Some links in this post may be affiliate links. You won’t pay more but we might receive a small commission.

1. Games

Games are a fun and interactive way for children to be exposed to new concepts. While you might not think there are many options for history games, there certainly are!

Video games are another option that are sure to catch your children’s attention. This website contains a variety of games and interactive videos and images for your student to view. However, as you would likely expect, some may contain violence or some graphic images, so do preview them before your student plays.

2. Videos, Stories, and Photos

Many children are visual learners. This can be difficult with topics like history where there aren’t as many interactive options for learning. Documentaries and even photos can be a great aid to social studies in your homeschool. There are several documentaries about World War II with valuable info and an engaging format.

3. Books

A list of “50 of the Best World War II Books for Middle Schoolers” is a must-have resource. You can find it on nourishingmyscholar.com. While no list is comprehensive, this one is very thorough. Each book has a short summary and recommended age range, from picture books to chapter books and audiobooks.

4. Ducksters

Ducksters is a history website aimed at kids to help them learn about various events and time periods in history. Their page on World War II is filled with a variety of resources including links to battles, leaders, events overviews, and more. You can find material here to supplement any history curriculum!

5. Puzzles

When children put together puzzles, they’re looking at the same reference image for extended periods of time as they work to assemble the puzzle. With this, they learn the information in the puzzle without even realizing it! Puzzles can be a great memorization tool for your student regarding history topics. This puzzle has pictures of the tanks from many countries involved in World War II. If you look in the suggested items, there are several other similar puzzles to look at, so you can choose one that works for you!

6. Museums

Museums make a great educational field trip, and you can find many that include exhibits on World War II. This can be a great chance for kids to learn the material in an engaging and interactive way. Many museums also offer discounts for homeschoolers at certain days/times, so definitely check on that! Or, if you don’t have a physical museum near you, you could look online for a virtual tour of a museum, like this one from the National World War II foundation.

7. FundaFunda Academy

Of course, here at FundaFunda, we have several resources to help your students learn about World War II as well. We have two unit studies about World War II in our store. This one discusses important figures in World War II, and this one gives a year-by-year breakdown of the events of the war. Additionally, we offer our high school U.S. History Class, where your child will learn about America’s involvement in WWII as well as many other historical topics

8. Choose Your Own Adventure Books

Choose Your Own Adventure books provide an engaging way for kids to learn about WWII by immersing them in interactive narratives where they make pivotal decisions throughout the story. By assuming the role of characters navigating through the challenges of the era, readers gain insight into historical events, perspectives, and dilemmas. These books encourage critical thinking, empathy, and exploration of WWII history while fostering a sense of agency and personal investment in the learning process. Popular titles include World War II: An Interactive History Adventure, What if you were on the Pacific Front in WWII?, What is you were on the European Front in WWII?, and Can you survive a WWII escape?.

9. Primary Source Analysis

Studying primary sources such as letters, diaries, photographs, and propaganda posters from WWII can help kids develop critical thinking skills and gain a deeper understanding of historical events and perspectives. Thanks to the internet, there is a wealth of primary source s to be explored! A great place to start is DOCSTeach, which is a collection of primary sources from the national archives. They have links to primary sources and teaching activities that go with them!

10. Hands-On Activities

Engaging in hands-on activities like building model airplanes, tanks, or ships from WWII can provide kids with a tactile learning experience while fostering an appreciation for the technology and innovation of the era. There are a lot of kits that you can find on Amazon, like this one that teaches you how to build a model Hawker Typhoon plane.

11. Family and Oral Histories

Encouraging kids to talk to older family members or community members who lived through WWII can provide personal connections to history and help kids understand the impact of the war on individuals and communities. Sometimes museums will also host events where people who fought in WWII will give presentations. Be on the lookout at museums in your community!

12. Role-Playing and Simulations

Engaging in role-playing activities or simulations that recreate aspects of WWII, such as air raid drills or rationing exercises, can help kids empathize with the experiences of people living during the war and understand the challenges they faced. It is an exciting way to learn history, and gives kids a greater connection to the material. Additionally, there are a number of online programs that allow kids to role-play as a world power during WWII, like this one from historysimulation.com.

We hope you enjoyed these World War II resources for homeschoolers! If you have other suggestions, as always, please leave them in the comments down below. Thanks for reading!

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**Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. You won’t pay any extra if you choose to purchase, but we might receive a small commission**

1. Families of the World

Families of the World is a DVD series that showcases, as the name suggests, different families from around the world and how they live their daily lives. It is a great way for your students to se everyday life in other countries. It can also provide a great prompt for a writing assignment. You can tell your child to pick a few aspects of their daily routine and write a paper comparing/contrasting their personal routine with the routine from another country. For South America, Families of the World has Brazil and Costa Rica. Of course, you can also check your local library for these DVDs.

2. Man vs Wild Season 2

In episodes 5 and 6 of this season, Bear Grylls visits the Amazon and Patagonia. These are two fascinating areas of South America. if you have adventurous, thrill-seeking kids, this could be a great choice to get them interested in geography. As a follow-up assignment, you could have your student write about which activities they would like to participate in or make a map of the places Bear travels in the episodes. (Side note: This season is free if you have Amazon Prime!)

3. Mapominoes

This fun and educational card game is like dominoes but with countries! This deck contains countries of North and South America. The goal of the game is to play a country card from your hand next to a previously played country card that shares a border with it. This game will help your children learn the locations of these countries on the map, and they get to engage in some friendly competition in the process

4. GeoPuzzles

Puzzles are a great tool for visual learners to process what they are learning about! This puzzle of Central and South America is a fun activity for all ages to practice their geography skills. You can challenge your student to put together the puzzle without looking at the reference image to really test how much they remember!

5. Lost on the Amazon (Choose Your Own Adventure)

Choose your own adventure books are an immersive way for your child to learn about various locations and periods in history. They also teach valuable critical thinking and cause-and-effect skills, and they motivate your child to read more! This choose your adventure book is set in the Amazon in South America. After reading the book, your could tell your child to try and research and design their own choose-your-own adventure game based in South America.

6. YouTube Vlog Series

While you might not think of YouTube as the first place to go for teaching resources, there are actually many great videos on there that you can use in your homeschool. Vlogs are video diaries that many creators do for their daily life, trips they go on, etc. There are many creators who make vlog series about traveling through South America. These videos will likely entertain your child, but they also give insights into traveling, the climate and physical geography of countries, activities, foods, language, and more. My favorite is this one from X Overlanders of their adventures overlanding across South America.

7. Unit Study

Here at FundaFunda, we offer an “Around South America in 30 Days” unit study. This unit study is fully online, self-paced, and contains interactive assignments for your student to complete. The course is aimed toward 4th-8th grade and discusses many aspects of South American geography. Even better, once you purchase the unit study, you will have lifetime access for your whole family!

We hope you enjoyed these teaching resources on South America for Homeschoolers! For more resources, check out this blog post on “Playing Your Way Around the U.S.A.” And, as always, if you have any more suggestions, please leave them in the comments below! Thanks for reading!

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December is a great time of year to sneak in some geography studies as you and your children learn how people celebrate Christmas around the world.

In this post, I will suggest projects and activities for all ages to help your family learn about the Christmas traditions of other cultures.

Instead of using ready-made printables, use this opportunity to teach your children to do research and to share their research. This will teach them more skills AND they will remember much more of what they learn.

Where to find your information?

Public libraries (and perhaps your church has a library) are great starting places. If you know people living in the country, get one of your children to email them. Go to Youtube and search “Christmas in (country)”.

Here are two websites that include many countries

Of course, you can also do an internet search using phrases like “Christmas traditions in (country)”.

ChatGPT and other AI can give you ideas of projects and info on different countries.

And don’t forget Pinterest! It will contain a wealth of ideas.

What kind of projects can you do?

The activities and projects you do to teach your children about Christmas Around the World will depend on their age and the sorts of things you enjoy doing as a family.

If you have a number of children who will participate you could give each child a different activity to work on and then you can come together and each child can use their project to teach the rest of the family.

Project ideas

• Research traditional Christmas food for the country, locate a recipe, bake / cook the food. Then eat it!!
• What is Christmas called in the country? Does Father Christmas have a different name? What are other words relating to Christmas used there? Make a word cloud using a resource like ABCYa!
• Put together a slideshow of Christmas traditions
• Make an ornament like one you might buy in that country
• Find and play Christmas songs from the country
• Create a Christmas card using phrases in the language of the country and graphics that relate to their traditions
• Write a Christmas play set in that country – and perform it!
• Find a traditional Christmas story / legend from the country and read it
• Create an picture e-book on Storyjumper explaining the traditions of the country
• Make an online game / quiz on the traditions using Kahoot, Quizizz, or ClassTools
• Do a craft that this country makes over Christmas eg Yule log
• If your children know Scratch, they can program a drama that teaches about Christmas in a specific country
• Make a video explaining the tradition. This could be your child speaking, or it could be an animation using a tool like Powtoon
• Use a tool like Canva to make a virtual poster or collage about Christmas in the country. Or use markers and cardstock

If all these ideas sound great but you would rather it is all laid out for you, consider buying an online unit study from Techie Homeschool Mom.

More ideas

You can wrap up your studies by comparing and contrasting the different countries you have studied. Brainstorming with your children how best to do this will be a valuable experience! Some suggestions: tables, charts, Venn diagrams.

I would love to see your children’s creations. See my bio below for where to connect with me!

Bio:

Meryl van der Merwe homeschooled her 4 children and during that time started teaching at the local homeschool co-op. She still teaches there – as well as online at FundaFunda Academy.

Meryl also hosts the Homeschooling with Technology podcast. In her spare time, she loves reading and traveling.

Follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

The post Christmas around the world: Projects and Activities appeared first on FundaFunda Academy.

The links in the post are all affiliate links – doesn’t cost you any more than usual when you buy through them, but I get a small commission.

In my co op geography class, I spend a few weeks on US Geography. I use a few periods to play board and card games that teach the states and capitals. I find playing games helps most kids absorb information far more effectively than trying to do it by rote learning.

A game that works well for the whole class to be involved at once:

This US Bingo has enough sheets for 36 students. Instead of just calling out names of states, the caller chooses from 3 sets of clues of varying difficulty. For example, you may call out “Albany is the capital of” and the students with New York on their cards put a counter on that square. Other clues contain landmarks, dates of admission and other state trivia.

As this game is based on luck as much as on knowledge, the smartest kids don’t always win. This gives the other kids a fighting chance!

I also have periods when I divide the class into groups of 4 and let them play board or card games. The following 3 games work well as a single game, last 30 minutes or less, and are easy to learn. All of them are lots of fun, but also require the students to concentrate on US geography as they play.

10 Days in the USA is for 4 people. You have to plot a course across the US by foot, car or plane using exactly 10 cards. You start by each taking 10 cards and then each turn you take new cards and discard ones you don’t want in order to create a perfect journey (ie moving legally from one state to another).

Kids are constantly looking at the map on the board to plot their course – which helps them learn the map without even realizing it!

Scrambled States of America game is based on the fun book and DVD by the same name. I play the DVD in class at the beginning of our studies of US Geography and the students all enjoy it despite the fact that its target audience is slightly younger kids. As one of them remarked: “It is so silly, it is funny”.

The board game is for 4 people and is very easy to learn. Players receive 5 State Cards which they must send home by matching them to criteria on the Scramble Cards.

Scrambled States Card Game is for up to 5 people. One person lays 15 cards in a circle with the draw pile in the middle. Then, a player throws the dice and reads the characteristic the dice shows. After that, other players have to match the card on the top of the pile with another card in play that has the same characteristics.

Quick reactions, as well as a knowledge of geography, are helpful here (ie, don’t try to play against your children if you don’t like losing!)

I used all these US geography games in a classroom setting, but of course, they would work just as well at home played during a family games night or as part of a homeschool lesson.

And for online US Geography fun, take a look at our web-based North America Unit Study.

The post Playing Your Way Around the USA: US Geography Games for Kids appeared first on FundaFunda Academy.

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. You won’t pay more for the product but we might make a small commission if you buy through our link.

If you like having a Christmas theme to what you cover in your homeschool at this time of the year, don’t forget to include Christmas Geography Studies in your plans.

As Christmas is a festival that almost every country celebrates to some or other degree, December is the perfect time to take a peek into other cultures.

It is fun for students to see what is the same and what is different in the way people celebrate. For instance, I come from South Africa and our traditional Christmas dinner is very different from what Americans will enjoy on December 25th. It is very hot in South Africa at that time of year and so many enjoy a ‘braai’ (barbeque) and salads. As a family we did have ham and chicken – but not turkey. Turkey in South Africa is expensive and not nearly as good as American turkey.

I have also spent Christmas in both Germany and Switzerland – and that was completely different too. When I was in Germany I loved visiting all the Christmas markets. In Switzerland, church bells ringing (for a LONG time) make sure everyone is awake.

If you have younger children they may enjoy this video.

Older children may be intrigued by this Buzzfeed article about Christmas dinners around the world

And try this fun quiz where you select the correct name for Santa Claus for a given country.

Ready to dive into more Christmas themed geography studies?

Check out my post on Christmas Around the World: Projects and Activities for a number of free DIY ideas to do with your children.

Or you can buy an online unit study from Techie Homeschool Mom.

Have you found any great sites to use, or done any fun Christmas geography activities this month? Leave a comment if you have!

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In fall 2016, I enrolled in the World Geography course taught by Mrs. van der Merwe on FundaFunda, hoping to improve my geography skills. One of my favorite assignments was a group project to plan a week-long, budget-friendly, Latin-American vacation for a family of four. My partner and I decided to plan a trip to Tulum, Mexico. Our plan included airfare, lodging, food, and activities.

Here is the trip as planned by Lily and her group (yes, you can do group projects in online classes!)

Fast forward to summer 2017, and the trip I planned became reality. I had been hoping to go on a retreat with my scholars’ program, but that didn’t work out. Because I had already planned the Mexico trip as my geography assignment, my family was able to quickly make reservations to go to Mexico. It helped that I was able to tell my parents it would be affordable!

I was so excited when the plane landed in Cancun. The sky was blue, the weather was balmy, and palm trees swayed gently. We started the drive south to Tulum, and along the way, we stopped at a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant. That was also where I realized that I totally don’t know Spanish, despite having listened to a series of Spanish language-learning cassettes four years prior. Unfortunately, the restaurant staff knew equally as little English… I accidentally told the waiter “I love you.” Whoops. The fish tacos there were excellent.

The first two days were spent in Tulum. We visited the Tulum ruins, one of only a few Mayan villages built along the coast. We stayed in a palapa-roof cabana on the beach, sleeping under mosquito nets and realizing that Mexico without air conditioning is not 100% enjoyable. Behind the cabana was an above-ground cenote (rainwater lake, pronounced sea-no-tay), which was a fun place to kayak.

One of my planned activities was to visit Aktun-Chen, an incredibly beautiful cave and cenote. Aktun-Chen is a wet cave, so there are plenty of stalactite and stalagmite formations. Tree roots, seeking water, come down through the roof, and bats flit around. At the end of the cave tour, we went snorkeling in the underground cenote inside the cave (warning: the water is cold).

Spending the day underground was the perfect way to avoid the stormy weather brewing up above. When we got back to the cabana, we were pleased to find that the tropical storm had driven out all the mosquitos and dropped the temperature to a much more pleasant 80 degrees. Unfortunately, the storm also made the beach too rough for swimming, and the rain managed to percolate through the roof of our cabana. We made plans to move inland the following day.

Deviating slightly from my original planned trip, we found a place to stay in Valledolid, an old Spanish colonial town several hours northwest of Tulum. Valledolid wasn’t far from another activity I had planned: the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza.

Chichen Itza was a much older and larger city than Tulum. It was amazing to see the ruins and realize we were standing in the remains of a once-bustling city that included numerous temples where priests offered sacrifices, including human sacrifices, to their many gods.

We left Valledolid to spend the last days of our vacation in Puerto Morelos. Puerto Morelos is a small beach town, about 30 minutes south of Cancun and noticeably less crowded. At Puerto Morelos we were able to enjoy the beachfront activities I had originally planned for Tulum, the highlight being a snorkel tour.

The Mesoamerican coral reef is the second largest reef system in the world. This reef is right off the Puerto Morelos beach and can be accessed by a five minute boat ride. We saw a lot of cnidarians: star coral (huge), staghorn coral (brown), brain coral (lumpy), sea urchins (pointy), and both green and purple anemones. We saw lots of colorful fishes! My favorites were the rainbow parrotfish and the juvenile yellowtail damselfish. We saw large schools of fish, huge gray fish swimming solitarily, and tiny little yellow fish. There were pencilfish (they swim vertically!), pufferfish, lobsters, and a stingray.

It was an incredible week in Mexico. I love it when school assignments have real-life applications, especially when that application means a tropical vacation!

The post When a Geography Assignment turned into a Vacation appeared first on FundaFunda Academy.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in the above post are affiliate links ie we make a small amount if you buy through the link – you don’t pay any more, though.

This is a good time for your children to learn about the process of electing a president. In this post, I will list a few fun ways to teach children about the election.

Use games, books, and online resources to engage your children this election cycle.

1. Two engaging books on elections

Which president brought his own pillow on the campaign trail? How did the word “booze” become part of our vocabulary (yes, this is related to elections!) and what is the Help America Vote Act all about? This book answers all these questions and more in an easy-to-read, engaging style.

This book is one that children will want to pick up and read as it is attractively laid out with plenty of illustrations and fun facts in the sidebar. I read it in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good for 4th grade and up.

This book is only 48 pages and doesn’t cover nearly as much as See How They Run does, but it covers all the basics of elections in an easy-to-read style. There are plenty of illustrations throughout the book to keep younger children interested. I would suggest this book this for 3rd through 6th grade

2. A card game about the constitution

The US Constitution Quiz Deck is just a set of cards with questions about the constitution. I suggest you take it in turns to read and answer questions, and players retain any cards they give the correct answer to and you see who has the most cards at the end. If a card is answered incorrectly put it at the bottom of the draw pile and someone else can attempt to get it correct.

3. Board Games about Government

I have not played either  Election Board Game  so I can’t tell you anything more about it than that it looks awesome and it is aimed at children so will be appropriate to play together as a family. If you can tell us about it, please do in the Comments section below.

 4. Online Election Unit Study

There are many many online resources to teach children about the election process. You can google and find games and websites and songs and much more. But, of course, you have to weed out the stuff that is “blah” to find the really good resources. Or – you can just buy one of our online unit studies! We did the work for you and found fantastic resources – and we also created some of our own.

Up to 4 students from the same family can participate. They can work at their own pace at any time of the day (or night!). Nothing will be graded BUT the students with the highest scores in some of the games, and the best projects will be awarded gift cards at the end of the semester.

The unit study is designed to take about 4 weeks but you can take as long as you want to. It will be available all semester in the virtual classroom. In fact, we will leave the classroom open past the end of the semester but the prizes will be awarded in the final week of the class.

The Election Unit Study is divided into 4 modules:

• The Government and Constitution of the United States
• The Road to the Presidential Election
• Election Day and the Electoral College
• The Role of the President

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