Planning {Physics & Geography}

In school I loved my social studies class. It was a combination of a bit of history, physical geography and social geography. {I don't think they call it 'social geography' either; I just came up with that now.} Interestingly, some people don't call it that any more. For the state of Ohio, it is still required to graduate.

I am so determined to do better with Fox than I did with Lee. I don't think I did terribly with her but I could have done so much more and better. She, thankfully, absorbed much without my interference {or neglect, hmm?}. Specifically with science. Geography is considered a science, after all. That took me a while to come to know.

This year for Fox he is doing Physics. For geography, this term anyway, he is covering the Middle East. To prepare myself to 'teach' these subjects, I've had to do some research. I will have to learn right along side of him this year.

Physics- I have talked about this in at least one other post so I'll just link to that and add in some other resources I've since found:
Cliff Notes {requested a book from the library but it looks to have been lost in cyberspace; thankfully found this site!}
Khan Academy
MIT BLOSSOMS {couldn't resist with a name like that *wink*}

I still have a lot of 'planning' to do with this subject.

Moving onto Geography. This one has me somewhat excited, as you may have gathered from the introduction of the post. Planning this area required some more research into how. Nancy's post at Sage Parnassus has been quite helpful, along with Dawn's recap of an immersion class done by Nancy at CMI 2014*. Also the linked PR articles {thankfully found together in the History/Geography subforum*, or look here}. I used Push to Kindle to download all the articles linked. I'm still reading.

*you'll have to be a member of the forum to view those posts

I decided to have a look at lesson plans put together by teachers in various teaching positions, i.e. public or private schools. What I found was interesting. I expected it to be disconnected; made up of just worksheets with numbers and names of places. It really isn't. At least not all of them. It's much like CM would do it but for one big difference. In a lot of the lesson plans, the lesson begins with a conflict. For the Middle East, for instance, the 'fight' for water or the effect of water pollution is the starting point of the lessons. The lowest grade I looked at was third and the lesson was on conflicts created by lack of water in the Middle East. According to the lesson plan, the real reason that Israel and Palestine are against each other is because of water.

Some books I will be using- along with maps; many maps- are:
Hillyer's Child's Geography of the World {just a little 'fun' one to include since we have it on the shelf; the copyright is 1951}
Mason's Geographical Readers, Volume 5
Blij, Muller, & WinklerPrins' The World Today

And the book for this term's Geography is Eothen, which covers the Middle East. I learned rather recently that neither Lee or Fox care much for this book! I could use Walking the Bible by Feiler but probably won't.

Looking at Volume 3, School Education, Charlotte Mason outlines a lesson for Geography on the bottom of page 347 to the top of 351. This is for 13-year-old students but I can follow the same pattern for my almost-16-year-old.

After attending the Spring Awakening session in Windom, MN, I am looking forward to getting more attached to our maps. It was so fun to learn about Russia in this way! I imagine it will be just as enjoyable to learn about the Middle East.