Homes Around the World

Posted by : Karen Monday, October 03, 2011

It seemed only fitting after King Arthur built his house that we moved onto looking at homes around the world. I'm beginning to realize my *problem* with this homeschooling journey is that I get so excited about what we are learning that I could spend weeks learning about something, that doesn't necessarily interest my children! I chuckle! Thankfully he's into this ''home" looking for a bit!)

So, having trawled the Internet these are some lovely links I found to go along with this theme:

we loved this book which we browsed on line that showed us photographs of houses around the world and then had a cross sectional diagram of what it looked homes looked like - so insightful!

This site had some wonderful photographs and information about homes from around the world - imagine my delight when the first one was from South Korea, an ondol, with a heated floor- it brought back many memories! (for those of you who don't know, King Arthur was born there!)

Another site with unusual homes from around the world - ask your kids which one they can imagine living in - why? What do they like about it?
This online matching game was a little disappointing (each underlying picture appears to be of a castle), but for younger kids it might be fun.
This is one of our favorites! We loved this collection of photographs from Visual News, about where children sleep around the world - hours of discussion can come from looking at these photographs together!

A friend of mine has an amazing mom who made all three of her grandsons the most amazing tepees one Christmas, and whilst I'm not quite adept at sewing something like that (yet - but wouldn't it be wonderful!) these craft ones have been just as fun!

this is the one I want to pluck up the courage to construct (hmm, great Christmas present idea!)
this one is made from a paper bag
and a simple one with paper and straws!
and the best ones with templates!

This lovely Dr. Seuss book is great to introduce the topic, and one I fondly remember from my childhood...

There is so much you can do with this book. It's great to read; great to ask your kids to guess what region of the world the they think the homes come from - are they hot or cold? Why? (What clues can they deduce from the pictures?). Can they name actual countries? For older children, you can ask them to try and find other pictures on the Internet that would match the one sin the book (or you could do this beforehand for younger kids!) Can they pick up any clues about national costume?

And then today, some friends joined us at the start of the holidays and we made mud huts!