wendyroo Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 If you used SOTW in the early elementary years and did the map work in the activity guide, did you also do a separate geography or map skills program? Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duckens Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 We have.I am hoping that my children will grow up to know how to use GPS AND know how to read a paper map. I also want my children to know that there is more to the world than Iowa. We love Iowa, but not everyone lives as we do, and we need to know that.1) We are doing this set of workbooks. There are 4 in the series. They are short.Map Skills 2) Between K and 1, we read the states series from our local library, one book at a time. I made a book for her to record the state flower, bird, capital, etc. We used a U.S. sticker map. an app on the nook, and a U.S. puzzle.3) Now we are doing world studies (when we have time). We are using: --Top Secret Adventures, which is expensive, but dd loves!!! You can get a deal through Homeschool Buyer's Coop or Educents. I can't remember which. It is good for how irregularly we get to it because it is unit studies. --Sheppard Software --Geopuzzles --Map of the World by Siddhartha Singa Totally worth the modest cost. It's a thrill to see your 2nd grader draw Australia, and New Zealand, and Tasmania, and New Guinea. And identify them all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 --Map of the World by Siddhartha Singa Totally worth the modest cost. It's a thrill to see your 2nd grader draw Australia, and New Zealand, and Tasmania, and New Guinea. And identify them all. Thank you for sharing that; it looks great!! I wanted to do some map blobbing next year but I did not know exactly how to start. Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 Just so you know, I have been pleasantly surprised that the map work in SOTW 4 is more challenging than it had been in previous years. Duckens' map the world ebook by Siddhartha Singh looks intriguing! And a bit scant, so I'm glad to have the recommendation! :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 Just so you know, I have been pleasantly surprised that the map work in SOTW 4 is more challenging than it had been in previous years. Duckens' map the world ebook by Siddhartha Singh looks intriguing! And a bit scant, so I'm glad to have the recommendation! :-) Does the map work in the SOTW volumes give exposure to a lot of different parts of the world? For example, if we do SOTW 1 next year, will the kids see and mark up maps of places in most of the continents? I guess I'm wondering if I could use that as a loose geography spine, and just expand on that map work by finding those areas on a globe and modern day map and perhaps reading a book about that area or one country in that area. My kids are still very, very young, so I don't care about being thorough, I just want them to be introduced to many different regions. As for the Mapping the World ebook, I was intrigued enough that I bought it this morning. I bought the combo pack, but I've only looked at the USA portion. It looks great. I love that he had done all the thinking for me and broken it down into simple steps. He doesn't just say first we draw the outline, but instead first we draw three simple rectangles right next to each other then starting right here we draw a funny looking W. Three things I noted, however... 1) I don't think English is his first language. It's not like the text is full of mistakes, per se, just he uses some stilted phrasing and unusual word choices. I noticed the same thing on his website. In the end, it doesn't really detract from the program at all. 2) You don't end up with a map that looks just like the real thing. He calls the map you are drawing a thematic map; most of the states are shown as rectangles, triangles, trapezoids, etc. It makes it easy to see which states are neighbors, and even the relative sizes and positioning are pretty close...but his map of Michigan does not have a thumb or an upper peninsula and his Florida is more triangle than panhandle. However, he does constantly show the real map in the ebook for comparison purposes, so there is nothing stopping you from making your Michigan thumbier or Florida panhandlier. 3) The second mnemonic he introduces in the USA booklet is Ideate Your Argument...and Your stands for Utah. Really? There was no simpler mnemonic to remember Idaho, Utah, Arizona? What about I'd Use Airplanes. I don't know if all his mnemonics are quirky, but I can make up my own if necessary. Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carriede Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 If you used SOTW in the early elementary years and did the map work in the activity guide, did you also do a separate geography or map skills program? Wendy Thanks for asking! I'm doing Evan Moor's Beginning Geography with my K'er. He loves doing the workbook pages. We'll being doing SOTW next fall for 1st, but I need more geo NOW as we're almost done with BG. Blobbing is also on my list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SereneHome Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 I am doing Evan Moor and Down to Earth Geography. He likes them both. There is a lot of coloring and exercises and since he is finally reading on his own, he can do it while I do things with younger ones. Down to Earth comes with CD disk, so you can print as many pages as you want, which is great for me, since I have two more kids that follow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 Thanks for asking! I'm doing Evan Moor's Beginning Geography with my K'er. He loves doing the workbook pages. We'll being doing SOTW next fall for 1st, but I need more geo NOW as we're almost done with BG. Blobbing is also on my list. I'm currently doing Maps, Charts and Graphs A with my K'er and the preschooler tagging along, and it is quite a bit too easy for my K'er and just about right for my preschooler. As I was thinking about next year, I assumed we would do Maps, Charts and Graphs B (or maybe C), but when I looked at the samples they seemed to be covering almost exactly the same stuff as this year. Yes, the higher levels get a bit more quantitative when discussing map scale and distances and the like, but it seems like the vast majority of it would be review. I really want to be able to combine the kids in the content subjects (to the extent the preschooler is interested in participating), so I think I need something more open ended. Everyone (even the baby) could do map blobbing at their own level. Everyone could enjoy and lean at their own level from reading picture books about modern day geography corresponding to the regions we are reading about in SOTW. Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 Down to Earth comes with CD disk, so you can print as many pages as you want, which is great for me, since I have two more kids that follow! Thank you for mentioning this series; I had never heard of it. My kids are very close in age to yours, and being able to print multiple pages is great. Often the 1 year old wants to sit and do parts of school with us, and more and more often he isn't satisfied doing his scribbling on a blank piece of paper - he wants the same paper the big kids have!! Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 The map work does give exposure to a lot of different parts of the world. Everywhere the text goes, the map work follows. However, the world in previous eras did not have a lot of today's borders. Sometimes this is an issue I need to explain. It could also be an issue if you want your child learning modern-day geography starting now. It is great to revisit places in SOTW and set them developing into their modern-day countries, but that may not be what you are looking for when you are talking about teaching your kids geography. We just finished the map work in SOTW 4 that had us labeling the Balkan countries. We are all learning a lot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 I found the geography in SOTW adequate for years 1-4. In years 5-8 I used the Evan Moore daily geography. Easy peasy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrine Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 We are in SOTW book 1 and I am using Evan Moor K-2 Geography separately. We did about half of it last year for K along with Evan Moor Native American History pockets as a spine for social studies. We just finished the last of learning about basic landforms and moved into learning the specific names of continent and oceans. We like it a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tawlas Posted November 13, 2014 Share Posted November 13, 2014 We're only on SOTW 2 so take this with a grain of salt, but here's what we've been doing for geography. -All the map work activities, including finding the particular area on the map on the globe and/or world map. -We have a map of the continents, our country and the globe in our school area, a map of the world in their reading corner, a giant map of our province (with roads etc) in the hall outside their rooms and playroom with cities we're familiar with marked with pins. -Including geography in map work. First the continents, then the oceans, then countries of North America, then provinces of Canada (we're Canadian). Next? Not sure. but they really enjoy it and are so proud of their accomplishments so I'll have to add something soon! -A simple separate geography workbook, as of yet, just for the older two kids. Last year it was Beginning Geography, this year the first book in Apple Press's series, which focuses on Canada. Next year it goes more deeply into Canadian geography and then moves on to global geography. -This year I'm also doing a separate geography book - Canada, My Country by Donna Ward in concert with the Apple Press workbook. That will morph into a separate Canadian history book (also by Donna Ward) next year to co-incide with SOTW 3, stretched out of 1 1/2 years. I feel like there's not enough Canada in there. This will be used along side with Apple Press's second geography book. Depending on retention, this may or may not be repeated in logic and rhetoric stages with different materials. We'll see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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