have, I would place an Amazon order. I also looked on our bookshelves for books that would tie-in. Each Saturday or Sunday, I would look ahead in the Teacher's Guide and get a general idea of what we were going to learn. I looked in the Trip Around the World books to see if it covered that country, and if so I would look for additional activities or worksheets and make copies or gather supplies. I also looked on Pinterest for a few fun crafts from that country. If I needed to buy something extra for the crafts or activities, I would run to the store that weekend.

Our weeks followed a similar rhythm:

• Monday: We would fill out our passports and glue the flag inside along with the date. We would read from the Children's Atlas of God's World, then find the country on our map, color and label it. Next we would fill our "Country Fact Sheet" with the country, capital, population, language, religion, and government type. We usually did a craft on Mondays.

• Tuesday: We would read a library book and then color the flag worksheet, reading about the flag design. We would finish the craft from yesterday if necessary.

• Wednesday: We would read from "Children Just Like Me" and complete the accompanying worksheet. We would read library books, too. Sometimes we did another craft.

• Thursday: We would read from the "Trip Around the World" books if they included that country, and do a worksheet or activity from the book. If the books didn't cover the country we were studying, we would usually do a worksheet I found online, sometimes just a crossword or word search, sometimes a map or learning worksheet. We would also do any experiments or extra activities that were in Expedition Earth.

• Friday: We would make our postcards and fold-outs. We would read any library books we had left. We would finish any crafts or activities from the week. We would review the country facts and some from previous countries.

postcard and fold out for Panama

Here are just a few of our favorite activities from the year:

Australian Aboriginal Boomerangs

Nigerian Quicksand Experiment

African Savannah Dioramas 

Kenyan Beads

Panamanian Molas

Peruvian Pan Pipes

Mexican Sombreros

Balloons on the first day of school to kick off our world geography lessons!

Cinnamon rolls with little world flags to make things fun!

Kites when we studied Korea!

Homemade fortune cookies when we studied China!

We had a blast this year with Expedition Earth! It was simple to plan, fun to implement and I think the kids learned a lot about different world cultures. In fact, we loved it so much, I bought Road Trip USA from the same author to use with Silas and Titus next year! It looks even more fun, and I'm already collecting books. 

Homeschool Highlights: 4/20/20 - 4/24/20

G'day, mate! In geography this week, we "traveled" to Australia! Our libraries are still closed, which is affecting our geography studies quite a bit, but I did have two books on Australia sitting on my bookshelves. We did our usual flag sheet, country fact sheet, Children Just Like Me sheet, postcard, and a few extras from "A Trip Around the World."

We made Aboriginal Boomerangs using cardboard and dot painting with q-tips.

We are still in the book of Numbers, and we are still working on memorizing 1 Corinthians 13. The kids are so close to being finished with their language arts and math curriculum. It's mostly review now, so they're done with school by 10:30 or 11:00 each day. 

Titus has been using a penmanship curriculum that we are reviewing. His penmanship needs a lot of work! He has also been reviewing nouns, verbs, and punctuation. In math, he is reviewing addition and subtraction with borrowing and carrying. He has also been using Reading Kingdom, a review product.

Silas has been practicing cursive. He is also working on 2 digit by 2 digit multiplication. He is reviewing all of the grammar he learned this year.

Mercie is reviewing everything in math and language arts. I've had them doing a lot of free-reading lately. She is also starting Artistic Pursuits, a review item, and we've done several lessons in Beyond the Stick Figures, another review product!

Eli went to his follow up appointment on Wednesday. His incisions are healing nicely! The doctor said we don't have to go back. Mikaela also had her first prenatal appointment on Wednesday. She got an ultrasound, so we got to see the baby kicking and moving and hear the heartbeat. It made everything seem so much more real. Her due date is November 7. We go back May 19th for her gender scan. I'm getting excited and am still in disbelief that I'm going to be a "Grammie".

Random shots from the week:

Zeke loves putting rocks in his dump truck and dumping them out.

We got Zeke a toddler bed! He hasn't slept in it yet....he still likes co-sleeping.

Mikaela made Zeke a flower crown and he wore it for a long time. He loves picking flowers.

I got the boys old kitchen out of our shed, and Zeke has had the best time playing in it!

I cut a bunch of shapes from foam and made Zeke some bath stickers. He loves these!

Mikaela has been doing a lot of baking and cooking!

How was your week?

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Homeschool Highlights: 3/23/20 - 3/27/20

This week was a hard week. We had a family friend pass away. The lady that let us borrow her bag of Peru souvenirs fell off of a ladder this week and passed away. She was such a wonderful lady, so funny and sweet and full of kindness and joy. She will be greatly missed. And we can't even have a funeral right now. They are going to bury her and then have a service in April - hopefully everything will be on the way back to normal by then.

Rod is still in Texas working. He should be home in 2 - 3 weeks. They are considered necessary workers (gas workers) and have to have permits to be out! We miss him, especially in light of everything that is going on.

Also, from now on Homeschool Highlights will link up before noon. It's hard for me to get it linked up early in the morning!

In geography this week, we traveled to Nigeria. We completed our country fact sheet, mapping sheet, flag sheet, and Children Just Like Me worksheet.

We made Nigerian drums out of tin cans and paper bags.

We did a quicksand experiment using cornstarch. We used army men to show how quickly you can sink in the quicksand if you're standing up and if you fight it. If you lay flat, you don't sink as quickly. The kids loved the way this felt!

When they put some in their hand and rolled it into a ball, it became hard. They held out their hands and it turned to liquid! Then they squeezed again and it became hard again. They thought this was so neat.

We only have 7 countries left to "visit" this year. We have really had fun with Expedition Earth!

In science, we started a gardening unit to finish out the school year. On Monday we kicked off the study by making "dirt pudding" and showing the layers of the soil.

(Kind of hard to see but we had graham crackers, golden Oreos, pudding, Oreos, chocolate chips and gummy worms.)

We also started our seeds for our garden this year. We seeded out carrots, onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, okra, sweet corn, watermelon, strawberries, cantaloupe, black-eyed peas, and squash. I still need to seed out the cucumbers, lettuce, and a few other things but we ran out of trays!

The kids loved being involved in this. They each had their own tray and chose what to put in it. We used craft sticks are markers to remember what we planted.

We did a few soil tests on the soil in our garden plot. We added vinegar to one soil sample and baking soda and water to another. The soil didn't react to either one, which means our soil probably has a neutral pH balance of 7. That's great news!

with vinegar

with baking soda

We are doing an earthworm test later today.

Zeke had a "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" theme this week for Tot School. He played in some rainbow colored rice. We hid laminated cards with the animals from the book in the rice. He found the pictures and put them with their match. We do two cards at a time, and he does great!

He also painted the animals from the book the correct colors. We are laminating them and making his own book.

He loves painting!

We did a lot of playing outside, cleaning inside, and watching TV. I ordered our curriculum for next year - Volume 1 of KONOS - and I've been looking through it. It's tough being ordered to stay home. We live in Louisiana, which has the fasted spread of COVID-19 in the world. That's sort of scary, but we do live very rural which I'm hoping will help us not to catch it. It's been nice having the big kids home from public school - they help with Zeke a LOT.

Random shots from the week:

Zeke loves this hammock and he loves being outside.

Mercie started a cross-stitch of our cat.

I don't like this picture of me (it's not flattering at all!) but I do like how one of the kids captured Zeke and I talking. So sweet! 

How was your week?

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