In this episode of the Neuroeducation Podcast, host Angie discusses great resources that are easy to source and affordable, if not free, for exploring the world and enhancing learning at home with children. She emphasizes the power of music, dance, and cultural experiences in expanding our understanding of the world. Angie shares her own experiences volunteering to teach English to refugees and highlights the importance of connecting with people from different backgrounds to learn about their languages, cultures, and traditions. Tune in to discover how to bring the world into your own backyard and revolutionize children's learning.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:00:35 - Exploring the World from Home

00:01:51 - Learning from Cultural Diversity in Australia

00:04:00 - Inviting Cultural Sharing in Education

00:04:32 - DIY Geography Project: Visual World Map Collage

00:07:14 - Deep Learning Through Children's Questions

00:08:07 - Montessori Materials for World Exploration

00:09:53 - ABC Letter Mastery and World Exploration

Here in Australia, we have people from all over the

world and we have this incredible opportunity to

connect with them, to learn from them and to bring their

natural resources into our classrooms. Welcome to

neuroeducation. where we're exploring the neuroscience of

how to switch on the brain to supercharge learning. I'll be sharing

with you innovative teaching techniques, effective parenting strategies,

and educational advocacy. I'm your host, Angie Dee.

Together, let's revolutionize children's learning. Hello,

everybody. Thank you so much for joining us again on

Neuroeducation Podcast with Angie Dee. Today,

we're going to be talking about what are some great resources

that are easy to source and cheap, if

not free, that you can do at

home with your children or at your family

daycare, childcare center, school, wherever it may be. to

explore the world and even our letters and

our numbers. So I wanted to start

by a absolutely fantastic method

of exploring the world from

our own little backyard. There's a beautiful song

by Ella Jenkins. And in the song, she says, we

can travel on a boat. We can travel on a plane. We

can travel in a song and we can travel in a game. And

she goes on to say all the different ways that we can travel, but really we can

travel. through music, through dance, there's

so many things that we can do to explore the world right

from our backyard. When I was doing some volunteering

to teach English to refugees at a fantastic school

here in Brisbane, Australia called Milpera High, I

learned so much about the world, so much about languages,

cultures, dance, food, from all the amazing cultural

experiences I had right there at that school. And

how do we do this? Because the students were

sharing, parents were sharing. And I

felt even after I went to another country, which

I went to Tahiti in 2004, I

loved Tahiti, loved the people, loved the food, loved

the dance, but I didn't feel like I had a huge, let's

say cultural, culturally personal experience because

while I went to a cultural show and I watched the dance, uh,

I ate the food, stayed at a beautiful resort. I

didn't feel like I got to really meet the people. But

here in Australia, and I would say in many Western countries,

we have people from all over the world and

we have this incredible opportunity to

connect with them, to learn from them and to bring their

natural resources into our classrooms. And

a lot of these parents and grandparents, they want

to share, you know, If

you come from another country and you've come all

the way to a country that speaks a dramatically different language, lives

dramatically different kind of style of life, it's

not only an honor and a privilege, but it's just

so nice to be able to acknowledge a totally

different way of life that they have come from and their children

and their grandchildren. So it's beautiful

to honor that in our schools, in our centers, family

daycare centers, and in our homes. And there's lots of ways we

can do that by inviting friends to share different cultural things.

But as a teacher, something that I really enjoyed

doing was bringing people in, um, family

members, mothers, fathers, grandparents, to speak

about their experience in different countries and come to share different things,

whether it's a song, whether it was some delicious

food or they even got to cook some special food

from different countries. There are schools where I

have seen doing a cultural expose where

they're doing a beautiful expo, children picking different countries

and getting to share all different things. But in terms of

some DIY resources, One

of my absolute favorite activities, geography

activities to do with children, is to create

a collage of the world. And it is free

and easy. It literally didn't cost me a

cent for this geography project that

I did with children that lasted months. And

they got to come back to it and they kept adding and adding and adding to it.

So what I did was I wanted to create a

massive map of the world, but I wanted it to be

a visual map of the world. So I went to

a shop that sold blinds and I asked if

they had any cutoffs. Sure enough, they had

plenty. And one of the cutoffs was maybe

four metres by two metres. So it was a huge piece

of canvas. And I

painted the background blue and

we outlined all of the different continents. And

I went to my local travel store and I

asked them, do you have any magazines that you don't use?

Because travel stores always have magazines

that are outdated. whatever the tours were to

Rome the year before, it's updated. It's got a new price

or whatever it may be. And so they have all of these magazines. So

I brought these magazines from all over the world in

a big box. I had glue and I had scissors.

The only two things that probably cost me money, but I already had a lot of those resources. And

we had this massive map of the world and different children got

to choose different continents. Asia, Africa,

North or South America, Europe, Australia, Antarctica. And

they got to cut out the pictures that they thought visually showed

the continent, the beauty and the wonders, the people, the food.

And lo and behold, after several months,

because they worked on it maybe for half an hour here or half an hour there,

We had this incredibly beautiful canvas

that was this visual map of the world of some of

the most beautiful places you can imagine. But what was amazing

about this process was like the

saying goes, the journey. it's

not about the destination. Because the children would ask

so many questions. Why are the rocks that

colour in this country? And where is this? And why is

the water formation like that? And why are

they dressing like that? And where is this from? And We

did so much deep and meaningful learning, which was

from the children's interest, which we know their brains activated

when they're interested and they're engaged and they're asking questions. We

did so much beautiful, deep and meaningful learning around all

of these countries, these landmarks about the

natural landscapes, the people, the food, the culture, the

customs, the religious traditions. so many

of these things through these beautiful images that sparked the

interest of the children. It was such a fabulous project

and I've done it replicated in different ways in

different schools around Australia that I've worked in but

it's one of my favourite go-to experiences that

you can bring in a world of learning by

obviously asking parents, asking grandparents, but also creating

this beautiful visual display and exploring the questions that the

children have of different things from different countries and

continents along the way. So Montessori,

I have to do a shout out to their, one

of the most amazing materials because Maria Montessori was

brilliant in the way that she created materials that

were very hands-on and interactive and child led. And

the Montessori globe that children, even as

toddlers start with, is a world globe

that just has blue silky paint for the water

and rough sandpaper for land. And that's what they start

with. Here is the water and here's the land. That's what our

world's made up of. The next continent goes the

next globe goes to the continents. So rather

than having all of the

countries broken up to the hundreds of countries and children having to

figure out all these countries, it's just Asia, Africa,

North and South America, Europe, Australia, Antarctica. And the

children get to explore these by having different

color codes for each of the continents. And each

of these continents then have their own little folder and

you can have special pictures of food and people and

religious traditions and landscapes from all these different countries that

are color coded back to the continent. And then an

object box with fun little things, whether it's magnets or

little artifacts from those countries. and it's a fun way

of having something in the classroom that children can explore different

parts of the world and they can build up on it with magazines just

like you made a you could make a poster you can make little things to

add to the folder as well and it gives them that little sense of um

I, you know, I feel like a little bit of independence that

they're contributing to it. In the same way, we'll get to

ABC letter mastery resources in another episode, but

you can do the same thing, exploring countries of

different, of different letters, animals, foods

from around the world. And you can break these into all of

the letters from A to Z. And it's a fun way to explore the

letters and practice the letters by exploring the world around

you as well. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you

for tuning in. Please, if you can do our

podcast a massive favor, give us a review on

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information down below on all the links below. I'll catch you on