I'm stumped….need help with geography!

My children are younger.  Oldest will be 7 next month.  But, we have studied more in geography recently and I have invested our homeschool budget into geography resources these past few months.  I did go ahead and get Hillyer’s Child’s Geography.  I read the first chapter to my kids and they seemed to like how it is read – engaging.  I know it can be expensive.  I found mine on Amazon, I think.  It was the updated 1951 in good enough shape.  No dust jacket.  I paid $21.88 plus $3.98.  At the time I thought I might have been crazy for spending that much on an older book.  But when I got it, I went through with small post-its and marked off each section with the country name.  I couldn’t hardly put the book down myself.  I really learned a lot in pre-reading it before reading it to my kids.  I noted some places (not too many) with outdated information such as population or largest city or that maybe one day someone will go to the moon.  We made “passports” out of two file folders taped together (kind of like a lapbook).  We document the country we visit and draw/color the flag, date it for when we “went there” and reference it to the continent map.  The kids love it and share it with others and stare at it for hours.  I also got Ann Vaskamp’s 1st geography book.  I haven’t used it yet.  It is more about physical geography on the Earth.  I don’t think she has anything yet on South America.  I also checked out what My Father’s World uses for the first year on countries and cultures and got a few of those resources.  So far, we really like Usborne’s The Great Animal Search, which organizes the animals by country/continent/habitat regions with a fun look and find layout.  We also have Netflix and I use many travel shows to show the country and cultures.  Examples are Globe Trekker, Rudy Maxa, etc.  I also bought Window on the World but haven’t used it yet.  The map in the middle indicates that Uruguay, Colombia, and Venezuela are featured in the book.  We like Passport to the World which has a two page spread on each country.  We also got Material World which is recommended on this site by Sonya.  Have you ever read the Christian Heroes books by janet and Geoff Benge or Hero Tales by Dave and Neta Jackson?  My Father’s World recommends those.  I’m not sure if any are of South America.  There are also many resource on the Amazon rainforest you can find.  I hope some of that was helpful.  Geopgraphy has been my hot research topic lately.  There is also a free website by the author of letter of the week called country of the week.  You can Internet search it.  I am not sure how much CM it is.  I think there are 4 countries on there now and she is adding more.  We have done Norway and Antarctica.  Just started Germany today.  We are studying composers along with it: Bach and Handel with it in March.  Studied Edvard Grieg with Norway.  I don’t think I answered your question specifically.  I do not know of any South America books as read-alouds in particular unless there is a Christian Heroes book.  I do not know anything about Holling.

Nate Saint is South America.

Yes, there were several books on South America about the missionaries.  I hope it works for you.  If you come across any others, please post here so I may use it, too.  I have never seen End of the Spear.  I’ll check into that.  I had never read the Christian Hero books to my kids although I have 3 of these books.  I wasn’t sure if my kids were old enough yet.  I started reading a few chapters of Corrie ten Bloom last night to decide if my kids are ready for it.  I had to make myself put it down so I could get to bed.  I hope it is considered CM because I really did like it.  She is in Holland at the time when Germans invaded for WWII.  So I am thinking of reading it to the kids near the end of studying Germany to lead into studying the Netherlands.  It covers history too.  We are delaying the start of Module 1 until maybe next year when the kids are old enough.  Until then, we are having fun learning about the different countries.  We are a bit eclectic if you couldn’t tell that already.  But CM seems to be the best for most subjects.  It is so hard to pick which resources to use even from CM choices.  We are blessed to have so many great resources available.

They might be a bit easy, but over at mainlesson.com there is a group of books by Lucy Fitch Perkins that might be interesting. Also about 4 books titled Peeps at Many Lands by Edith Browne.

Mrs. H