Teaching geography

[kristinannie]

Right now, we are just covering geography as part of history. When we talk about a country or region, we look it up on the globe and in an atlas. We look and see if there are lakes, rivers, mountains, etc. We also look up places we come across in our read alouds. I know this is enough for K. However, I am wondering about as my kids get older... Is it beneficial to use geography workbooks? I am not a huge workbook fan, but I can see the benefit of these. Which ones do you like? If you don't use workbooks, how do you teach geography?

[Lots of boys]

We are using Evan Moor Beginning Geo for my K'er and Gr. 2'er. It is pretty basic but a good overall book. I use it right after history and we try to tie it all in.

[Mrs Twain]

I am trying to figure out a good plan for geography, so thank you for starting this thread. I am interested to read the replies.

 

My favorite things so far are ideas from The Core (Bortins) which tell how to teach geography through drawing maps, and Hillyer's old book _A Child's Geography of the World_. I haven't looked at the Evan-Moor workbooks yet, but I like a couple of things I have bought from them.

[kristinannie]

Has anyone used this?

[lakshmi]

Right now, we are just covering geography as part of history. When we talk about a country or region, we look it up on the globe and in an atlas. We look and see if there are lakes, rivers, mountains, etc. We also look up places we come across in our read alouds. I know this is enough for K. However, I am wondering about as my kids get older... Is it beneficial to use geography workbooks? I am not a huge workbook fan, but I can see the benefit of these. Which ones do you like? If you don't use workbooks, how do you teach geography?

 

We started at co-op last year with world geography and this year with USA geography. My dd are 6 & 7 and have found Road Trip, USA to be okay. It is nice because it groups into areas and has some interesting facts and is nicely put together.

[Bang!Zoom!]

This is my most often visited site for Geography online:

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/geography-education

[tomandlorih]

Currently we are doing it just like you (with Winter Promise Children Around the World).. but starting next year I am going to try the Evan-Moor Daily Geography Grade 3.. And if we like it we'll continue, if not we might try the Complete Book of Maps and Geography.. It covers all kinds of things I wouldn't think to mention on my own. Different kinds of maps for example(physical, political, topography, economic). Anyway, I also have Charlotte Mason's Elementary Geography put out by Queen's homeschool that I need to drag out and look at.

 

I'm :bigear: for what other ideas are out there! Thanks for starting this thread!

[Classically Minded]

In 1st grade during the summer, I bought "The Usborne Geography Encyclopedia: With Complete World Atlas" to use as a spine. However, we love to learn geography through games. We play them a few times a week and here are the ones we own and recommend:

 

Scrambled States Game (my dd's favorite!)

10 Days in the USA

10 Days in the Americas

Talicor Where in the World?

 

We eventually plan to get all the 10 day games, they have them for Africa, Asia and Europe as well.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

We've used the Trail Guide to World Geography and the Trail Guide to US Geography. They come as physical books and as downloads. There are also cds of Student Notebooking pages (which includes all needed blank maps) and a lapbook in different print and digital formats.

 

These are at 3 levels so they can be used with multiple ages at one time and provide an excellent overview of geography. I highly recommend the Student Notebook pages.

 

http://www.curriculum-for-homeschool.com/AdvancedSearch.do

 

We have also used National Geographic's Map Essentials Program. Various grade level programs that present cartography and map usage at several levels.

 

http://www.ngsp.com/Product/SocialStudies/nbspnbspMapEssentials/tabid/585/Default.aspx

 

I've bought several of these publications through Great Books Academy as well as from various online sources.

 

Finally we are currently using Runkle's World Physical Geography. Another excellent program but probably not for elementary ages. Some sample pages are at http://www.runklepub.com/

 

I have supplemented all of these with our own program of state and country name/location work.

[Mrs Twain]

And if we like it we'll continue, if not we might try the Complete Book of Maps and Geography.. It covers all kinds of things I wouldn't think to mention on my own. Different kinds of maps for example(physical, political, topography, economic).

 

Update to earlier post:

I just bought The Complete Book of Maps & Geography workbook (listed as grades 3-6, but I am going to try it with my 1st grader as well as my 3rd grader). It looks very good. It is over 300 pages, and it cost about $10 on Amazon. It contains many of the skills you see on the scope and sequences for geogrphy, such as map skills, compass, reading different kinds of maps, U.S. regions, continents, oceans, hemispheres, latitude, longitude, time zones. My dh (who mainly teaches our weekely geography lesson) thinks it is a great book and is looking forward to using it.

 

To try to be systematic in covering geography (i.e. trying to cover all of those things that don't happen to come up in the history and literature reading), I use The Core Knowledge K-8 Sequence (Hirsch). It is a listing of knowledge and skills for students to cover grade by grade. I like using it sort of as a checklist to see how I am doing and to make sure I don't have any major gaps in my curriculum. Throughout the history/social studies sections are goals for geography each year. For instance, I can't quite remember, but I think for K you teach continents and oceans. If you are interested in looking at that, you can download the Sequence for free here:

http://www.coreknowledge.org/download-the-sequence

[TheAutumnOak]

The only thing I would like to add is that you may want your dc to label maps when they get older...There is a CD of maps called "Blackline Maps" that let you print out many different maps of many different areas, from ancient times to the present...We use TOG so I use their "MapAids" for my oldest, but if I did not use TOG, I would use the Blackline Maps...They are here...

[LarrySanger]

Aha, one of my favorite subjects (just now). I wrote a couple of blog posts, "What is the best way to teach geography?" and "What are the best books about countries for children?" I also started this thread about geography books.

 

I'm pretty partial to the method we're using now. Basically, we set aside fifteen minutes or so after lunch, daily, to read 2-4 pages of a geography book. The books mostly introduce different countries, organized by continent. Our favorite series are True Books and National Geographic Countries of the World. We've done Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and now we're almost done with Colombia. Chile and Argentina next, to finish our study of Andes Mountains countries, and then we'll wrap up with Venezuela and Brazil. We'll skip the small countries (the Guyanas, Uruguay, and Paraguay) and didn't spend so long on Bolivia. (I wouldn't recommend doing them in the precise order we've tackled them--we did because we started by using a "spine," and Peru was the first South American country in the "spine." In fact, we have a couple of spines (children's atlases that feature a significant amount of text about the countries), and while we still use these, they have become practically irrelevant once we've reading whole books. We toss off the sections about the area of South American we're studying in a day or two, and basically just use it for reinforcement/review. We have also read a couple books about South America in general.

 

As we read the books, we very frequently look things up, either on maps in the book itself (especially when using the superlative National Geographic books), or on a 16" floor globe we have (for less-detailed things), or a ginormous atlas we have (for more-detailed things). When there is not a picture of a place or thing in the text, we usually look for one on the iPad. Using iPad to search Google Images is one of the best ways to supplement and make things "visual"--we also do this with history study. We also frequently look for videos to illustrate things like music, ethnic groups, and more about what things looks like in general. The iPad also has a couple of good apps, Google Maps, Google Earth, and a couple National Geographic map apps. I've also had him trace simple, line political maps of South America and Colombia using tracing paper. But I'd say 75% of our work is reading the books about countries.

 

I've never seriously considered using a canned geography curriculum. It's simply not detailed enough and frequently involves what seems to be busywork, which I would like to avoid.

 

My argument for using books, and not doing so much map copying, projects, or worksheets, is simple: it's more efficient and I think he'll learn and retain more in the long run. Of course, it's impossible for him to retain all, or even half, of the information he's exposed to--but he's exposed to so much more, and such a richer and richly interconnected variety of information, that he comes to "live in" a continent. Factual information such as a country's capital is becomes second nature, because it's mentioned many times in different contexts: several times in the text, in our study of the globe, atlas, and map apps, pictures, videos, etc. Because of the rich variety of media, our focus on only the best geography books, and our daily (albeit fairly brief) exposure, we have come to enjoy the time learning about different countries. The other day, my son had another 10 minutes of reading to do in his daily hour of reading, so he read six pages of the National Geographic Colombia book--which bothered me, because now I'm not going to be able to read it! We are as it were slowly travelling around South America. Because we've learned so much, things that might seem dull, like the varieties of Indian groups or different geographical areas (e.g., "Los Llanos" grasslands in Colombia and Venezuela, or the Guajira Desert which I hadn't heard about before), become genuinely interesting. It really, really helps--in fact, is absolutely essential--that we look at pictures and videos of things we're unfamiliar with, or things which we think might be impressive to look at. Combining a reasonably detailed text with lots of visuals makes all the difference.

 

I happen to think that study of geography is at least as important as modern language study. If a large part of the reason for studying a modern language is to be able to get around in that country and to understand the culture, how much more important is it to study the country itself, head on? Geography is necessary is you want to travel, to understand international news, and to formulate opinions on foreign policy. It also helps a child to understand the wider variety of current human experience, history, landscapes, etc. It makes a child more worldly and less provincial--and hence capable of understanding many things he might not otherwise be able to understand (or, not so easily) when it comes to subjects that really demand an open yet critical mind, such as philosophy, history, and world literature.

[kristinannie]

It covers all kinds of things I wouldn't think to mention on my own. Different kinds of maps for example(physical, political, topography, economic).

 

 

This is exactly what I am concerned about! Let me know what you end up using. I am really interested in the CM geography!