When I look back at my school days, geography was not a strong point for me. I remember colouring maps and memorizing capitals and countries, but for the most part, I didn’t find it that interesting.
When I first began homeschooling, I didn’t worry too much about geography either. However, as I taught history to my kids and read historical fiction to them, I began to realize that history and geography belonged together. So I bought a globe and a world map, and we began to find places on them as we learned. It was great to see the kids being able to point out places on the globe.
Still, while the kids were able to recognize the continents and some of the countries, I really wanted them to get to know the world we live on. (I wanted to learn more about it as well!) Because of this, we decided to focus on world geography this year. We would explore the world, continent by continent, and see how far we got. Our goals were for the kids to get a good general knowledge of all of the continents and the countries of the world, and to explore a few countries from each continent more in depth. (You can read about the lapbooks we created when we studied Asia here.)
Because we have students in grades one to eight in our co-op, we wanted to make sure that the material we used would be easily adaptable for different ages. We found a great resource from Cindy Wiggers called Trail Guide to World Geography. This resource gives an overview of the geography of the world and has atlas and map work at three different levels: primary, intermediate, and secondary. It also has many extra activities to make your study more in depth. The student work pages can be ordered as a download or a CD. Although the book is organized to work through all the continents in a year, you could easily make this into a multi year study if you included more of the additional activities.
In any geography unit, you need a good atlas. One of my favourite atlases to introduce the kids to the continents is called The Ultimate Interactive Atlas of the World. It has different flaps and mini books for the kids to look through, and is very fun and engaging. A couple more atlases that we like are the Rand McNally Classroom Atlas and the National Geographic Kids World Atlas, which has internet links as well.
We also wanted the kids to be able to memorize the countries as they travelled the continents. Our favourite resource for that is Sheppards Software, which has a variety of free online mapping and geography games. Our kids have learned all of the countries of Europe and Asia through these games. (I have also!) We’ve also really enjoyed the Geography Songs CD, which has been a great tool for learning country names.
We’re having a great time travelling around the world! In addition to the books mentioned above, we’ve checked out lots of information books from the library, and have enjoyed reading historical fiction together… Hopefully this year will ignite a love of geography in my kids.
Even if geography isn’t your focus, here are some tips for incorporating geography into your curriculum:
1. Have maps up in your home to refer to. It’s a great idea to have a markable map where you can label places as you hear or learn about them, or to use push pins and string to highlight places that you’ve learned about or where you know people.
2. Have a globe handy too! It’s very different locating places on a globe and a map.
3. Bookmark the Sheppard software site, and have your kids play the games for fun. Have contests to see who can name the most countries in the shortest amount of time.
4. When you read about a place in a book, look it up on the internet. That can really help bring the book you are reading to life.
What do you do for geography? Please add any activities or resources that you’ve liked for teaching geography in the comments section.
Happy learning!
lifeoncanterburylane 