A Trip Around the World - Intro

I LOVE teaching Geography at our Coop!  And, I love Missions!  So, guess what I put together for this semester...a 10 week class called A Trip Around the World  for grades 5-8th.  (can I add...it filled almost immediately!)


Here's my general theme for each class period:

• Focus on each Continent with mapping skills and facts (homework)
• Introduce the class to a missionary each week
• Visit a different country (from that week's continent) each week in class - eat the food or do an activity
• Do some in-class activities to learn about geography.

Ongoing project for each student:

• Read a Christian Heroes Then & Now Missionary Biography - each student gets their very own!    
• Complete a written report on the book, and create a class presentation about the the country their missionary served in.  
• Bring a food to share for our "World Celebration" day

For our first class, I had everyone introduce themselves and tell where they most wanted to visit using my "Map Tangle" game board. (Map Tangle is like twister...but geography)

Then,  I introduced "The World" by having 10 of my students come up front.  This is what the spiritual state of the world looks like with 10 people and simple props:

• Tribal - zebra stick horse
• Buddhist - orange robe
• Muslim - head scarf
• Hindu - bindi dot & Indian wrap
• Christian (one who identifies as a Christian without knowing why) - Easter Basket
• Christian (one who identifies as a Christian without knowing why) -Santa Stocking
• Christian - Bible - this is one who has a living, personal relationship with God
• 3 Unreached - sunglasses - these have NEVER heard of Jesus!

This is quite a powerful visual of what the world looks like!

We spent our class time doing the good, old orange activity to discuss the differences between maps and globes and the effects of distortions on the maps.

To finish class, we had a class game of Map Tangle to see what we knew...

I love this class!