Tuesday, April 5, 2011

John Paul II Activity

On the homeschooling front, we've been working our way through our John Paul II unit study in preparation for his beatification on May 1st.  

One of the activities we have listed in there is to find a list of all of the countries that John Paul II traveled to during his pontificate and plot them on a world map.

We found out that he made 104 trips outside of Italy during his 26 year reign; to every continent except Antarctica!  I printed out maps of each of the continents and the kids went through and marked each of his trips on the maps.

At one point my son said, "He must not have liked hot places because he traveled everywhere in Africa except to the countries that are mostly desert".  Some of the countries he went to were so small you can't imagine many people being present!

This was a great activity and it shows just how well-traveled a pope he was.  Not only that, but it was a great geography lesson, too!   While trying to find some of these small countries, we found out some interesting information on them and saw some beautiful scenery.

If you're interested in, there's still time to download the unit study and get started before the beatification!