Create an imaginary island

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I mentioned in my “Where did August Go?” post, I’d decided the geography in Illuminations {affiliate link} was just too much for my kids, so I went back and looked at the younger kids geography.

And I think I heard choirs of angels singing (or maybe that was me).  The first week’s assignment was to create an imaginary island.

Now, that is right up my alley, and my kids’ too.

So, I gave them the assignment of the imaginary island, and told them here is what I would be looking for (as suggested in the Hands on Geography book {affiliate link}

• name
• where is it located?
• compass rose
• climate
• animals (at least one, can be imaginary)
• plants (at least one)
• key
• topography (mountain, cave, river, something that would be a variety)

And they set to it with a vengeance.  They compared locations with our different fabric maps (which are going to be made into quilts, eventually, just found the fabric), and we referred to the Ultimate Geography guide from time to time as we needed questions answered.

And here are their Imaginary Islands:

You can see their personalities in these so much, and they loved making imaginary islands.  Batman created an island at war, as he explained Aliens attacked it so there is “1 tree left Mommy,” and there’s only a few animals left.  By contrast Princess’ is less busy, but she had created an island similar to my example island.  Superman’s is full and overflowing, it has clone troopers on it, and he has exactly one or two of each thing he was required to have, and about 200 troopers.  His island took up so much space he had to put his map key on another page, there just wasn’t room.

They all ended up going back and revising their islands after their looking at the rubric because they’d left off one or two items.  But, in the end they all included the required items.

So the kiddos and I are both happy now to of switched over to the young learners track because it is a perfect match for us.  Happy sigh of contentment, now I’m going to take my accidentally sun-burned self off to bed to bake by myself.