Geography Suggestions

I am geography rich this year!!

My kids are doing http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Geography-Explore-His-Earth/dp/1932786325  and

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=longcc&book=geography&story=morerivers and

http://home.comcast.net/~rlaurio/ElementaryGeography.html plus……. map drill!!!

Here is how I am doing it and my kids are loving it all and learning so much.

1-2 Chapters from Elementary Geography on day 1 of the week depending on how big the chapters are.

1-2 chapters from Home Geography by CC Long (mainlesson) depending on chapter sizes on day 2 of the week.

1/2 chapter from Explore His Earth on day 3. — this resource you could make more interesting for your 7th grader by adding in some more reading from the links and books she suggests at the end of the chapter.

on day 4 of the week I give kids a US map and we label the state names, then once they learned them, we learned the state abbreviations, and then we learned the capitals. Now I a having them continue to label 2 states a week, but now we are adding rivers. After they learned them….we will go through again and we will discuss areas such as deserts, mountains, plains, swamps, forests, etc….then we will move on to a new country and do the same thing, but maybe not in the same depth.  HTH….. each geography lesson a day is between 5 -10 minutes max. Only thing I bought was the one on Amazon.

Last year, we enjoyed A Child’s Geography of the World by Hillyer. This year, we’re eating up BF’s Geography course! Also, a friend was recently telling me how much they’re enjoying Trail Guide to Geography by Geography Matters.

Blessings,
Melissa

Thanks, Christie! I definitely plan to check out your link:)

The simplest and easiest are The Visits to series offered here by SCM, in my opinion.  Second to that are maps that you print from http://www.WorksheetWorks.com.

Well, I gotta ask, although I might embarrass myself in doing so, HERE GOES>….

We are doing Visits To Africa. And it’s ok, IMO. What I started skipping was the map drills. I honestly am not understanding the importance of the kids memorizing where the 42 (guessing?) countries in Africa are. There are several main ones that are often discussed in life, so sure, let’s memorize those. But WHY? memorize where little countries (some of them you can barely see) are? I can not say them. And when I try to say them to memorize them one week, I say them totally different the next day. So to me, memorizing something I can’t say, and certainly can’t spell…….I”m just not seeing the importance. I am so willing to learn for you seasoned CM mamma’s on this one, that’s why I’m embarassing myself here.

Is it just an order of priority (what to have them memorize from all the subjects?

My 4th grader has horrible spelling. I’d rather work with her on spelling words she will actually use, rather than having her spend time memorizing countries she will never again hear of.  My 7th grader has so much school to do and many farm chores to do, and barely gets to have time for quiet reading. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed in general. The map drills have fallen off the wagon for us. Looking to see if I’m overlooking some importance.

Thanks everyone….. 🙂

I understand your point about memorizing (not memorizing) the countries of Africa and other trivia.  I’m not sure what the more “seasoned” homeschool moms here will say, but my goal with geography (especially of far away countries whose names change often) is for my children to have a basic knowledge.

So, I want my girls to be able to guess (correctly) that such and such country is on the continent of Africa.  To at least have a reasonable guess at where the countries of the world are.

For our country, USA, I want them to know much more – the exact placement of the states and the states’ abbreviations and the states’ capitals.

When we read aloud about wars or read books that take place in other countries, we look up those countries and have a wee-itty-bitty map study right then.

I did make my oldest daughter go through the motions with the map drills (the CM way) for Canada, just because it’s a neighboring country.  I never stressed about it and never stressed her about it, just gave her the blank map each week to fill in.  And I was surprised at how many provinces she can place correctly.

In the future, I’ll probably do the same for each continent’s countries:  Hand over the blank map, but not stress over it.

I’m eager to hear others’ take on this!

KellyWright said:

We are doing Visits To Africa. And it’s ok, IMO. What I started skipping was the map drills. I honestly am not understanding the importance of the kids memorizing where the 42 (guessing?) countries in Africa are. There are several main ones that are often discussed in life, so sure, let’s memorize those. But WHY? memorize where little countries (some of them you can barely see) are?

I am using Visits to the Middle East this year with 50 kids, ages 6 to 17,  in our CM co-op this year. It is a rich study in my opinion. We have tweaked the lessons to fit into 24 weeks, we’ve subbed a few book choices to better work in our situation, but the kids are really enjoying it and learning so much. 3 of my 4 are doing the study and they are 7, 10, 13. They are learning the names of those countries, how to pronounce them, and how to spell them. Now, we do not worry about memorizing spelling as they always have a list in front of them. In my opinion, the stories and the cultures draw them in and they surprise themselves with the painless learning of the countries and some of the geography (rivers, mountains, etc.) of the continent. We spend about 20 minutes on geography with the kids and they grasp it. It is neat when they then read about a place in their history or current events and know just where those places are. My kids have fun trying to stump me on the spelling. It never works as spelling is my strong suit. 🙂 Those little countries are unique and interesting to learn about. Books like Material World and Hungry Planet and videos give such depth to the cultures we learn about. Map drills give context to those cultures. It is easy for kids and adults alike to learn 2-3 new places once per week. You can modify the drills as needed, too. If writing is a challenge, just let the child color the countries or label the first letter of each country.

Personal Story – There is a small country on the west coast of Africa called Senegal that looks like it’s eating another country. My husband and I have been there. We’ve met the people, ate dinner with them, shared life with them. That small country and it’s people, our friends will always have a place in my heart – Mamadou, Khadja, Samba, Abdillajai – these people who shared a month of my life helped me to see that just because a place is small and may seem inconsequential, it is a part of the world God created and He cares for the people who live there. They are interesting to Him and should therefore be interesting to us. I share this story just to show that given my school experiences with geography – which was mainly statistics like imports/exports and population, etc. I wasn’t very interested in geography or culture of any sort. Getting older gave me a somewhat improved perspective, but going to Africa by way of France changed my heart.  I saw people and places more with God’s eyes and they took on a new importance to me.

Mrs.McCardell said:

Should map study follow your history timeframe?  It would make sense but I may be overthinking it too.

Personally, I think that looking up the places we learn about during our history studies is an excellent part of that learning, but for map drills, to me it makes more sense to study and learn the current geography as that is the world we live in.

We’ve been doing map drills a long time, for 8 years now, so that is just my two cents.