The Nations of the World
a topic leading to maps, flags, languages, history, food, religion, money, clothing, climate, animals, ethics, water, science, universities, oil, building materials, music, art, mathematics, notation, paper, computers

Original

Same song, with flags (nicely done).

This is a good story of just where an Animaniacs song can take you. Several months ago my 10 year old dd and I were listening to the Countries of the World song. This led to a search to find the lyrics so we could sing along. That in turn led to a discussion and then search for whether Yakko missed any countries (yes, he did). One of the countries he missed was the Maldives. Which led to a discussion and impromptu research project on the Maldives. Which then led in turn to Google Earth, which gave us lots of questions about Indonesia and Micronesia.

To this day Ashanti perks up whenever she even hears mention of the Maldives. One song and one idle question led to all that.

Mary

Any website has a point of view, a reason for existing, and something to promote or spotlight or sell. Every map ever made was made for some particular reason, and so looking for "objective" information shouldn't be the goal so much as being aware, when you find information, that there will be other ways to describe or portray that. Don't depend on any one site, but look around with an open mind for your whole life, gathering information and comparing and knowing that things change.—Sandra Dodd, who chose the links below but didn't build the sites

Kids Around the World (Part of The World Almanac for Kids site)

Flag Tag, identifying flags, easy mouse-click game, requires a little reading, from United Nations Cyber Schoolbus

One World—Nations Online


Portals of the World Library of Congress, Global Gateway

The European Union

Pinky and the Brain sing history geography more history connections