We started “back to school” a couple of weeks ago, starting with this study of one of the key counries in the Middle East. I thought I’d post these lists/plans a couple of weeks behind where we are actually studying so that I could tell you what we did and what worked and maybe what didn’t.

Music:
Modest Mussgorsky—Pictures at an Exhibition

Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: United Arab Emirates
2. WotW: Beja
3. WotW: Oman
4. WotW: Qatar
5. WotW: Saudi Arabia

Poems:
My Poetry Book: We’ve just been reading random poems from this book, some about winter or January or home life. Some funny stuff. Tomorrow I plan to find a poem for each of the children to memorize in preparation fo another poetry night.

Science:
Astronomy: Stars We did a week long unit on the stars, reading several easy picture science books aloud. Sometimes I had Karate Kid (age 9) read the book for the day to his little sisters, ages 7 and 5.

Nonfiction Read Alouds:
Arabs in the Golden Age–Moktefi We didn’t manage to get to this book because, although I know we have it somewhere, I can’t find it. In spite of the fact that I think our books are really organized, this sort of thing happens way too often.

Fiction Read Alouds:
King of the Wind—Henry I started reading this one to the little girls, but they don’t know anything about horses or horse racing. So they were bored, and I was bored. We’ll find something else.
Seven Daughters and Seven Sons–Cohen Karate Kid and Brown Bear Daughter really, really liked this one. We’ve been reading it for the past two weeks and should finish tomorrow.

Picture Books:
The Camel Who Took a Walk–Tworkov
Abdul–Wells

Elementary Readers:
Ali and the Golden Eagle—Grover
The Horse and His Boy—Lewis I know this book is fantasy, doesn’t take place in the Middle East at all, but it does have that flavor.
Nadia the Willful—Alexander
The Rise of Islam–Moktefi
A Sixteenth Century Mosque–Macdonald Karate Kid read this book as his assigned reader.

Brown Bear Daugter read Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller as her assigned reader to help me with my Cybils judging responsibilities. She absolutely loved it, and I think she’ll be writing a guest review for the blog soon.

We also learned the Middle East song from the Geography Songs tape and did some map study. My children now know where Saudi Arabia is and in addition they can find Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, among several Middle Eastern countries in the song.

Previous posts in our Around the World 2006-2007 homeschool unit study.