How to Prep the Global Explorers Club: South America Unit Study

So, you’ve downloaded the Global Explorers Club: South America unit. Now you may be wondering, “What do I do with all of these files now?” No worries, here’s how to prep and organize the curriculum, ensuring you have a clear roadmap for the entire semester and helping you stay organized.

There’s two ways to prep the Global Explorers curriculum:

Prep the entire South America unit in one day (or a weekend). Then when you’re ready to begin each country study, simply grab the materials needed.
Prep each country study as you move through the curriculum.

Whichever you choose is fine. This tutorial will walk you through the first method: prepping the entire curriculum unit up front. I prefer this method because having the semester’s material prepared ahead of time allows us to easily plan around vacations, extracurricular activities, or other events, ensuring that I don’t overlook something or get stressed trying to fit it in the weekend prior to starting a new unit.

If you choose the second method, you’ll simply follow the “Prep List” found in the Notion database for each country prior to beginning a new unit. I still encourage you to read through this tutorial, as it may help familiarize you with the different resources and materials available to you as part of the Global Explorers program.

Tools you’ll need

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Paper, Cardstock
Printer
Expanding file folder
Pocket folder with prongs
Virtues Cards (optional)
Global Kids cards (optional)

The Global Explorers Club: Printable Resources for South America

First things first, I recommend clearing a block of several hours to complete this process. If you have a movie you’ve been wanting to watch or a favorite TV show, go ahead and turn it on. As much as I love to prep an entire semester’s worth of materials in a day, it’s definitely n the most exciting task in the world. Next, grab a cup of your favorite hot drink and get comfortable. We’ll be doing a lot of printing to start. It’s easy enough, but it does take a bit of time.

All right, let’s get started with the Global Explorers printable resources.

First, gather the supplies and materials listed above. To begin, use regular printer or copy paper. We’ll switch to cardstock paper at a later time.
Then open up the “Global Explorers South America” folder.
Next, open the “Printable Resources” folder.
Print the “South America Country Study Overview Sheets.”
Print the “Global Explorers Journal – South America.” I suggest using two-sided printing for the journal.
Open up the “Book Discussion Guides” folder. Proceed to print the guide for each of the books you plan on incorporating in your study of South America. Some of the guides contain activity sheets that you may wish to print multiple copies if you plan on having each child complete their own.
Next, open up the “Language Arts” folder. Then click into the “The Writing Revolution – Sentence Strategy Worksheets” folder.
Print the “Geography and Culture: South America Sentence Strategy” sheets. If you’d like to use two-sided printing, print each country separately and specify the following page numbers: 1-4, 5-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17, 18-21, 22-24, 25-27, 28-30.
Print the “Circle Round Sentence Strategies – South America” sheets. If you’d like to use two-sided printing, print each folk tale separately and specify the following page numbers: 1-2, 3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17, 18-21, 22-24.
Print the “Andean Music Sentence Strategies” sheet next.
Go back into the “Language Arts” folder and print the “Making Words” sheets. If you’d like to use two-sided printing, specify the following page numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-6, 7, 8, 9-10, 11-12.
Now you’ll want to switch to cardstock paper. Open up the “Geography & Culture” folder and print the “Global Connections and Task List” for South America and the “Map Drill” card.

At this point, I recommend going ahead and organizing everything you’ve printed by country. For the folk tales, simply separate them into piles at this time. Then take a small break and stretch your legs before we begin on the next part of the prep process.

At this point, you may be feeling overwhelmed. I get it, but please, please, please trust me. This will 100% pay off in the end! Every country study will be neatly organized into its own folder, and when your family is ready to explore and learn more about that country, all your materials will be ready and waiting for you. You can totally do this!

Okay, now, we’re going to move onto each country’s supplemental materials and begin organizing the supplies and materials by country.

Now let’s switch to the Notion database and prep the remaining resources for each unit study.

Open up the Notion database for the Global Explorers Club: South America and click into the first country on the list, Venezuela.
Open up the “Prep List: Venezuela” and switch the view to “Table“.
Beginning at the top of the list, complete each task.
For Venezuela, you’ll start by printing the South America map from Seterra. I suggest printing both the “blank” and the “labeled” maps. Once complete, change the status to “Done”.
Next, gather the following from the sheets you printed earlier: the “Venezuela” and “The Owner of the Sun” sentence strategy sheets, the “Making Words” sheet for Venezuela, and “The Incredible Yet True Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt” discussion guide and sentence strategies. Mark each item as “Done” in the “Prep List” for Venezuela.
Optional: Print “The Owner of the Sun” coloring page from Circle Round. I like to scale the print to 40% so my children can cut the Circle Round illustrations out and paste them into their learning journals, alongside their completed sentence strategies or written narration. Be sure to print one copy per child, plus one for you too.
For the additional book discussion guides, you can either (1) print them or (2) preview and reference them as you’re reading through the books. It’s completely up to you! I usually print any activity sheets that look like something my kids would enjoy completing, and then I simply preview the discussion questions prior to reading the book(s) with my kids.
If you’ve chose to use the Virtues cards, go ahead and grab the “Creativity” card and add it to your other Venezuela resources.
Next, place the Venezuela materials into a folder slot.
Now you’re ready to move onto the next country, Colombia. You’ll repeat the process listed above for the remaining countries on the Global Explorers: South America list, gathering and printing materials as needed and then placing them into a separate folder slot.

Once you’ve finished preparing all the country unit studies, you can move onto printing any of the supplemental materials you plan on using.

Okay, now it’s time to work on the supplemental materials.

Open the “Global Explorers South America” folder.
Open the “Printable Resources” folder.
Print the “Virtues Poster” and/or the “Virtues Poster Coloring Page” and the “Our Wondrous World: Wonder Wall” sheets.
Next, click into the “Science” folder and print the “Food Pyramid Templates“.
Then go back to the “Printable Resources” folder and click into the “Just for Fun” folder.
Print the “Global Explorers Boarding Pass“, the “Global Explorers: South America Stationary Paper“, and the “Global Explorers: Country Population Cards“.
Go back to the “Printable Resources” folder and click into the “Language Arts” folder.
Print the “Global Explorers: Student Reading Tickets“, the “Global Explorers: Vocabulary Journal” sheets, and the “Global Explorers Reading Log“.
Go back to the “Printable Resources” folder and click into the “Cooking Class” folder.
Print the “Global Explorers Recipe Card” and the “Global Explorers Recipe Shopping List” cards.

Remember, all of these resources are optional! The Global Explorers program is designed to be flexible, so feel free to use only the materials that work best for your family.