Continents and Confusion

This continent work has been popular in our Casa lately.  The children punch out the continents in colors that correspond with the puzzle map, cut out the hemispheres, glue the continents on the hemispheres, and label the continents.  My trainer always said we MUST NOT do this because the punched continents are not accurate representations of the continents.  However, many of my colleagues (AMI and AMS) offer this activity so I decided to try it. It does seem to give the children a real and remembered sense of the continents and their names.  I always try to help the children realize what our continent is in relation to country, state (in our case) and city.  On Thursday I asked a small group, "What is our continent?"  Most replied with our city name, finally, "North America!"  "Okay, what is our country?"  City names again, then, from the same child, "United States!"  "Okay, what state do we live in?"  A few missteps but eventually, "Minnesota!"  "And what city are we in?"  Thank goodness they got that.  I then went the other way, what city, state, country, continent.  My last question was, "And what planet do we live on?"  Someone shouts out, "The Sun!"  I've got some work to do. 

A Truly Logical Consequence

I thought you might enjoy seeing our little baking set-up.  We've been making tortillas (gluten-free) for some time now.  The children use them later to prepare quesadillas for a snack.  This looks like a fairly successful baking adventure as I don't see flour all over the floor.  Rice flour can be extremely slippery.  Yesterday two children had "accidentally" spilled all of their flour and were slipping around on it as they "cleaned" up.  I just said, "Oh, it looks like you could use some help cleaning up," and we moved on.  Later, one of the children said, "Where are my tortillas," and was truly confused.  I said, "Remember, your dough fell all over the floor?"  He wore such a crestfallen look.  I love it when logical consequences are actually natural.  There was no need for any further words.