Geography day -- How My Children Guide their Learning

I was thinking that perhaps we'd just take a break from a school for today and maybe even for the next week or so, but the boys asked if they could work on their geography reports today and I didn't have the heart to say no.

Alec decided to report on Japan.  He's been reading all of the Japan books we checked out of the library over the past month.  Today he wanted to re-watch Families of Japan while he read a bit more in some of his Japan books.  Evan joined him in watching the movie.

While they watched the movie Ian and I read another chapter in his Guyana book and wrote another half- page or so on his report.

We were doing well, I would read a chapter or two then stop and have him tell me in his own words what they were saying.  He struggles the most out of my three boys with reading and comprehension and these were thick text-book type texts so I wanted to make sure I wasn't loosing him in the vocabulary.

Once we finished the chapter he asked me to pull out my computer so he could add more to his report.  

He dictated facts while I typed them.
 
By this time Alec and Evan had finished the movie and Alec wanted to start working on his report.  We printed a map of Japan off the internet for him to color and he started working on making a replica of their flag.  After we sat down together at the computer.

He dictated facts to me about Japan and I typed and helped him organize those facts into sections.

He knows a lot about Japan and is trying to share everything he has ever read about every single fact.  I tried to help him comb through and pick out the most important facts.

When we finally finished up we had written a page and a half.  He was stuck on a thought that he was trying to express and asked if he could watch the movie one last time during lunch to help jog his memory. 

 So all three boys sat down and watched Families from Japan.... AGAIN! 

After lunch Evan and I brought a book about Madagascar into the living room to read together.

When Evan and I finished reading I sat at the computer and asked him if he could remember any facts about Madagascar.  He came up with quite a few on his own and with a few questions from me and a couple glances at the book we soon had a page of bulleted facts about Madagascar.  I thought that was excellent progress!