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.

Find more of my geography picture book recommendations here.

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.