From Blanket House to Mongolian Ger

A few weeks ago, Josh built the kids a blanket house in our living room on a Saturday morning, as he has done many times in the past. This time, however, he made a huge house, using our larger dining room chairs, a sleeping bag, and several blankets. The large, roundish house fit all three kids comfortably, and sometimes both cats as well!

In this past year's World Vision Gift Catalog, I had seen a special kind of round house, built by Mongolian nomads, called a "ger" or a "yurt." The blanket house very much reminded me of these houses, and that gave me an idea. Instead of moving to the next Asian country in Galloping the Globe, I would piece together my own unit on Mongolia. Using sites like the CIA World Factbook, we researched information about the country of Mongolia and its people and began adding pages to the kids' geography notebooks.

Later in the day, I visited National Geographic's website, looking for more information or photos, and I stumbled across the opportunity to participate in a real expedition in Mongolia, by simply labeling satellite images from home. After a period of training, I could identify roads, rivers, modern structures, ancient structures, and points of interest with a reasonable amount of accuracy. I then included Hannah, allowing her to make suggestions and guiding her to understand the images better. She absolutely loved helping out as a real researcher for an actual project, and she found the satellite images quite interesting as well.

Eventually, when we wrap up the unit, we may even have a "Mongolia party," just as we had a "China party" in the fall. I had a difficult time finding Mongolian recipes easy enough for kids to prepare, but we might try making some non-lamb version of Steamed Buuz . I decided to pass on preparing fermented mare's milk however...

I love that homeschooling allows me to turn Saturday play into school day learning, to harness the kids' experiences and games and use them to teach about a country many kids have never studied. And, I enjoy seeing the kids' faces glow with excitement when I say, "Hey, let's do some geography today! What do you think?" Typically, they respond with cheers.