Disney Lesson Plans for Homeschoolers?

[tweedlemom]

My friend homeschools and she is thinking of taking the family to Disney World in January. I mentioned to her that she may be able to find Disney-Park themed lesson plans for her children, ages 5, 8 and 9. (She definitely wants to put an educational emphasis on the trip.) Any suggestions?

 

[Heluvsme]

We just got back last month and I made sure to teach mini-units on the countries of Epcot prior to leaving. My son loved seeing the actual representations of the countries he had just learned about. We had learned about the food and the dress and the customs of each country and seeing them portrayed there really helped to "cement" the lesson. Also, each country has employees from the homeland and talking to them is so interesting! They all seemed to genuinely want to talk about their homeland and to share where they came from.

Also, I typed in Disney educational materials in my search and there was a great web-site that you could order Disney teacher materials from. I'm so sorry, I can't remember the exact name right now, I'll do a search later tonight and try to get back here and post it, but there were lots of results just from those words alone.

Animal Kingdom lent itself to a lot of units on animals and on geography. I didn't do any prior to leaving, but we will be starting off with that in August when we start back up. Africa and Asia will be the focus of our geography and the Savannah animals will be our focus for our animal sciences.

 

[tweedlemom]

Thanks for the feedback! Great ideas!

 

[DawnM]

We learned things about the countries too.

My son loves to draw so we did some emphasis on imagineering at MGM and also watched a show and read about what an animator does and what an engineer who designs the rides does. They LOVED that!

At Epcot we also went on the ride about growing plants indoors. I will have to look it up, can't remember the name right now. DH LOVES learning about different kinds of plant growing and explained everything to the kids before getting on the ride.

We did a little history lesson on Walt Disney too before we went.

Check this site out: http://dep.disney.go.com/educational/index