Continent Box: Australia

I was so excited to stumble across the Continent Box idea a whilst back.  Sadly, I didn't think of them. Nor had I heard of it prior to just this past year-so my older kids totally missed out.  But alas-I have one student who can benefit from it.

I will be doing a whole geography series (of posts) as we move through the various continents, but for now-here is what we have in our box.  For more (and awesome) ideas, just search Pinterest for Continent Boxes and Geography Boxes.  A ton of pins will pop up.




Our boxes go on our Geography shelf.  The current continent (box) to be studied sits right next to the Montessori sorting box on the second shelf. Extra things go in the basket on the top (in this case, the boomerang) that do not fit inside the Ikea box.

Contents for Australia/Oceania Box:

*Boomerang (purchased on Ebay)

*Australia and New Zealand coins (Ebay)

*Australian postcard (received via postcard exchange)

*New Zealand Kiwi keepsake (Ebay)

*Safari Toob: The Land Down Under (JoAnns-used 50% off coupon)

*Little koala bear (I believe that was from a McDonald's      Happy Meal promo from way back when. I just bought that toy not the meal)

*Pez Tasmanian Devil (grocery store)

*Map (Homeschooling in the Woods Olde World Style Maps and I also have the Bright Ideas Press WonderMaps I can use when need be)

*General Info on Australia/landmarks of Australia [free] (Montessori Print Shop)

*Australian Food (purchased from Montessori Print Shop)

*IKEA box (Kassett 2 pk 6.25 X 10)

*Australian/Papua New Guinea and New Zealand Stamps (Ebay)

*Australian animal and Landmark cards (Target: dollar bin area. Pictures of them to the right.  Look during the back to school time or hopefully, you can find these or something similar)

We also checked out a ton of books from the library on Australia, New Zealand, Fuji, Tasmania, the Aboriginal peoples and the Maori peoples.  I also grabbed some arts and crafts books so that we can do some activities that relate to the area.  

If I had more kids coming up behind him, I would have purchased more stamps to sort but what I have is sufficient for him. I probably would have bought the Montessori musical instruments, people and animals cards as well, but since my student is now 13-it just wasn't necessary. I only used/laminated the cards that have all the info (not the 2 part matching ones) on it. 

I do not have any flags in the box because the Homeschooling in the Woods map set has notebook sheets [to fill in various nuggets of info for the region/countries] with an area for a flag. The only thing I won't print are the flags, in order to save on ink since it can be spency. I am purchasing some stickers that he can place there instead. These notebook pages will go into a Countries of  the World binder we will build over time.

BTW:  I could have labeled this the Oceania box but since our kids were taught that Australia is one of the 7 continents, not Oceania, I didn't want to change it. Obviously, you can label it as such. I really don't like how they keep changing things, like the Antarctica Ocean to the Southern Ocean and Pluto being nixed as a planet. I mean leave it alone already.  Sheesh.  LOL.