Can We Discuss Geography?

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  • June 24, 2011 at 4:23 am
    AussieMummy
    Participant

    My children have a strong grasp of basic geography {continents, oceans, states in our country, locations of major countries} I want to expand more on world geography as we’ll get quite a bit of US geography with the history we’re doing this year. 

    I’ve heard a lot of chatter about Beautiful Feet Geography, and I must admit it looks delightful. However, from what I know of those books {we own a couple} that programme will cover more US geography then world. 

    Is there anything equivalent? Basically we can read good living books about various countries and then map what we read? Ideally, i want them to start learning about small countries. For instance, they can locate England, Scotland, & France on a map. But there’s a lot more to Europe then just those few countries. They can name a half dozen countries in Asia {or more} and so on. I’d love to expand this knowledge while they are still so very curious about geography.

    I want to do it gently and have it be a lot of fun. I all ready have gobs of beautiful outline maps that I intend to use for their notebooking purposes. Now I just need a way to use them. I stumbled upon a map making set put out by a company called the Noah Plan which looked nice, but I don’t need a kit.. I’m curious how they chose to have children fill in what and considered the teacher’s guide for that purpose but it seemed extremely pricey just for that.

    What about Trail Guide To World Geography? Will that help me put my maps to use? I wasn’t looking for something that was meant to be used 4 days a week though. In fact, I was hoping for one or two days as we’ll have US geography other days during the week. 

    Any suggestions?

    June 24, 2011 at 1:01 pm
    botanicalbecky
    Member

    We’ve started to incorporate Geopuzzles. They have one for world, then one each for the continents. We’ve been working on Africa. I don’t just let him put it together willy-nilly, though. We start at the top (north) and talk about each country and how it relates to the next country. What is next to Niger, or what is east of (fill-in-the country). These are very detailed puzzles and all but the very smallest countries have their own piece. We’ve been having a lot of fun doing these and I’m learning a lot! lol 😉

    June 24, 2011 at 5:53 pm
    lgeurink
    Member

    http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Songs/dp/B002CB3KPM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308937758&sr=8-1

     

    We use this cd along with the map drill as recommended her on SCM.  If you do not want to do map drills, the cd would still be fun and helpful.  I can’t tell you how often we are in church or someplace else and somebody mentions the name of a country and my brain immediately bursts in to song, “Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Ruwanda, and Tanzania are in East Africa…”  We have been using it for 2 years and only concetrate on the continent we are studying.  We did Africa with a Pre-K and 1st and this year did Asia/Middle East with a K and 2nd.  They both impressively know all the countries.  It is fun, easy, not time consuming, and crazy effective.

    June 24, 2011 at 6:37 pm
    blue j
    Participant

    I second both posts above.  I need to dig out our Geography songs CD since it has been years since I’ve used it with the kids.  I thought about it last year, but never did get it out for my 10 yo dd who has no memory of this CD.  While doing map drill this past year with my girls, I would sing the Africa songs in my head to run through the list when I was having recall problems. Cool  My 16 and 14 yos did something similar too.

    The Geopuzzle of Africa REALLY helped my 10 yo (k… really all of us).  It was fun racing against our fastest times putting the puzzle together to see if we could improve.  Great thing is that the Middle East is on this map as well, so we’ll be using it again for this year’s study.

    June 24, 2011 at 10:56 pm
    AussieMummy
    Participant

    Ha, that’s funny on the songs. I still find myself singing 50 Nifty United States from “back in the day” when I was taught at home and we learned the states that way. I’ll have to check it out. I also love the puzzle idea. Very fun sounding!

    June 25, 2011 at 4:09 am
    Wings2fly
    Participant

    There are the 10 Days In… games for each continent.  Are you looking for a geography book on countries?  We like V.M. Hillyer’s Child’s Geography of the World.  It is out of print, but a nice read to the kids on each country, or sometimes group of similar countries.  You could read that part of the book while they do map drill or coloring pages in the Dover coloring book called Around the World.  You could also use Passport to the World which has a 2 page spread on the country showing cultural items, landmarks, money and 4 language words.  You could easily use these three together in one day.  It works for us.  Then I follow up with some picture books on that country from the library for bedtime (many are listed in All Through the Ages).  Does your library have the series:  Look What Came from…?  I may also play a travel video.  (But, beware of content.  One had a nude beach!)  You could also look into the Christmas Around the World book and another Dover coloring book of same title.  I plan to do that at Christmas this year.  Some is review and some are countries new to us.  I try to do one country per month.

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