Jungles!

movie? or homeschooling curriculum?

To wrap up our unit on jungles...we had a movie night tonight - Planet Earth! 


Let me tell ya, it captivated my kids.  Movies, in general, tend to captivate kids' attention anyway, right?  But tonight, to celebrate the end of our geography lessons for the week (ie: a sneaky way to review facts!), we watched the Jungle section of BBC's Planet Earth.  I know Planet Earth is, like, so three years ago...but for a homeschooling mom, it is gold!

the force of Planet Earth at work

Check out these faces...do they look like bored schoolchildren wasting away at their desks waiting for the school bell to ring?  No.  They look like comatose schoolchildren (well...maybe not the baby) wasting away in front of the TV brushing up on their geography lesson.  


Seriously, though, throughout the hour, I heard comments from Run like "Look, Mom, those are buttress roots on that tree!"...and..."Those are Howler Monkeys!".  When I grimaced at a segment on fungi growing on the jungle floor, he told me "Mom, you may think it's disgusting, but I think it is beautiful."  Sounds like a boy to me.


Even Huy, my 3 1/2 year old was correcting my classification of a certain tree frog as "Gliding tree frogs, Mom...not dancing tree frogs."  Ok.  I get it.  Later, he recalled how the elephants weren't just digging around in the dirt, but were searching for a "special clay."  I love Planet Earth.


Tonight was a supplement to this book:

Wild!

The Usborne Book of Wild Places is jammed packed full of awesome stuff.  Pick it up at the library when you get a chance.  If you have kids.  And live near a library.  And, live in America...I guess that command can apply to only so many people who read this blog!


We read about these guys this week:

Hey...wait a minute!...

Tree frog on our front porch in the South of Thailand

...that looks a lot like this guy!


The best part about studying jungles at home...is that we can literally walk outside our front door and soon be in the thick of what we're studying. (Well...kind of.  Since we've just moved from the country to the suburbs!)


But...we're still learning about things all around that seem so familiar (the jungle/rain forest landscape of Thailand), but are still so unknown.  Like, did you know....

Me neither!  


Thank you, Usborne...our days would be so boring and uneducated without you.