Waldorf Grade 5: Geography Mini Units

  The first block for Waldorf Essentials Fifth grade combines mapping, geography and history.  We started with a review of US Geography, learning which states were in each of the four regions and remembering capitals.  This took us through the first week of school, studying a new region each day. For each region Jack made a main lesson page that listed each of the states and their capitals.  We worked with some map puzzles and even played the Stack the States app on the iPhone (the horror! So very un-Waldorf!  Yet, so very effective in this instance!).

   We studied Africa for the next week, mapping the continent and reading about the flora and fauna.  

 If you have ever used Waldorf Essentials before, you will know that the curriculum can often be a suggestion about what to focus on for the daily lesson.  Personally, I love having this framework and tailoring the lessons to fit the child.  It does mean you will need some extra resources, many are suggested by Melisa (especially in the grade overview audio recordings on her site).  The extra resources we use are normally wikipedia pages printed out, examples of main lessons found on pinterest and library books.  We have managed to build a pretty good home library over the years and I was able to pull several books to help with these units.  Here are the bulk of them:

 The Monkey and the Fiddle was our choice for the folk tale. Jack did a great job on his first summary of the year and took great care with his border and drawing.  We try to follow a two day Waldorf approach to Main Lessons,  listening to the story on the first day and then modeling or drawing from it.  On the second day, after the story has had time to digest, we write a summary.  We usually discuss it first, to make sure that we remember the important characters and events.  I will put proper names on the board to help with spelling, but Jack writes it himself.  When he is finished, we read through it together to catch spelling or grammatical errors.  I'm a big fan of focusing on a few items at a time, as I gleaned from Julie at Brave Writer.  For example, we may discuss the following: run-on sentences, proper nouns start with a capital letter, and sentences end with a punctuation mark. I'll have Jack look for those items on his own and try to limit any critiques to those specific areas.

  To wrap up the Africa block, Jack cooked an African feast for us, using this Moroccan Chickpea Stew recipe. 

  Our next mini block was Atlantis.  This definitely seems like an odd choice, but it is typical in the Waldorf fifth grade curriculum.  We talked about the legends, specifically Plato's writings about it, and where it may have been located. We also looked at maps drawn from Plato's description and made a clay model.  Like the other areas of study, we also looked at animals and plants.

  Our next stop on the mini world tour was Australia.  Aboriginal folk tales combined with exotic plants and animals mad this a really enjoyable unit to study. I am so glad we found out about the book Topsy-Turvy World: How Australian Animals Puzzled Early Explorers by Kristy Murray from some Australian homeschoolers on IG.  Reading about the European explorers' first impressions of animals such as the platypus and wombat was highly entertaining.  He chose to write about the kangaroo from the fifteen species highlighted in this book.

  Our geography block really set the stage for a fun school year.  We got a little busy and didn't plan a meal for Australia, which was a shame.  It certainly adds a lot to the unit and Jack is so proud to take charge of a family dinner.  Jack's map making skills improved greatly this month, as did his world geography knowledge.