X-post: Trail Guide to U.S. Geography vs. Visits to North America by Simply Charlotte Mason

[bluebonnetgirl]

I have decided to do a year of US or North American Geography and am trying to decide between these two curricula:

 

Visits to North America by Simply Charlotte Mason:

https://simplycharlo...-north-america/

 

Trail Guide to U.S. Geography:

https://www.christia...-PD-Description

 

Do I have my consensus right? , i.e:  Both have mapping, the difference is the other stuff.  Simply Charlotte Mason Visits To North America focuses more on literature: picture books, cultural coffee table books, and other literature with corresponding writing prompts for paragraphs.   Trail Guides has a menu of open ended research tasks using online research and then notebooking the findings

 

Which is more open and go, and more interesting for middle school age kids who are visual and concrete?

 

Thanks so much for any feedback.

 

[PeterPan]

I've got one or both of the Trail Guides, I forget. I bought them to use with dd (straight ADHD) years ago. I'm not sure what ages and issues you're working with. I'm glad you started this thread, because I'm looking for some stuff for my ds, things that are pretty straightforward that he might be able to use with a worker a couple days a week. Definitely don't want worksheets, which is what most state studies devolve into, and he's really not going to do a research-driven trivia question approach like the trail guides. 

 

I'm wondering if the SCM Visits has a similar flavor to the Exploring Nature with Children stuff we did a couple years ago. It was fabulous, kind of just right, loved it. I was thinking to myself today that I need to find something for geography that is like ENC. Ds needs that hands-on, that exploration. 

 

The SCM is intriguing in it's exploration of Canada and Mexico as well. That would seem to have a good effect on having context and awareness, rather than just making it odd fact rehearsal. I don't think ds will retain much from the picture studies of families without some kind of prompts or ways to relate. There's a lot of perspective taking there. The SCM samples seem to have prompts for that. I like that it is multi-age. Ds would span across activities like that.

 

So yeah, charming.