Ever feel sick of the curriculum? You know you’re “supposed” to be doing homeschool work but you suddenly feel like unschooling the rest of the day? It happened to me recently when I threw down a Geography Activity, Create a Country.
It helps we are stocked with poster board, colored sharpies, and imagination. It’s not hard to keep a few important items close by for those days you feel like going rogue! And I really encourage homeschool moms to be flexible to allow for these types of rogue days.
When you feel like going off the script and doing something total different – let the creative flag fly! However, I encourage you to keep some boundaries and guidelines around just so it doesn’t turn into a nothing assignment and time completely wasted. Leading you back to the books tomorrow to be frantic in playing the dreadful game of “catching up” swearing you’ll never unschool again. Or is that just my homeschool mom guilt talking??
Create A Country
It’s a simple activity: create a country. Draw boundaries. Give it an origin story, who found it? What language is spoken there? What type of currency do they use? What type of animals live there? What type of plants and produce grow? What do they export? Import? Do they have any special holidays?
You’d be surprised how much detail my son started putting into his little country. I’d hear him get off track and start talking about coordinates on the globe. Gently I’d bring him back on point to answer the “assigned questions”. He still needs some help with time management skills.
But the creativity! WOW! I was not expecting what he presented that night to the family.
His country not only had a name, founder, government and language … he told us about the exploding volcano that made new islands, their 1st Olympics, The Music Holidays, and sadly … their civil wars. We were so impressed how he included his Classical Conversations friends into the country’s history.
This little geography assignment of draw a new country and give it a name turned into a Creative Writing and Art Assignment! He showed off the flag, he made the currency, and he wrote a beautiful short story. You’d be surprised where Create a Country will lead.
Download our Starter Create a Country Worksheet. I believe in having some specific questions answered to keep a child on track. This worksheet helped my son to answer those questions and then go wild with his imagination.