Curriculum Integration Ideas

Misc. Ideas

• Note: You may want to teach the students about banner ads and teach them not to follow them. Some of these pages have banner ads.
• Here's a great page: African Arts and Teaching Resources.
• Quiz.pdf and quiz2.pdf (two variations of a review)
• If you can, subscribe to Cricket Magazine (for ages 9+). They feature great multi-cultural stories.
• Take your students on a tour with live cams around the world from Leonard's Cam World. Scroll down on this page and choose the country. (This page could be distracting to kids, I would bookmark the actual cam page and show it from the front of the classroom instead of having students visit).

Planning

• For each quarter, I chose one country per week up to the last week of the quarter. I saved that week to do a review. For review week, I put up all the flags and maps without labels and had the students figure out which country each flag and map represented. At first I chose countries that I knew something about or that fit into a certain area of the world. Then students offered to get involved and I let them choose the countries for the next quarter. I also let them create the list of prayer needs for each country and then I typed them up. You could also coordinate these countries with your social studies units.

Worship/Bible

• Every day at the end of worship, we talked about the country and the needs for that day. I also took other prayer requests and praises from the class.
• One quarter, I advertised the countries in the church bulletin and asked for help. Someone brought in pictures and objects from one country. Another person showed us slides and told us about another country. Next time I'd plan ahead and advertise the countries each quarter because the students enjoyed the presentations.
• *The students got inspired to help pay for children to get immunization shots from ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Association). We raised enough money to help over 60 children who would have died otherwise. This just shows that when you pray for something, it isn't long before God shows you how to help!
• *Visit ADRA and choose Resources and request their free newsletter!
• *Get old copies of the Review and look at the news notes for the countries.
• *Collect stories from AFM and share them. Or adopt a missionary from one of the countries and send them encouraging letters and raise money for them.
• *Read other information about AWR and the other stories.

Social Studies

• Give each student a map of the world and color and label the countries as you pray for them. Quiz them on the cumulative countries at the end of each week.
• Assign research reports on the countries. Each student chooses one of the quarter's (or year's) countries and writes a research report. Information could be presented the same week you pray for the country.
• Study and compare capital cities, climates, cultures, religions, economy, etc.
• Assign worksheets to find out more information about each country each week (See my bibliography for the book of worksheets I found on Africa).
• Visit www.shareware.com and search for flags or geography to find some neat games kids can play to learn geography and flags of the world.
• Print blank flags and maps and color and label them.
• Visit 3DFlags.com to find lots of flags!
• Roots: Investigating Your Heritage is a great activity to teach students about the World Factbook and their heritage. Great lead-in lesson for this program.

Math

• Have students make charts and graphs of the population and religions in each country. Compare countries. Operation World has lots of statistics that can be manipulated and studied in math class. (see bibliography)
• For math, have the students keep a list of the countries and their population. You can get this from the E-Conflict page also linked from the student's country list. Then have them put in order which is lowest/highest and compare to the US.
• Another math idea is to create problems from The World's Main Languages.
• For math, have an international bank and get the exchange rates from the CIA World Factbook, Lonely Planet's Destinations, or E-Conflict. Then assign a student to be the banker each day/week and other students "bring in money" to be exchanged and the banker must calculate the correct amount.

Computer

• Have students search the Internet or other electronic resources for information on that week's country. See my country list for links, questions, and activities.

Other

• *If you get a chance, participate in ADRA's global village. (This is awesome for any students - the latest one was in Washington, DC.) Or write and ask them for information on it. They have some neat cross curricular activities to teach students about how people live in other areas of the world. (http://www.adra.org)
• If you have any other ideas to add to this list, please email me.