Week 11 - United Kingdom

I went back and forth on how to include England in our studies. Originally, I had planned for us to study England with France last week. Then I decided they are just too different and each has way to much to offer to try to cram them into one week. As I began researching England for this week's lesson, I realized that it would make much more sense to go ahead and focus on the United Kingdom because it just felt a bit more complete.

Reading Comprehension 

We've been doing reading comprehension worksheets that I've been creating due to the fact that B doesn't always listen when I'm reading to her and she's struggling with recalling information. Since we are really working on her literacy, I find it helpful to create these easy to read summaries of a topic or person followed by five questions about what she just read. This activity is not only a reading and comprehension exercise, but it also requires handwriting practice and grammatical skills to form answers and copy them over. They've also been much more effective on helping her to learn about and recall the information we are studying.

I created an United Kingdom Reading and Questions worksheet for B with basic information about the countries which make up the United Kingdom, their primary language and the capital city.


I also created a one sheeter for Florence Nightingale. Florence was a nurse in England who traveled all over Europe studying and improving hospitals, nursing practices and healthcare studies. Her work inspired many of today's healthcare practices and standards. We used two books Florence Nightingale and Usborne Famous Lives - Florence Nightingale and talked together about how God called Florence to take care of other people and how she made such an impact on the lives of so many people because she listened to God.

The Queen and royal family were in the news this week as Princess Kate is expecting her second baby and the family is preparing for a trip to New York City, apparently Kate's first visit to NYC.  Isn't amazing the things that become "newsworthy" from someone like Kate?  Thanks to her big "news" I was able to show the kids what the queen and her royal family looks like. I pointed out Prince William and Princesses Kate to them as well as Buckingham Palace, the guards and other points of interest. It was a good opportunity to explain to them the way the  countries together are "united" in the "kingdom" under the rule of the royal family. I think B was interested and maybe even a little bit puzzled to see Princess Kate without the princess ball gown and crown that her Disney princesses wear.

In our free time this week, we watched Disney's Robin Hood and chose a few "England themed" episodes from some of our favorite cartoons. Justin Time has a Brave Sir Justin episode in season 1 that takes place in Ancient England during the times of the knights.  During season 2, the Mystery of the Missing Hat episode takes place in London. Pit Crew Hullabaloo and The Big Toot are also based in England.

I have some other ideas and resources pinned on my Great Britain Pinterest board that we didn't get to, one being some resources on the BFG by Roald Dahl. I loved that book when I was a child and had planned to read it with my littles but decided that some of the parts where giants steal the kids from their beds and chomp their bones might still be a little tough to grasp for them. We'll put that off for at least another year but ultimately plan to read the book with them at some point.