The next section in our study of American history was the Age of Exploration. We happened to be studying Portugal simultaneously which matched up perfectly!
The Age of Exploration
My older kids read Around the World in a Hundred Years: from Henry the Navigator to Magellan. In twelve chapters, it discusses the following explorers: Prince Henry the Navigator, Bartholomew Diaz, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, John Cabot, Amerigo Vespucci, Ponce de León, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, and Ferdinand Magellan.
They loved reading this book! When I read a few books aloud about Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and the age of exploration, they often piped up, “oh the Around the World book said that, and also…” You know you’ve found a good book when the information sticks like that!
In a similar vein to the book about Viking exploration, this book places the reader in the position of sailor. In Sail! Can You Command a Sea Voyage?, you sail on a ship departing from Portugal to India for goods. You learn detailed information about sailing vessels, navigation, and common hardships on long voyages. The book provides a timeline of exploration at the end, from the birth of Prince Henry of Portugal in 1394 to the Dutch gaining control of the spice trade in the 1600s.
Accompanying activities
I dug into my files and found a unit by Wonderhouse Creative. It was from a mega bundle of curriculum released in 2022. This unit was about maps and included activities with the basic compass rose and mapping your neighborhood or city. The compass activity was a great introduction for my younger children, aged 5 and 7.
Because we had moved to a new state right before the pandemic, we have only really explored the area in the past year. This map activity was perfect for us. Firstly, each child divided a sheet of paper into 9 rectangles. Then, they each drew our home in the center rectangle. We used a map to figure out the locations of our favorite spots. Then, they filled in the corresponding rectangles around the center rectangle (north, south, east, west, and all the in-betweens. Now when we’re headed for ballet or church, they have an idea of where we are on the map!
This Maps unit also provided basic information about longitude and latitude and contained a printable game similar to Battleship. It explained how sailors measured latitude by using a quadrant. We tried the craft to see how closely we could measure our latitude in the northern hemisphere using the North Star. So much fun!
Our next explorer felt like opening a can of worms. But when studying exploration, there really is no way around discussing the life of Christopher Columbus, is there?