How To Build Your Own Country

Oh. My. Gosh. This book is awesome. I bought it a bit ago but finally started using it this week. Woohoo! Can you tell I'm excited? It's such a happy thing when I stumble across an idea or product that just truly excites us. This is one of them. 

It's not actually designed as a curriculum or anything. It's just so darn clever and fun. And it's organized such that it lends itself very nicely to a dandy little unit study. It's broken down into three sections...

1. staking out your identity (name, location, population, flag, anthem, etc)...
2. running the country (government, constitution, laws, money, services, taxes)...and, 
3. meeting the neighbors (keeping the peace, fitting in with the rest of the world, etc).

Like I said, we just started. Each of us is creating his/her own country. I've got it "planned" out to take a couple months. I don't want to rush it and want the boys to actually stop and give this some decent thought. We're talking about making up project boards to present each of our countries and then having those ready to show grandparents when they come to visit in May. :) (Nice to have deadlines sometimes, lol.) This week, I just introduced the idea and started reading the first chapter of the book to them. The goal is to have settled on a location and a name by the end of the week. (We do a bit of geography four days a week.) We're keeping notebooks for any ideas that come to us and will write up the final decisions later (and make flags and currency and passports and all kinds of cool stuff). Already the boys are having an awesome time. Here are just some of the things that have come up for discussion:

- Names. Obviously this has been hilarious and somewhat predictable. Still narrowing it down and trying to steer boys away from any place names in the Star Wars universe. ;) The book, itself, has some awesome choices. (For my own country, I'm in the very preliminary stages but have The Queendom of Bob, Amandaland and Country as possible names right now. I'm open to suggestions, lol.)

- Location. Decided to allow pretending here and let them overlap existing areas if they want. Had to clarify that we must be on the planet earth (for now...may actually go back and do this again for a study on the universe or something...where they can be anywhere in the universe). Worked in discussion about climates and habitats and economy. Found it freakin' funny that Noah immediately declared that he couldn't be an island nation because there wouldn't be enough land for all the cattle he'll need. (At this point, I also suggested Carnivoria as a possible country name, lol.)

- National (fill in the blank). Though I only asked for the first two things, they all quickly latched onto the idea of having a national bird, a national sport, a national food, a national language, etc. (Asher's invented an Ework for his bird, Micah's talking about stunt flying as a national sport and Noah would like to know if binary could count as a national language.) Man, look at all those side research topics. ;) If I were the kind of homeschooler who could let go of curriculum plans and rough schedules, I can really see that this project could cover all subjects.  

- Everything else. And, even though we're trying to focus just on the name and location right now, they've already been talking about forms of government and economy and international trade and armies and just so very many things.

They've been making notes and looking things up, and this has all been going on after "school hours," which just goes to show how into it they are. :) Plus, it's just plain cool. Happy sigh. 

Comments

[nan]

I can hardly wait to see/hear the results in May!