The World for a Schoolroom

by Pam Gentry1

Take a good look at the locale of your family’s work assignment. Hiding within that environment are a wealth of learning opportunities your family can explore. Many topics studied in the elementary classroom can be discovered just outside your doorstep even if you do not have many books.

Using a scrapbook format to collect your children’s discoveries and reflections, your family can explore the village, city, or country where you are assigned and document your school work at the same time. All the normal school subjects can, to some extent, be incorporated into your scrapbook project. Science, social studies, and writing, however, are the most widely applicable. To get you started, activity possibilties for these areas are listed below.

It is actually possible to use a scrapbook as the main focus of your school work for a whole school year. If you do, include a math text and some literature at your child’s reading level. Children reading at a beginning level can use their corrected daily writing as a source of supplemental reading material.

You may also want to gather a small collection of books relevant to the history, geography, flora and fauna of the country where you live. An encyclopedia on disk or a collection of Eyewitness Books on disk would be extremely useful if you have a computer with CD-ROM. Local sources of information and goodies to stick in your scrapbook might be the Peace Corps office, which often has a library; the national post office, which may have stamps on different topics; the tourism office and its publications; and in-flight magazines published by the national airline.

Materials to make a scrapbook may be available within the country where you work. Heavy paper such as card stock cut in a large size makes excellent pages for a scrapbook. Choose something heavier for the cover. An office-supplies location may have a binding machine, or large metal brads can be used to hold the whole thing together. If supplies in the country are extremely limited, you may need to take them with you.

Science

Weather

Astronomy

Life Science

Earth Science

Social Studies

Writing

Six basic forms of writing are encouraged during the elementary school years: procedural, narrative, opinion, evaluative, and descriptive writing, plus various poetic forms. In addition, children are encouraged to write lists and keep a journal.

Using these writing forms, any number of writing assignments can be made relating to science or social studies. Many more examples can be found in the above listing. In addition, writing assignments using the basic forms can make a connection between the children’s reading and the world around them because children’s reading is often organized around universal themes.

Here are examples of writing assignments which make a connection between literature themes and the living environment:

Friendship

Pets

Exploration

Poetry

Various forms of poetry work easily into literature themes, social studies, and science. The easiest forms of poetry to write are descriptive. Thus, a poem describing the wind, a rainy day, a flower, or a moonlit night ties in nicely with science study. A poem describing the sounds and smells of the city or a village celebration coordinate with social studies.

One simple but effective type of poem uses an anagram to provide the structure. Down the left-hand side of the paper the child spells out in capital letters the word he wants to describe. The child then uses each letter to write a short sentence or phrase about the word he has written. You can learn about other simple types of poetic structure in books about writing.

One excellent resource is If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How to Write, You’ve Gotta Have This Book, by Frank Marjorie (limited availability). Another excellent resource that covers the whole writing process for students is Write Source.

Benefits of the Scrapbook Format

The scrapbook approach to school provides a flexible framework that can support your whole school program or supplement a traditional program. It can provide for your family’s first year of language and culture learning some structure that is relevant to your daily living situation. Or you may choose to add to the scrapbook over several years of living in your work assignment as items are relevant to your regular school program.

The scrapbook will become a valuable tool for you and your children to share your experiences with others during furlough. Knowing there is an audience for their writing will give children purpose and motivate their best efforts. You may choose to do a scrapbook as a family or encourage each child to build his or her own. No matter which path you take, the outcome will be a treasure of memories of your time on the field, a treasure from your child’s perspective.

Permission is granted to copy, but not for commercial purposes.