Geography book suggestions

[LauraClark]

I'm working on curriculum for next year for ds11 (will be 7th grade). He's pretty proficient in general geographical knowledge: where countries are located, physical features, major cities around the world, etc. I was thinking of having him choose a country every two weeks or so and read about it using nonfiction books from the library. I still like that idea, but our library stinks-an extremely limited selection. Anyone have any recommendations for books? I'd rather not have to purchase separate books on each country-maybe one book that has several pages on each country? I'm also open to any other geography ideas-I don't want a workbook, it will suck all of the joy and learning from this child, just informational type books.

[SilverMoon]

You might look at the spines for Build Your Library level 7, which is a world geography year. I'm planning on using the lit and readers with my youngest this coming year; he'll also be a 7th grader. 

I really like the look of DK's Where on Earth; Geography as You've Never Seen it Before for a supplement. There's a World Geography & Cultures textbook on it's way to me but I haven't seen a good sample yet. If we use it we'd just be reading and discussing like any other book and not just working through the textbook. 

[LauraClark]

2 hours ago, SilverMoon said:

You might look at the spines for Build Your Library level 7, which is a world geography year. I'm planning on using the lit and readers with my youngest this coming year; he'll also be a 7th grader. 

I really like the look of DK's Where on Earth; Geography as You've Never Seen it Before for a supplement. There's a World Geography & Cultures textbook on it's way to me but I haven't seen a good sample yet. If we use it we'd just be reading and discussing like any other book and not just working through the textbook. 

Oo-thank you! I do like some of those spines. I also saw The Flag Book as I was looking at some of those resources-that will be a fun one for him!

[knitgrl]

It's too bad you don't have a good library to borrow from. Otherwise, Give Your Child the World might be a good resource.

[Lori D.]

If you don't mind older (almost 30yo) and out-of-print (but that means inexpensive used), Circling the Globe is a great nonfiction resource for the middle school years.

[caffeineandbooks]

Your family might enjoy Window on the World from Operation World.  It's a prayer resource rather than a "geography" book, but it includes double page spreads on a couple hundred countries, with photos, demographics, "a day in the life" type stories and prayer points.

[LauraClark]

1 hour ago, caffeineandbooks said:

Your family might enjoy Window on the World from Operation World.  It's a prayer resource rather than a "geography" book, but it includes double page spreads on a couple hundred countries, with photos, demographics, "a day in the life" type stories and prayer points.

Thanks! I actually have that in my line up of options to use if there is a people group in the area we are studying. I had purchased it several years ago, but we never really used it. I'm excited to get good use of it this next year!

[LauraClark]

2 hours ago, knitgrl said:

It's too bad you don't have a good library to borrow from. Otherwise, Give Your Child the World might be a good resource.

Have you used it? I'm a little confused looking at it on Amazon: is it book suggestions? Are there other things that go along with it? Amazon has only given me a few pages to look through.

[LauraClark]

2 hours ago, Lori D. said:

If you don't mind older (almost 30yo) and out-of-print (but that means inexpensive used), Circling the Globe is a great nonfiction resource for the middle school years.

Oh boy does that make me feel old to see the copyright of that book... And I was 10 when it was written... And it's considered "older" now 😭. Just kidding. Thanks! I will look into this and see if I can find some example pages somewhere in the Internet.

[knitgrl]

38 minutes ago, LauraClark said:

Have you used it? I'm a little confused looking at it on Amazon: is it book suggestions? Are there other things that go along with it? Amazon has only given me a few pages to look through.

It's pretty much a big, fat annotated bibliography. It breaks books down by continent, also by age group. There's a country index, as well as a historical time period index. Like I said, it's handy if you have a good library to borrow from.

[Lori D.]

19 hours ago, LauraClark said:

Oh boy does that make me feel old to see the copyright of that book... And I was 10 when it was written... And it's considered "older" now 😭. Just kidding. Thanks! I will look into this and see if I can find some example pages somewhere in the Internet.

lol. And I was much OLDER than YOU when it was written. 😉 

I embedded photos of a few pages from Circling the Globe in this past thread: "5 th grade geography". If you need more samples, private message me, and I'll see what I can do. 😉

Also some good resource ideas in that same thread. And also a lot of ideas in this past thread: "Considering a geography year" (for an 8th grader). In one of my posts way down in that thread, I linked a lot of movies to go with different countries, plus resources for doing games, recipes, music, activities, etc. to go along with the cultural studies.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Lori D.

[LauraClark]

7 hours ago, Lori D. said:

lol. And I was much OLDER than YOU when it was written. 😉 

I embedded photos of a few pages from Circling the Globe in this past thread: "5 th grade geography". If you need more samples, private message me, and I'll see what I can do. 😉

Also some good resource ideas in that same thread. And also a lot of ideas in this past thread: "Considering a geography year" (for an 8th grader). In one of my posts way down in that thread, I linked a lot of movies to go with different countries, plus resources for doing games, recipes, music, activities, etc. to go along with the cultural studies.

That is perfect-thank you so much! I'm hoping to turn this into a 2 year thing and having the next two boys join in (in a grade appropriate way). I've ordered a comparative religions book (which I see is what you did with yours also). We also plan on having dinner with a friend once a month to explore recipes from some of the countries, so thank you for the recipe links too. And games are a great idea!

Follow up question: I was thinking of tying this to our history (mostly SOTW3), but that would have us jumping all over the world. I've listed all the places it touches on and added some from other regions not covered (mostly for the sake of the family doing this with us-that way we get to every continent at least). Is that going to be too chaotic to be in Mexico, then Poland, then Japan, then Central America for example? I was thinking recipe/meal wise it would be better to jump around than to have a couple months of very similar recipes.

[LauraClark]

8 hours ago, Lori D. said:

embedded photos of a few pages from Circling the Globe in this past thread: "5 th grade geography

Oh, and thank you-I think this book looks exactly like what I was hoping to find. Putting it in my Amazon cart now.

[Lori D.]

5 hours ago, LauraClark said:

...I'm hoping to turn this into a 2 year thing and having...comparative religions...

Two years -- yes! I so WISH we could have done a 2-year study -- as it was, we only managed a fast fly-by of Eastern Hemisphere, and we were reading a TON that year -- and even then we couldn't go deep. 

We skipped any formal history when we did this for 2 reasons:
1. we had just completed 6 years of mostly chronological history, so it was fairly fresh (and we were ready for a BREAK from history focus)
2. you naturally get a lot of history mixed in with your religious and cultural studies, so not a big need to ALSO do a formal history

 

5 hours ago, LauraClark said:

...I was thinking of tying this to our history (mostly SOTW3), but that would have us jumping all over the world...  Is that going to be too chaotic to be in Mexico, then Poland, then Japan, then Central America for example? I was thinking recipe/meal wise it would be better to jump around than to have a couple months of very similar recipes...

IMO, yes. Way too chaotic and disjointed. Very hard to see/make connections.

I would organize by geographic area, rather than by SOTW3 order (which jumps all around).

Going by geographic area made it much easier for us to absorb info about adjacent areas and see the changes/variations/connections in cultures and religions. Also, it was easier to see some of the history between adjacent areas. We could see how nations impacted one another, and how there were wars/conflicts of culture, as well as trade and at times blending of cultures and religions. For example, Buddhism actually started in India, but Buddhist monks traveled east and north into multiple far-east Asian countries, which became the area where Buddhism was more widely practiced than in India...

I can't imagine we would have been able to make those bonus connections by jumping from one nation to another on the opposite side of the globe. That might have ended up just being: "And now, here's the next nation with the food and clothes that are different from ours..." 😉  

But, that is JMO -- YMMV.  😉 

(An idea: instead of organizing by SOTW, why not plug in SOTW as it fits with your geographically-based studies?  SOTW is so broken down into different countries and hopping here and there, it would be easy enough to just plug in the few chapters from the four SOTW volumes when you cover a particular nation or area.)

re: food being too similar
No, that's not an issue at all. Sushi from Japan is very different from Pho from Vietnam which is very different from bao from China, which is very different from plov in Uzbekistan. Asia is VAST. And all the recipes of all the countries in Asia are NOT stir fry vegetables on rice, lol. So much to choose from that it will be easy to make very different recipes for different Asian nations. So no, I absolutely would not organize by recipe/meal. 😉 

One idea (of many many possibilities) for a breakdown to cover the world in 2 years (I skipped North America, as you likely will or have done a focused study on U.S. and/or Canada):

Year 1 = Eastern Hemisphere
4 weeks = Oceania
16 weeks = Asia
16 weeks = Africa

Year 1 = Middle East / Western Hemisphere
10 weeks = Middle East
10 weeks = Americas: South, Central, and Caribbean
16 weeks = Europe

Edited May 8, 2023 by Lori D.

[LauraClark]

47 minutes ago, Lori D. said:

One idea (of many many possibilities) for a breakdown to cover the world in 2 years (I skipped North America, as you likely will or have done a focused study on U.S. and/or Canada):

Thank you for this! You're right, it would be too chaotic, I was just desperately trying to make it work for some reason. As soon as I read that you confirmed I felt much more free to give that idea up-ha! On to write up a new plan (or rearrange the current plan).