For our first sampling of fourth grade geography work we are very happy to have a contribution from the UK. Rachel writes:

Hello Donna – I thought I’d send you some pictures of some of the work my daughter, who has just finished 4th grade has done. We are in the UK (Poole, not far from where you lived). For local geography we looked first at the history of our area, who lived here first. My daughter made a celtic harp from mount board, a celtic roundhouse, visited an iron-age hillfort and an iron-age museum. I told celtic stories in main lesson, we visited an ancient technology centre and experienced iron-age life for a day. I have sent a photo of the cross-stitch she did of a celtic knot and her pages from the main lesson book on the Romans. We did the same with Romans. We looked at the shape of Poole harbour on a map and heard stories about how the celts explored the waterways in log boats. We had stories in main lesson about local smugglers. I talked about what Poole was famous for, the pottery and the supply of clay nearby, we visited Poole pottery and did a factory tour, we learnt about the salt cod trade with Poole, Newfoundland and Spain. We got involved making wall hangings for the local museum using the molar technique with a textiles artist. We looked at the land and had main lesson about the local heathland habitat, learning about the animals and reptiles that live there and why the heathland is important and how it is maintained. This then led to my daughter doing a project about horses as these are one of the mammals on the heathland and she is horse crazy!! Before we started local geography, I thought I would find it hard to make it appeal to my daughter, but it has been very rewarding for the whole family.

Here are pages from the main lesson book of Sedona in California, beginning with the cover and contents pages:

Here are some pictures from the main lesson book of Mary Kate in Hawaii:

The following two pictures are from Alena in Florida. They are pages from her Local Geography main lesson book.

Although, usually, 4th Grade Geography focuses on local geography in the Waldorf curriculum, for a variety of reasons we did a more general Biomes and Habitats geography block in our homeschool.