Around the World: Maps, Mexico, Mariachi Music and Making Maracas!

In case the title didn't give it away, today's blog post has been brought
to you by the letter of the week, "Mm!"

Today was the day! We returned to our homeschooling routine and kicked off our Around the World unit. I wondered as I was planning if I might be over-planning activities and our starting up school again might be a slower transition we would need to ease into. I could not have been more wrong!  My little pupil was so eager to be back "in school," I had to dip into some extra activities I had planned as fillers just in case! Over the past few days, I've gradually been making over our playroom and learning area to prepare for this theme as I packed up our Chanukah materials and decorations for next year. Last night while my little guy was in bed, I transformed our living room into an airport. Today we weren't just traveling to school in our living room; today we were traveling to Mexico!

My son was so excited to see an airplane waiting to be boarded!
 We began our morning routine in the usual way with a morning Circle Time, daavening (prayers), charting the weather and some music & movement with shakers and scarves. Then we learned a bit about maps, globes, continents and countries. We looked at a couple flat, two dimensional maps and a 3-dimensional globe. We found where we live on both. We even sang this fun song about the continents:




We've Got the Whole Globe in My Hands
t.t.t.o.: I've Got the Whole World in My Hands


We've got the whole globe in our hands,
We've got the whole globe in our hands,
We've got the whole globe in our hands,
We've got the whole globe in our hands!

We've got North and South America in our hands,
We've got Europe, Asia, Africa in our hands,
We've got Australia and Antarctica in our hands
We've got the whole globe in our hands!

 Next, my little pilot put on his captain's hat and we boarded our plane! With extra tzedakah (money for charity) in our pockets and our passport ready to go, we took off to the blue skies for our grand destination, Mexico!

While aboard, we sang The Airplane Song (see below), enjoyed an in-flight snack (my toddler's favorite part!), and kept our ears open for landing when we would be greeted by some festive Mexican Mariachi music. It's important to know how to communicate when visiting a foreign country, so I made sure we both knew how to greet everyone in Spanish. My travel companion has been walking around shouting "hola" all morning now!

Captain!

In flight snack

When we landed, we put our tzedakah into the pushke (charity box) and danced to the music. We looked through a great book all about Mexico that we checked out from our library's non-fiction section and saw a photograph of the Mexican flag.

Next we got a little bit crafty and made our own maracas using two plastic cups duct taped together and filled with a few scoops of dried beans. My little guy had a great time decorating the cups with stickers, helping to scoop in the beans and shake, shake, shaking his new maracas to the "Mexican Hat Dance."

We finished our morning with the introduction of our marvelous new letter, the letter "Mm," using letter magnets and some journal work. Join us tomorrow for the next part of our visit to Mexico. We'll be making our own pinata, preparing homemade salsa for a Mexican feast and celebrating a family fiesta! Until then, adios and happy playing!

Tiny Mariachi musician with his maracas!