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World Geography-need advice


mykidsrmyjoy
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I started this school year with many wonderful books and resources for teaching my 3rd grader world geography. I have several atlases and a stack of books on different cultures and countries, as well as puzzles, flash cards, etc., etc. I had good intentions of tying all these materials together and studying geography 2-3 times a week. The first couple of weeks were ok, but now, 9 weeks in, we're dragging our feet. I've basically been tossing one of the geography books at dd and saying, "Here, read this for 20 minutes "

 

My question is, should I look into finding a guide that ties all my resources together in a more orderly way, or is independent reading sufficient? I really don't want to spend any more money if I don't have to. Have you made the study of geography work for your kids, without using a formal geography curriculum? If so, how?

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We did world geography without a formal curriculum.

 

I picked one country a month.  We did Little Passports, but that was so light that it was really about 10% of what we did.  Dollar Tree at the time had sticker packets with flags, landmarks, and animals around the world.  I took the stickers and put them on individual cards along with a foam map piece (again, Dollar Tree foam. I used tracing paper to make a template from our map, cut it out, then cut it out of the foam) and country name.  These went into a divided box, foam countries on one side, cards on the other. Each month we added a new set of cards to match up, so 10 countries total by the end of the year.

In addition, we explored food, culture (I checked the art museum and festivals around town to find field trips), language, music, stories, and major landmarks.  One activity per day, about 3 per week, and 1-2 stories a week.   This site had a lot of good ideas broken down for me. 

We intentionally only did a few countries from each continent to give a simple world view.  However 2 years later my kid can recite facts about all the countries he studied, label them on a map, and knows the cities where major landmarks are found.

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The Stack the Countries app is a treasure trove of information.  You can start with just one continent and control what it asks, but my oldest learned country shapes, flags, official languages, capital cities, major landmarks, and locations by playing the game.  He just did it for fun about a year ago, but I could easily see using it as part of a formal study.  To beef it up, I'd probably just pick a continent at a time, alternate playing the game and reading books about and from countries on that continent; when I wanted to wrap up, we'd spend a week or two baking, doing crafts, finding related outings, etc. for a grand finale before moving to a new continent.  (It was super exciting for him at the end to turn on the "whole world" portion and see how well he could do when he was being asked facts about the whole kit and kaboodle!)

 

FWIW, we get tired of doing the same thing for too long, which is why I switch up our subjects every six weeks.  (Six weeks seems to be the magic number for us; five always seems too short, and seven is just a hair too long.)  So if you spend four weeks doing the standard read-and-game-about-one-continent routine and then take two weeks to do puzzles, flashcards, art projects, baking, etc, I think it would be a good balance: just enough variety to keep it fun without being overwhelming from the planning side.

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I'm planning on world geography for next year, so I'm just in the starting-to-mull-things-over stage. A couple things on my radar are the trail guide to world geography (super cheap used) and the creek edge press geography task cards. http://www.creekedgepress.com/Products.html#Task_Card_Series

 

If your kids are into paper-based hands-on, homeschoolshare has country lap books that could be used with whatever you are reading. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/connections__geography.php There is also good, 'old fashioned narration to provide output. Guest hollow has printables available to correspond with the various countries. http://www.guesthollow.com/homeschool/geography/geography.html

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We do geography in a fairly haphazard way. When we're in a geography phase, I'll assign one task each day. That might be a puzzle, it might be adding to her collage (cutting stuff out of my old collection of travel brochures,) it is very often a documentary or travel show from the library and it's not unusual to throw a book at her to read in the car. We have some blank maps on the wall of each continent, and every now and then I'll test to see if she knows any new countries, and if so, I let her colour them in. We do Ellen McHenry's map drawing lessons as part of our history studies. I don't think the "where countries are" part of geography needs to be particularly well organised.

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I had a similar plan with a mishmash of materials. Like it or not, I really am an open-and-go kind of teacher who likes things presented systematically. So we have switched over to using the Glencoe "The World and Its People" books. We read the sections together, discuss the questions at the end of each section, review the chapter and then take the free online quiz. It is intended for middle school (our district uses them in 6th & 7th grades) but my accelerated 3rd grader has done really well. I still have supplemental books, videos, and research prompts, but it's ok if hose are haphazard because we have a strong spine. YMMV, of course.

 

If you're looking for a way to organize your resources, you could make a notebook in OneNote and collect all of your pieces for each country. Mine has links to videos, links to topics to read about, suggestions for fiction, National Geographic and Time for Kids website links, etc.

Edited by ondreeuh
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I'll cut and paste my plans in case that helps.  My goal for the year is to really work on hand-drawn maps and physical geography, but I hope by drawing the maps, we'll also learn political geography.  

 

Geography Map Drawing Sequence

 

 

Blob Mapping Sequence

* Discussion topics:  map distortion, climate by region, seasonal changes, biomes

 

☠ Equator, prime meridian, compass rose, hemispheres

☠ Great circles: tropics, polar circles, tropical/temperate/polar regions

☠ Africa + geographical features

☠ Europe + geographical features

☠ Asia + geographical features

☠ South America + geographical features

☠ North America + geographical features

☠ Antarctica and Australia + geographical features

☠ Oceans

☠ Oceans and seas

☠ Homemade globes project

☠ Homemade globes project

 

 

 

Freehand Maps Sequence

* Discussion topics: geographical vs political maps, biomes

* Use Atlas for an overview of each continent

 

☠ World

☠ World with Great Circles

☠ Europe

☠ Africa

☠ Middle East

☠ Asia

☠ Eurasia combo

☠ North and Central America

☠ South America

☠ Australia

 

 

 

Detailed Maps Sequence

 

☠ Switzerland Cantons

☠ US States (freehandmaps.com)

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This is our geography plan for 1st - 12th. It's worked so far to fulfill my goals for my kids, which is a basic knowledge of human cultures and beliefs and a rough mental image of where each country/capital is and what it is like there. Geography as a subject by itself would bore us to tears (esp for a whole year), but putting it in sporadically like this is doable for us.

 

Every history lesson we look at the globe (world history) or a map (US history) to locate where the lesson took place. This literally takes about less than 5 minutes to find and briefly discuss. Then in addition:

 

1st - read People by Peter Spier and Passport to the World by Craig Froman

2nd - go through activities in My World & Globe by Ira Wolfman

3rd - do 2 pages/week (edited from 2/day - oops!) of Beginning Map Skills workbook

4th - work on learning US states and capitals and abbreviations using misc stickers and worksheets and online games, make a map of our hometown

5th & 6th - go through Trail Guide to World Geography over 2 years on their own

7th - we skip geography this year because we do extra units on civics and government instead

8th - go through Trail Guide to US Geography on their own

9th-12th - read the first unit of BJU Cultural Geography on their own, then play increasing levels of Seterra games online once a week (We tried to make it through the whole BJU book one year with oldest DS and it was an absolute b.o.m.b. - sooooo boring. But I do think the first few chapters are useful, so we are managing to slug it through those.)

Edited by Momto5inIN
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Thanks to all who have responded. You've inspired me to look again at the resources I have and come up with a doable plan. I think we're going to focus on a couple countries each week and work on locating them on the map and filling in some notebooking pages I found online. I also think I'll assign free reading to incorporate all the wonderful geography books we have. I'm not expecting her to be able to name every country on the globe, I just want to give her a good overview of geography.

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