Topography Activitie

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you some topography activities we did during our geography study. 

We started of by watching this YouTube video. It was a really good introduction to a topic that might be hard to understand. 

After the video we made a our own playdough mountain. We used floss to cut the different layers. We then traced it on to our paper. The further the contour lines were from each other the flatter that part of the mountain is. The closer the lines are together the steeper the mountain is. 

We also used foam sheets to make another example of contour lines. 

Older boys used cardboard to make their contour lines. This was such a fun and beautiful activity. You can get the full instructions from Beauty of Plays map curriculum.  She has book suggestions and more topography hands on activities to make this lesson come to life. 

Here is another really good video we watched demonstrating how mountains are drawn on a map. 

If your looking for more mountain projects and unit study ideas, check out our mountain diorama post. 

British Columbia Study

Hi guys, I wanted to share our study of British Columbia. In my opinion one of the most beautiful provinces. Here are some activities we did. We used The Great Canadian Adventure as our primary resources. 

At the beginning of the week I set up our work shelves with books, projects, and pintables to get us in the mood to start our study. 

After learning all about the Rocky Mountains we baked a sugar cookie in the shape of British Columbia. We used chocolate chips for the mountains and blue icing for the two major rivers. 

We learned about the three types of volcanoes (shield, cone, stratovolcano). We of course used baking soda and vinegar to make a volcano. We also tied in some Arabic watching Farashaty video on volcanoes. 

We learned all about salmon and tied our history study of the Pacific Northwest Natives. 

We did a flower dissection and learned all about The Great Bear Rainforest.

We also read a lot of books and watched videos all about British Columbia. I shared a lot on our Instagram page. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing all the different activities. If you enjoyed this post check out our other post all about Nova Scotia. 

Mountain Unit Study

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you guys our mountain unit study. This was a short unit that went with our India study.

We learned the different parts of a mountain using these three part cards from the Montessori print shop.

We also learned the different animals that live in the mountain also using three part cards.

Here are all the books we used for this unit. Our two favorite books are A Day on the Mountain and Let's Explore Mountains.

We also made a mountain diorama together, which the boys really loved.

We used a Amazon box as our base and created a mountain shape using aluminum foil and once we were satisfied with our shape we covered it with plaster sheets. We waited 24 hours for the plaster to dry.

Once everything dried we painted the whole thing gray and waited for that layer to dry. After lunch the boys painted the white peeks and the base of the mountain green.

The next day the boys added more detail to the mountain: animals, trees, and a stream. 

Once the mountain diorama was done, the boys added facts to the side of the box. We finished off this unit by learning the Arabic word for mountain.

We're off to China for our next unit and learning all about the ocean.

If your looking for more mountain project and unit study ideas check out our topography study post.