Unit on Making a Fictional Country, Ideas?

[mycalling]

I'm planning units about making our own fictional country set in the late 1800's. I figure we can make a country and come back to it multiples times throughout the school year focusing on different aspects of a society. I want to cover as many subjects as I can: math, LA, history, government, science, art, geography.

 

My kids that will be doing this are 7-11yo. The kids have built their own little community outside with pine cones and acorns for money. They barter and sell for items to build teepees and set up farms, so I think they would really be into this.

 

I've also been reading about Problem-Based Learning, which makes their education more relateable and goal-oriented. DH and I were thinking it'd be fun if we gave them a newspaper issue at the beginning of each lesson of what's happening in their country because of the previous lesson's decisions/changes, the citizen's opinions of their country, and new issues our DC need to address.

 

Since we recently covered Western Expansion touching on resources and are currently doing a unit on Ecosystems and building a zoo, we could start by planning the types of climate regions and resources our country should have, size, any neighboring countries, etc. Then I'm thinking we can choose a political system. Name a president or ruling family (depending on their system choice) and decide on characteristics or qualifications for their leader(s).

 

After that...? I need ideas on what we could cover during the year and how to present topics on their level.

[Alte Veste Academy]

My kids each made up their own country for the beginning of our world geography study this summer. We used How to Build Your Own Country as a guide. I just love your spin on it though! You've got my my gears turning about how we could make it into part of our current events discussions. Hmmm. Where does each president (or king/queen, benevolent dictator, etc. ;)) stand on the big issues? Great dinner table conversation...or "U.N. talks." Potato/potahto. :tongue_smilie: Thanks!

 

ETA: Re:

we could start by planning the types of climate regions and resources our country should have, size, any neighboring countries, etc. Then I'm thinking we can choose a political system. Name a president or ruling family (depending on their system choice) and decide on characteristics or qualifications for their leader(s).

 

The book I linked does help coming up with all this.

[ccolopy]

I started a similar project last year with DS, but he discovered nationstates.net and we switched over to just using that. It might be a little mature for your kids, but you be able to take a few ideas from it!

[EmmaNadine]

Read the book Weslandia by Paul Fleischman. It's a great book about a boy who creates his own country over summer break.

[mycalling]

Great ideas! You all are fast. Thank you so much. I've pinned or bookmarked everything you recommended already.

 

:D I'm excited!

[Farrar]

Read the book Weslandia by Paul Fleischman. It's a great book about a boy who creates his own country over summer break.

 

That's a fun book.

 

I also immediately thought of the Westmark books, which are middle grades books about an early 1800's fictional country. A couple of them were Newbery honor books.

 

I've done build your own country projects with students before and it's always been a mix - sometimes it works spectacularly and sometimes... not at all. I've never done it for history though. That's a neat spin.

[Hunter]

We used How to Build Your Own Country as a guide.

 

:iagree: I love that book. Back in the late 90's my son (maybe 11 or 12?) spent months planning a country(without that book obviously). He became a little communist and I FREAKED out. He talked me down and explained some things to me about PEOPLE vs GOVERNMENTS and I calmed down and grew as person, but I'll never forget my freak out. Good luck! This type of project makes the topics of economics and governments fascinating instead of dry.

[Tap]

One way to do a project like this is to have the student start by drawing a large fictional country and place it on an existing continent where ever they want BUT it must work within relative contraints with their designed city (can't have a large agricultural area in Antartica). Draw the country on large paper and add to the image as you progress through the project. Have the students include some agricultrual areas, cities, travel ideas (airports, bus/trains etc), water and basic land demographics. They then build their country with these existing constraints in place. They could add to it, but not take away (without a price at least) just like current countries are build on existing structures and have limitations.

[Kfamily]

What an intersting idea! My dd wrote a paper about what her ideal country would be like after reading Thomas More's Utopia. This is as far as we took it, but I think she (and my younger dd too) would really enjoy taking it further.

[OSUBuckeye]

I had several gifted ed teachers have me do projects like this throughout my time in PS. Some ideas:

 

Create a natural resources map (you know, the ones that have pictures of cows or oranges or coal)

 

Create a government structure (My friends and I loved the idea of an oligarchy - where the Bill Gates' and TED talk speakers, as well as the leaders of industry, religious leaders, medical professionals, and leaders of social welfare agencies hold positions in a Congress-like structure. Expertise and results would be valued, and all aspects of a problem - environmental, business, social - would be addressed)

 

Create laws for the country

 

Generate a list of professions needed for this society (judges, police, trash collectors, teachers for the children, etc.) This list will quickly get very, very, very long. Along with this might be to read a book about Garbage collection ("Where does Garbage Go?" Let's Read & Find Out, or maybe something older based on your kids' age).

 

Create a list of problems that their country faces, and have them tackle it (problem-based learning). Maybe there's a need for greater education, how will they solve it? - Will they make free public libraries with community classes, free higher education like France does, trade schools...

As a previous poster said, this is a great tie-in to current events / interesting historical time periods. You could read them some articles about how New York and New Jersey handled Hurricane Sandy (the transportation issues were fascinating to me - how are millions of New Yorkers going to get around with the subway closed, flooding in places, and closed gas stations), or how schools are forming in poor regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan to teach children for the first time (and also give trade skills, reading lessons, and community health information to the parents/grandparents), or laws that exist in Saudi Arabia for wealthy women - men can drive at 18, but women can't drive or vote. How can countries in the same time period have such different laws, but still function successfully? Also, maybe some research into the Chinese Revolution (Mao's government was trying to bring his country into the modern era, but some policies like grain quotas and iron smelting were implemented backwards and caused starvation and major accidents).

 

Also, what do you do for law-breakers? People who don't do chores (ahem), students who don't want to learn, people who don't want to earn a living, people who steal, people who kill? An economics principle I was fascinated with was that if every crime received a penalty of death, and you rob a 7-11, you're better off killing the clerk because then you're more likely to escape, and if you get caught, you'll be put to death just for the stealing. And thus, we don't put you to death for just any crime (even major ones). The Newbury book The Giver would be a good tie-in to a lot of the topics involved in creating a society, and is about 5th-6th grade in age/topic.

[MrsH]

Sounds fun! We created a diorama of sorts, of a fictional place. This was mostly to learn about landforms, but I thought about taking it further in the way you describe. If you type "social studies landform project" into google, it's the first entry that pops up. I liked having the guidance, though I did change a few of the requirements.

 

That resource also mentions Roxaboxen, a picture book which we enjoyed, in which the main character has a fantasy world.