Has anyone used Galloping the Globe for young kids?

[Heather in VA]

I'm looking for something that will be primarily for my rising Ker but with which I can include my rising 4th grader. What kind of time do you need for this? Do you get a good sense for the countries you study? Did your kids enjoy it?

 

Thanks

Heather

[daisychics]

:bigear: I'm gonna follow this thread, I'm buying GtG soon. For my Pre-K and 2nd/3rd'er.

[Sarita]

We have been using GTG this year with our dd5 and dd3. I chose to use it before starting SOTW, so the girls would have some sense of the world before starting a "formal" history program next year. We didn't use it much as a true unit study...it was just an extra fun add-on to go along with our unrelated reading, math, writing. We've had a blast with it, but we've done it pretty loosely. We certainly could have done more with the program, so I'm sure you could ramp it up with older kids. Besides the GTG book, we also bought Children Just Like Me, which the girls really enjoyed. Other than that, we used the library a LOT. We weren't always able to find many of the books on the GTG recommended lists, and some of those were much too long or mature for my kids anyway. But we were able to find lots of age-appropriate books at our library.

 

I'd love to answer any other questions, so feel free to PM or email me!

Sarita :)

[cin]

I'm teaching GTG in our co-op next year. The class is for gr k-4. I'll be doing alot of reading, we'll have a snack every week :D adn they will have mapwork and a flag to make/color each week.

 

We are aslo doing it at home with a 4 & 7 yr old. I think we will do fine, as most of it will be me reading, and them listening. We will find the country on the map each day, and discuss it's climate, wildlife, any famous people or things, and customs. So, it will mostly be read-alouds and discussions.

[K&Rs Mom]

We have been using GTG this year with our dd5 and dd3. I chose to use it before starting SOTW, so the girls would have some sense of the world before starting a "formal" history program next year. We didn't use it much as a true unit study...it was just an extra fun add-on to go along with our unrelated reading, math, writing. We've had a blast with it, but we've done it pretty loosely. We certainly could have done more with the program, so I'm sure you could ramp it up with older kids. Besides the GTG book, we also bought Children Just Like Me, which the girls really enjoyed. Other than that, we used the library a LOT. We weren't always able to find many of the books on the GTG recommended lists, and some of those were much too long or mature for my kids anyway. But we were able to find lots of age-appropriate books at our library.

 

We did the same thing last fall, before starting SOTW in January. My dc really enjoyed it, and I've been surprised how much they have retained. My focus was just to give them a basis for where things are before starting history, and to give them some exposure to different cultures. We had a lot of fun with this program! We didn't cover the entire book, but "visited" all of the continents and I tried to choose the countries that were either very different from ours or very likely to come up in their future studies.

 

As far as the amount of time, we were done in under an hour most days (depending on the project), but we didn't really follow the science at all (started biology a la WTM instead). We also made our first lapbook, making one book for each country or continent, and I think that helped my older get more out of it.

 

There's a GTG Yahoo group that has some great ideas for a lot of the specifics too.

[Mamabyrd]

I'm looking for something that will be primarily for my rising Ker but with which I can include my rising 4th grader. What kind of time do you need for this? Do you get a good sense for the countries you study? Did your kids enjoy it?

 

Thanks

Heather

 

I used this for kindergarten for one of my childrent (currently in 2nd grade). It was a great year. My child really enjoyed it and still remembers some of the interesting things we learned. We utilized the program the same way described earlier: I bought the GTG book, of course, and I also bought Children Just Like Me (which my child LOVED) and Baby Animal Stories (now out of print and unnecessary, anyway). Then we would go to the library and get books. It was fun and didn't take very long to do. I never spent more than 2 hours per day for kindergarten.

[Pine Ledge Academy]

my dd (7) and ds(5) did this in a co-op this year and loved it. they have learned alot.

[SnowWhite]

My second grader and I are doing this right now as a very loose, add-on, fun when we want it type program. :iagree: It works well for young children, *and* you can get as in-depth as you like for your fourth grader. You will likely use more of the factual history and geography books than I am with a 2nd grader.

[wyomom]

We did GTG this year with my 5yr old ds. It was a bit much for him to do it all like they had laid out because he couldn't handle the writing and notebooking part along with Saxon math and learning to write and read. Or maybe I should say mom couldn't. We just used the countries as a guide to checking out library books to read to him and he loved it. If we had time that day, I tried to do an activity with him out of the book too but most of the time I got the head on the table groan out of him so we stuck with just reading and looking at the pictures in the books. He really liked learning about the science suggestions.

 

We also were doing Prairie Primer with my 12 and 10 yr old dd's at the time which required lots of library books as well, so I really think I was just getting burned out on trying to tie all of that together. I finally dropped GTG for ds and just used the science library books the girls were using for their prairie primer study and it worked better for us. If I wasn't trying to teach the older two at the same time, I would have LOVED to go more in depth with ds on GTG however and I really think I may use this more when he is in 2nd grade possibly. He needs more time to mature and grow a longer attention span before he can enjoy GTG. My 4th grade 10 yr old enjoyed what lessons we did do however and my 6th grade 12 yr old loved helping me gather the books and plan the week of lessons out of it. I decided we had to quit for awhile though when she was getting upset with her brother for NOT liking it as well as she did and NOT wanting to do ALL the suggested activities exactly how they were written in the book. She is completely anal about following exactly what the books say. So that burned us all out a little. Ds was not having fun at that point.

 

Julie