DIY "Little Passports"

[alisoncooks]

Every time a Little Passports commercial comes on, my kids 'oooh and ahhhh.'  I cannot afford the subscription, but I'm wondering if I could make something similar. 

What would you use to put together a monthly geography/cultures kit/unit study. I'm thinking food, culture, brief history, map exercise?  Is there already something like this in the homeschool world?

[alisoncooks]

ETA: we already have History plans for the year, so I'm not looking for a complete program (such as MFW ECC). 

[wehave8]

We loved using Galloping the Globe and Eat Your Way Around the World!

We still get them out now and then when we have a missionary or missions conference at our church.

 

Pam

[HomeAgain]

Your kids are older, but we got Little Passports for a year when my youngest was pre-K/K age.  It was not enough, not at all.  I ended up building a month's worth of activities at a time with library books and this site: Montessori Monday.  The site goes through each kit and adds on extra activities.  We found flag/animal/culture stickers at the Dollar Tree that I used to make 3 part cards, I cut foam countries (matched the color on our map of each one) for tracing and matching activities, we read stories from each culture and checked out cookbooks, too. HomeschoolShare has units for different continents/countries that we pulled from, too.

Because we built it ourselves, really, we got the best of both worlds: an indepth approach and the flexibility to use units "out of order" so I could match them up with events around town like a museum exhibit on origami or a Chinese-American heritage weekend where they welcomed the community to an open house.

[mmasc]

I’m thinking about possibly trying Confessions of a Homeschooler’s countries thing. Have you looked at it? If it’s too many lapbooks I’ll have to give it a pass, but I’m just now in my beginning research (on this particular thing anyway!) ?

[alisoncooks]

I think I looked at it several years ago when my girls were little. Thanks for the reminder. ?

[Moncha]

I bought this play passport on amazon... more than I wanted to spend but still cheaper than the kits, I'm planning on just picking up go along books at the library and am going to make a trip to Cost Plus World Market to pick up some foods and maybe a few "souvenirs"  depending on cost. Otherwise just looking up a craft and making a recipe from that country will go a long way with us. 

My son is young enough that he'll enjoy setting up an "airplane" and flying to the country as well... but I'm not super creative so probably won't decorate a whole lot or anything. I'll try to find a decent video for each country as well. - I've heard others recommend getting travel guides for countries as well or photo books from the library. 

And just off the top of my head... I know that states do this so I would imagine that countries have some sort of tourist bureau that you could request a tourist package from... might get some interesting things that way!