Teaching Geography

I have been homeschooling my six children for nearly 20 years, and geography is one of the areas I have never felt I was covering adequately. Probably, one reason is that it is not something you "finish". Not like a math program for 5th grade, or a science book for 3rd grade, that you get to the end of the book and know you are done. It is one of those subjects, like reading and writing, that needs to spiral every year.

If you are like me, and have been frustrated by the lack of easy-to-use materials, let me share with you some things I have recently used that I enjoyed:

For young children (preschool to early elementary):

"The Amazing Pop-Up Geography Book" by Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels is very colorful and informative.

"Beginning Maps & Globes" workbook by Learning Horizons contains some hands-on work sheet pages.

Maps & Globes" by Jack Knowlton is an excellent introductory book for early elementary grades.

We have discovered that we actually live very close to a Meridian Marker which we intend to find soon. On one of our daily walks in our neighborhood we found an elevation marker! All these things contribute to their knowledge of geography. Traveling would be a great geography lesson, but our pocketbook doesn't often take us more than 2 hours from home.

In the younger grades, if you consistently point out locations as they occur naturally in a book, or hear in the news, then as they get older it's much easier to memorize many countries.

One of the best things you can do, is to keep a globe, a world map, and a U.S. map handy at all times. Whenever we read or hear about a place, we try to take the time to stop right then and look up where it is located.

"Missionary Stories with the Millers" is excellent for locating new countries by having a world map showing the place at the beginning of each chapter.

A wonderful resource I bought at a bargain price was "The World Book Encyclopedia of People and Places". The lady selling it convinced me to buy it by citing that a boy who won the National Geography Bee claimed they were what helped him learn geography so well. They are a nice, colorful set of 6 which have every country listed with important data like climate, population, national language, etc. They make it very easy to look up any country and get a quick overview of it.

One of my older children once won the geography bee in 5th grade, but I don't think I can take much credit for it. I didn't have this encyclopedia set then, either ;) He was just one of those easy kids to educate that was like a sponge. That, combined with his extremely competitive nature, and a challenge to enter the competition inspired him to go for the goal.

Finally, I believe I have found the geography book I've always needed. Amazingly, it's called, "The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide" by Maggie Hogan and Cindy Wiggers. I recently purchased it, so I'll plan to write up something more about it after I've used it a little!

I happened on to the idea of notebooking their geography studies, and that too will be something new we implement this year. If you have great ideas for notebooking geography, please let me know.

Now I can sell all those other resources I bought in the past that either didn't use, or just didn't work for us. That doesn't mean they won't work for you, though - - so, would you like to buy some used geography resources at a good price?