A creative way to teach geography and maths

Don’t worry! This photo is not really on Sydney Harbour – it was at a police exhibition. Looks cool ‘though!

This I Wanna Be Creative project is one of the best things I have ever done – especially in bonding with and encouraging my 8-year-old son Orlando.

Orlando is now so engrossed in “our” project that he now suggests stuff for me to write about and every night he wants to check out the WordPress statistics to see where people are viewing “our” blog.

(This image is not the stats to our blog – I’m just showing what the colourful map and flags look like.)

It’s so cool that he is so engrossed and maybe I’m just a big learning nerd but I harness his enthusiasm to teach him other things like maths and geography (Yes, I know I am a learning nerd – or as Orlando would say “Daddy, you’re a nice, fun nerd- You make learning fun!”) Nerdvana!

He loves to go to the WordPress maps to see where people are viewing the blog.

“We are big in Bulgaria!” I joke with him – and I use the opportunity to show him where Bulgaria is on the map – and Costa Rica, Taiwan, Poland, Germany and Venezuela, and lots of other countries where people view “our blog” as well as Australia and the USA and UK.

We also talk about the different flags from these countries (which ones he thinks are the coolest) and I even get him to add up to help me count the viewings in combinations of countries.

This week, Orlando’s teachers at his school gave my wife and me a very positive report on how he is improving at school.

They identified his learning style – saying he responds very well to “projects” (their actual word) –  having the purpose of a project to learn rather than just getting random and disconnected facts.

So, a big THANK YOU!  to WordPress for your colourful and wonderful statistics resources with maps and flags and thank you readers of I Wanna Be Creative for helping create a great way to encourage and teach my son.

If you have friends in less well-known countries can you please pass on this blog for them to view – so the map of “our blog” can light up with different countries.

Also, if you know parents with kids who could benefit from this blog please feel free to share it with them. This started off being a project about creativity – but has morphed into parent-kid bonding and creative teaching as well.

Thanks so much!

Orlando and Tony

(now it’s “our” blog)