Iceberg Counting

Using a Topic of Interest to Engage Learning

I’ve found that with William the best way to teach him anything is to think outside the box and engage him in the topic that is currently fascinating him. When I was trying to teach him colors, he honestly could not have cared less about color tablets or matching games or any other methods that I had used to teach G. Buuuut, his godmother made him a fabulous truck Spot the Match game and had the wisdom to make each type of truck a different color. So William learned his colors by matching trucks.

William has been on a Titanic kick lately. It started when we bought him a boat alphabet book at a used book sale three weeks ago. T was for tugboat and Titanic. Since then, it’s all he talks about. He wants to know everything. So we’re learning about the Titanic.

Thinking outside the box has helped me tremendously in keeping William engaged in the learning process. I try to take whatever his current love is, and build on it, thinking what else I can expose him to that’s tangential to it.

Here’s where that has led us with the Titanic:

• We have pulled out our Atlas, and looked at Ireland where the Titanic was made. We used the map of Europe to track it’s progress from Belfast to where it set sail for it’s first and final voyage. We pulled up maps online and created our own to mark the Titanic’s path (I drew the countries, he colored them in and dotted the line for the ship’s voyage).

• We learned about icebergs, how they form, where they are located. We learned about the Arctic Circle and why there are no icebergs in the ocean in Florida (the only ocean he’s seen in real life).

• We’ve watched interview clips with Robert Ballard, and talked about the job of an oceanographer. We’ve seen his robot submarine at work and talked about why humans can’t go that far down into the ocean.

• We’ve looked at pictures of the Titanic after a hundred years under the sea, and talked about what happens to a ship when it sinks.

• We’ve looked at photos of the ship before it sank, look at the layout of the ship, talked about construction and safety. We’ve had conversations about how a ship turns and why it takes so long to stop.

• We’ve talked about history: the way life was when the Titanic set sail, about how men and women behaved, about the culture and society.

There are a lot of topics that are adjacent to the Titanic, where it’s easy to broaden a little mind. And then there are some that maybe are a little further outside the box, but still worth exploring.

This morning we did Titanic counting. We got a big bowl of water and pretended William was the lookout and I was the captain. His job was to tell me how many icebergs were in our ship’s path. I would put different numbers of ice cubes in the water, which he needed to take out one by one and count. It was great one-to-one counting practice for him and the fact that we were counting “icebergs” kept him engaged longer than other counting activities have.

Later we’ll work on Titanic sounds and will try to brainstorm a Titanic alphabet, at least with the sounds he’s already had lessons on.

One of my favorite things about homeschooling, is that it gives me the flexibility to teach my kids however they’re going to learn best at any given moment. This month, it’s the Titanic. Next month, it will be something else. Whatever it is, I’ll try to keep in mind the key lessons I want him to learn (like colors and sounds and counting) and try to figure out ways to use that topic of interest to keep him engaged in the learning process.