Children of the World

I found a real jewel in the library the other day. I wasn't looking for it, in fact, I really didn't want another project. The book was so beautiful, with so many delightful children, it was a project waiting to happen. If I didn't do it, someone else would of have to.

The stunning pictures alone would have compelled me to buy the book, although, the true treasure lies in the poems of the children and important facts about the children, i.e. what they eat and what games they play. I enjoyed reading this book to my children as is, the project was just an extension. You can view examples of all the marvelous photographs and poems here.

The development of the Children of the World Pin Map was definitely influenced by the pin maps in the Montessori curriculum. Big A and S Man were already pinning North America, so I thought, why not allow Lil A and Z Man have their very own pin map to learn about the world? I didn't realized how much fun they would have with it and how much S Man and Big A would want part of it also. My original plan was to leave all the pinning to Z Man and allow Lil A to hang up the children, flags, and/or the hello cards. However, she was not going to stand for that. She wanted a part in the pinning also, so now it has become a dexterity/hand-eye coordination learning device as well.

The first question I had was where am I going to display this pin map and how big should it be for my young Beloveds. We were running out of wall space and I wanted something they could take out and put away, a folding board seemed like the perfect solution. Finding the perfect map size and board size was a chore, but I finally decided on a 50 x32 Rand McNally map and 36 x 48 Elmers Tri-Fold 2-ply display board. The 2-ply is important for the pins and I just cut two inches off the side of the map to make up the difference of 48 and 50. The extra 4 inches on the bottom will hold a place for pockets, probably one pocket for each continent. The board is absolutely perfect! I actually prefer it far better than our cork board for pinning due to ease of use.

I love that the map can easily fold away.

I have found that Lil A will be fully engaged for up to 3 children's stories at a time, and Z Man will stay engaged for 7. Z Man could of complete the countries of one letter in the alphabet in one setting but I did not want to push him. A setting includes reading the poem and the important facts about the children, talking about the continent and finding the country on the map, placing the flag pin on the map first, then placing the hello pin on top, turning the hello pin over after we attempt to say hello in the language, and finalizing the map with children of the world pin which is on the front side of the hello pin. I made the original pdf with a circle to punch the hole out, however, I didnt have the right tool to do that. I just used a three hole punch after laminating the cards and the hole would not line up properly, so the new pdf download does not have a circle. You can always cut the hang tab off, if you don't like it.

I have one ring of flags, and the other ring has
children of the world on one side and "Hello" on the other.
I may later separate the rings by continent.

"Hello" in different Languages of the World
The book mentions all the different languages spoken in the country
I just used the first language mentioned on the card.

Flags of the World

This is excellent continent & country study work, the most exciting part for Z Man was finding Andorra on the map.

The 192 UN countries are listed in Alphabetical order so it fit perfectly with Lil A's ABC of the Quran curriculum. Therefore, you are more than welcome to download the A & B Children of the World stamp cards here.

As we were going through the cards, we started to become very interested in the sports each child loved to play. I thought ok, I need to make a sport and food card, then I thought again (maybe later). We did extend it by adding ball stickers, too bad we didn't have a cricket and polo sticker ;-/

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