Geography & Social Studies with Flat Stanley and Disney's Small World Library

Are you looking for a fun, kid-friendly collection of books that spark curiosity and learning about our awesome world?Then you may just like what we have found! After reading Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventure’s my daughter fell in love with this friendly and funny character who has been flattened by the bulletin board that fell on him in the night. He has unique abilities now that he is flat, which aid him to help catch thieves and save the day. He travels the world to all sorts of countries and the books really bring to life each place he visits.Book after book, my daughter cannot wait until the next adventure. We began using the books as another way to learn about the world. We would look up topics that are covered or mentioned in the books, and do some further learning by youtube and coloring pages related to the cities, activities, monuments, maps and flags. It becomes a fun and natural way of learning for my daughter. Flat Stanely travels to places such as Egypt, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, China, Mexico, Africa and California, to name the ones we have begun to collect.Another collection that is very fun and kid-friendly that we have added to our geography reading list is the Disney’s Small World Library books. I found the collection almost complete at a thrift store and ordered every other book we could find on amazon. They are filled with stories of the adventures of either Mickey and Goofy, Mickey and Donald Duck and so on. The stories lead us on a tour through the location such as Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Australia, Russia, Peru, etc. It covers more countries than Flat Stanley and has now become our go-to book for our geography and social studies for my grade 1er. We search youtube for any tour videos or history on the topics that come up in the books, such as glass blowing in Venice Italy and the St. Marks Cathedral. It is a really fun and easy method, as I don't spend hours at all planning it out. If she is interested in a part of the book, we look it up further. I will usually keep a notepad, or loose leaf paper with me, while we are reading and make notes for later. I also search online for coloring pages, related to the subject to make it fun and put in her binder for coloring or for future review.While we read the books, we do extra research just like when we read the Flat Stanley books. We watch videos on youtube for any tour videos or history on the topics that come up in the books, such as glass blowing in Venice Italy, and the St. Marks Cathedral, the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It is a really fun and easy method, as I don't spend hours at all planning it out. If she is interested in a part of the book, we look it up further. I will usually keep a notepad or loose leaf paper with me, while we are reading and make notes for later. I also search online for coloring pages, related to the subject to make it fun and put in her binder for coloring or for future reference.Another way my daughter likes to continue her learning from these books is to recreate things in Minecraft, such as Egyptian Pyramids, which she and her brother made in great detail after reading Flat Stanley in Egypt and watching documentaries on youtube about the Pharaohs and Mysteries of Egypt.Because we do a lot of natural learning, it really works well for us. As we move from one country to the next, I like to search for related books on the countries we are reading about and request them from my local library. You can read more about how I organize our library books in this post. along with our Reading List for the Year, starting with this post, for the month of April.I hope this was helpful for you all, I would love to hear what you think of our books we love, and what books you have found helpful in geography and social studies in your homeschool.~Alexandra