Meet Bluehoo

This fall in our homeschool we will be tackling My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures.  Per the description on the curriculum's website, we will be taking a trip around the world to explore diverse countries while learning geography and being challenged by true stories of missionaries.

I am always on the search for interesting ways to cover mundane topics.  World geography, while important, can have the tendency to be a bit dry.  I have been thinking about it all spring and summer (I bought the curriculum in March) trying to come up with fun ideas of how to make the year come alive for my kids.

I found inspiration in the most unlikely of places--I was reading a fiction book about a woman who helps out the local one room school house by teaching geography.  Rather than just sit at desks learning facts, she takes them outside and invites them onto her pretend magic carpet where they soar through the air to the country they are studying, then turns the carpet into a boat where they paddle down rivers and across lakes to get to where they are going learning interesting facts along the way.

I needed to buy a magic carpet.

While we were grocery shopping today, I had the kids pick out a rug.  After much deliberation and arguing (the girls wanted purple, David wanted black), they all agreed to a nice navy blue rug.  We brought it home, unrolled it, and the kids immediately started playing with it.  It was a magic carpet that took them to Antarctica.  It then became a boat that took them across the Atlantic.  Then it turned into a train that took them across the United States--all while waiting for the macaroni and cheese to be ready.

I asked them what we should name our magic carpet and they all agreed to the name Bluehoo.

Bluehoo will be taking us on many adventures this year as we learn about the people and places that make up our world.  Bluehoo will be turned into an airplane, a canoe, a sail boat, a train, a gondola, a camel, and whatever other modes of transportation we can come up with that would suit the countries we study.

I'm suddenly excited to take Bluehoo out for a test drive.  I wonder where he will take us.