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In addition to the Imaginary Island work we’re doing with our friends, my kids have been doing some notebooking. They’ve asked to work on their islands a few times during the weeks, or talked more about what we’ve been learning. It’s been nice to spend some time together sitting around,Continue Reading

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We are now in our second semester of Imaginary Island work – and it’s time to put some life on the islands! First we reviewed our work so far, remembering how our islands formed, the factors that cause the climate of our islands, and all the way up to biomes.Continue Reading

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Another note here to mention that both my kids have been doing biome work since they were in Kindergarten. The background knowledge they’ve gained through Montessori lessons and work allowed us to cover the mapping portion of this major subject in just one day. Today the kids got a briefContinue Reading

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This week the kids determined the climates of their islands! They started out by typing their island’s longitude and latitude into Google Maps. They zoomed out and chose a couple of locations that should have similar weather, based on latitude and topography. For example, everyone chose coastal locations because aContinue Reading

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Today we finished reviewing ocean currents, one of the elements that determines the climate of a location. They colored the ocean currents sheet from The Modern Montessori Guide (all part of her Imaginary Island curriculum). The kids then had two blank world maps. Looking back at their painted islands and theContinue Reading

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I think it’s important to step in here and note that the majority of kids in my Imaginary Island group have a lot of prior preparation going into this year long project. They have heard the Montessori Five Great Lessons multiple times, and done deep dives into functional geography experiments,Continue Reading

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We had a fabulous time making elevation maps of our islands today! Most of the families in our group had one sick person, so we decided to do this lesson over zoom, and it worked really well. Ahead of time the kids/parents had prepared an outline of their island resizedContinue Reading

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Painting Day!! It feels like so much preparation has gone into this day – the kids are finally paining their first map of their islands. They are using the sketches they prepared last week. We started out by looking at the Pin-It Map land/waterform control maps again. They’ve been soContinue Reading

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Week 9 saw the kids looking at map scale – and practicing scaling up their islands from their initial half page to full page sketches. Last week the kids had some time to brainstorm and sketch their island outlines, and they are working towards their first painted landform map ofContinue Reading

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This week the kids presented their island research posters. So far in our island work we’ve covered land/water forms, latitude/longitude, and different ways islands form, so these are the topics the kids were asked to research for a specific island. After the presentations we talked a little bit about whatContinue Reading