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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Around the World

Geography: Geography happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Although we are learning some geography through our history studies, we enjoy learning about our world as a separate subject in its own right. My absolute favorite resource has to be our Geography Songs CD. The tunes are very catchy and easy to sing along with. The last two songs on the CD are Continents/Oceans and Planets, which the boys have memorized.

Last year, I worked with Levi to learn the points of the compass, latitude and longitude, the equator, continents and oceans. Now we are working our way through the countries of the world using the Geography Songs CD and workbook. I am thrilled to have found the flip chart atlas (pictured above) to view while singing the songs and to use for review.

Also last year, I printed off pictures of landmarks around the world and pasted them to large index cards, writing information about the location on the back of the card. The boys and I enjoyed learning about these places and locating them on the map or globe. We will continue to add to our collection with landmarks relating to the area we are learning about in our current studies.


Our library happens to have a complete collection of Schlessinger Media's Countries Around the World DVDs. What a gold mine! We have watched (and will continue to utilize) these DVDs to learn more about the countries of the world.

Planning for geography might look something like this:

Day 1: Listen to geography song 2x while looking at area on flip chart atlas.
Day 2: Listen to geography song 2x while coloring black-line map from workbook.
Day 3: Read picture book relating to geographical area or add landmark card to collection. (Listen to song in car while running errands.)
Day 4: Have child point out countries on map and sing song.
Day 5: Watch travel video during TV time. Sing song.

(Repeat for as many weeks as necessary to learn song and locations of countries. Move on to next song when ready. No rush.)

Time allotted: 10-15 minutes daily.


Just for the fun of it, we may occasionally cook foods from our current geographical location using The Usborne Little Round the World Cookbook. It is indeed little, but has wonderful photographs, descriptions of food, and recipes... fascinating to look through, even if one doesn't use the recipes!

You can find more about our 'Around the World' studies here.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

heidi, i'm just wondering, where did you get that great flip chart. who is it published by? i've never seen anything like it before. what a wonderful resource.

Christi said...

I love the flip chart atlas as well - I would love to have that as a resource.

Thanks for the great ideas for incorporating geography!

Rebecca said...

Holy Toledo! I found your blog today....not even sure how I got here....but have spent every spare minute reading. reading. and reading.

I have found so much information and so much INSPIRATION here! I too, am homeschooling with a classical approach but have felt (all year) that I am not doing enough for my 6 yr old (our first official year). I feel confident now as to the WHY and certain of the HOW to get back on track.

You have devoted so much time to this blog and I just want you to know that it is not in vain. I am truly indebted. (Not to mention, as a lover of good photography myself, gotta love your beautiful pics. This blog is a winner all the way around! I added you to my reader now.

I wanted to let you know,a few years ago I had the priviledge of going to church with an incredibly talented woman who writes science curriculum and homeschools her (now adult/almost adult children). She is a BIG science and history buff (and talented in art as well) but to make a LONG story short: she has tons of free resources she has created and one in particular seems to me that you would appreciate. It is a free downloadable game called On VACATION AROUND THE WORLD and is a game about famous sights around the world. Really cool stuff. You can find it here:

http://ellenjmchenry.com/id102.html

Just thought you might like to know.

I do hope that you get updated about past comments, I see this post was written some time ago....