Geography curriculum comparison

[Melissa B]

How does Around the World in 180 Days compare to Trail Guide to World Geography? Any other similar geography curriculum?

[Guest]

bump

[Christine]

I'll take a stab at this, as I happen to have both books sitting in front of me. Please understand I have used neither. . .so it's just a "visual report".

 

180 = Around the World in 180 Days

TG = Trail Guide to World Geography (they also have a US specific book, but it doesn't make sense to me to compare that.)

 

Both are multi-level generally recommending a start around 2/3 grade. Both clearly mark those activities / questions for older grade levels. Both require map labeling.

 

180 almost takes a full-on unit approach to each continent. Not only will you cover the geography but you'll get a bit on the history / religion and cultures. TG includes Geography Through Art execises, and more hands-on activities.

 

180 does a fair job of introducing geography terminology. . . not so easy to identify if that's done in TG -- (hmmm, they want you to make "geography terms" flash cards).

 

TG asks a number a questions that require the use / knowledge of an atlas / map (for Africa there are ~48 questions / level). Very few such questions are asked in 180 (for Africa there are ~10).

 

TG has a unit study in the back of "Around the World in Eighty Days". 180 has a number of literature suggestions for each "unit" (continent).

 

BTW, the Student Workbook for 180 is virtually an identical copy. . .only it has spaces for answers to be written (instead of the answers).

 

Hopefully, that was somewhat helpful.

[Willow]

Hello, I am Willow, and this is my first post here.

 

I am doing a world geog study with my 11 year old ds (not sure about US grades. 6th Grade?)

 

I have acquired from a variety of places (brought some, df lent some, etc) 180 days, Trail Guide and all the SL5 books and a used copy of the EHE.

 

The one that has gone back on the shelf was 180 days. I found Trail Guide to have far better activities. I brought it from The Homeschool Estore (Currclick) and also brought the intermediate workbook. we print of the pages we need and we both love it. Ds is finally getting a grasp on looking things up in a non threatening way. The questions are short and sweet, but he needs to look through 2 or 3 different atlases to get the answer (mind you we don't have the recommended atlas)

 

The maps included in the workbook are the best I have seen and include both political and physical outlines. They are much better than the ones in the EHE.

 

Incidentally, it wasn't my child that did the EHE but it looks tedious, except some things called 'Chose your own adventures' These look fun and we intend to incorporate these.

 

So we are now basically following TG (which incidentally has no History component) with the core 5 books from each country, although TG covers more countries than C5, but the library helps here. This brings the history in. We pick a Chose your own adventure for a little individual project as desired. Although for Africa he wanted to study big cats, which was not a CYOA so we are making a Big Cat information poster at the moment. You could pick history projects here if you wanted more.

 

We are timing things so we can do China during the Olympics and Australia, NZ and Antarctica last, so we can spend more time on them. It seems to make not difference what order you do TG in, but I would do 'World" first.

 

I would REALLY recommend the TG workbook for your childs age.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Willow.

[Kelley]

Geomatters, the one who publishes Trail Guides have corresponding Cd-roms for notebook pages for each course. It has all of the daily drill questions, maps to color, vocabulary pages, and other types of things to make a beautiful geography notebook.

I highly recommend the CD-rom if you decide to go with that course.

 

Kelley

[Melissa B]

Thanks for responding! I am going to drop 180 Days from my list of possibilites. I may use the Trail Guide to World Geography.