What is intelligence? According to Glenn Doman intelligence is “a product of three things: the ability to read; the ability to do math; the amount of encyclopedic knowledge one has.” (How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge, Glenn Doman, 2001, p. xi. From now on GD) Well, we’ve all heard that child’s brain is getting formed by 5 and in the first 3-5 years the child learns faster and easier then ever before. Glenn Doman goes further: “It is easier to teach a one-year-old, then to teach a six-year-old” (GD, p. xi). Glenn Doman is the only one I know who provides some suggestions on teaching kids encyclopedic knowledge, but if you know anybody else, please comment below!
Encyclopedic Knowledge Materials
Books
Pick Yourselves a Subject to Learn: categories and units of study
Encyclopedic Knowledge Materials at other sites: English; Spanish; Other Languages
How to teach Encyclopedic Knowledge
How to use these materials
How to make your own materials
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Encyclopedic Knowledge Materials

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Honey organized this amazing swap (7 moms putting together 7 boxes of materials relating to one of the 7 continents and mailing each other duplicate packages to ensure that everyone has continent boxes from all over the world! See more here: Montessori Continent Box Swap). Honey found absolutely remarkable swappers to provide her with one of a kind continent boxes!

Leann was one of the first to respond. Lean also was participating in Honey’s other swap and did Central America for 12 other moms… and this is the list of incredible items she put together for us!

I still cannot believe we did it! Thanks to Honey, the amazing Mondorfment Mom who wittily combines Montessori, Waldorf and Attachment Parenting, quite a lot of us had a chance to learn about the world and to find fun and interactive ways to bring this to our children.

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A very kind and resourceful mom is sharing an incredible idea she had for letting the kids understand the enormity of the geological time periods on Earth. The trick? Ingenious in its simplicity: using a very long multicolored ribbon. Different geological periods are indicated by different colors, their length – by ribbon length! On top of the ribbon the kids were putting toy-dinosaurs, toy-mammoths, toy-humans and home made fossils to make the results both visual and tactile. I loved this idea so much, that I am definitely doing one of those for our own Geology units! Read the full descriptions, to-do directions and measurements (and many more wonderful ideas) here: Geologic Time Line Activity by Homeschool Den Mom

It was a long break. But no time went wasted: I was working on a really fascinating project, that I’ll be thrilled to share: Montessori Continent Box Swap! Seven moms got into a game, seven moms picked a continent, seven moms created their own collection of items for the continent they picked and sent their collection to everyone else. I picked Europe and spent the next three months “traveling” all over this amazing place in my daydreams… While I am still preparing more details and the materials for posting on the web, here is one of the games that I’ve included into my “Europe box”.
Art Bingo: covers Low and High Renaissance.
I am planning to add a few more art-styles over the time. So far – we’ve got some pocker chips and my own kids absolutely loved it, while I tremendously enjoyed learning so much about the artists, and the paintings of this period.

Thanks to Orsi for sharing this wonderful resource:

America The Story of US — premiering on HISTORY™ April 25 at 9pm/8c — is a six week event that provides a fascinating look at the stories of the people, events, and innovations that forged our nation. It will provide you with an unprecedented opportunity to bring our nation’s history to life for your students. This 12-hour series will be supported by educational materials tied to curriculum standards and is copyright cleared for Fair Use in the classroom by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities.

Geography turned out to be a lot of fun. But I had to do a lot of materials, and it turned out to be one of the most fun subjects! So let’s get right to it…

Other Categories and how we use these materials.
Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)

• Materials Useful for learning Geography
• Unit 1 – Introduction to Geography

Materials Useful for Learning Geography

Books: (we are great fans of some series that will follow. Great books that we fell in love with and don’t belong to any series are listed first)

This song turned out to be so much fun, that we sing it even after we were done with our unit in Geography.

“I live on Planet Earth” song to the “He’s Got The Whole World in His Hands“

We tried singing it with props: I printed pictures of earth, USA map, our State, our state with it’s city on marked, picture of our house. I punched wholes in all pictures and at every verse we’d string another picture on the “necklace” and sing it wearing the “necklace”. This fantastic idea comes from here: My Montessori Journey – Geography
Materials and song are available here: I live on Planet Earth file.

Pouring water, mixing water, squeezing water out of a sponge… have you ever seen any kid who isn’t fascinated with water? Mine is no exception. His excitement is contagious: I catch myself completely hypnotized by every drop…

Other Categories and how we use these materials.
Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)

• Materials Useful for learning Chemisrty
• Unit 1 – Introduction to Chemisrty – States of the Matter, Elements
• Unit 2 – Liquids