How We Do Geography

I love geography. And, thankfully for homeschooling, there are a bunch of really great ways that we learn it!

I got hooked on these really great games from the Out of the Box company. The titles of the games are 10 Days in Africa, 10 Days in the USA, and 10 Days in Europe. I am not sure if they have a South America one but I do know the Asia game is no longer in print or something because I tried to get it at Christmas and it was like $70! Boop and I play a lot. The girls are hit or miss. EG would like to play but she needs to be just a little bit older.

Another way we do geography is we have this really great book called Operation World. It breaks the whole year down into daily ways we can pray for every country in the world. At the beginning of each month I put all of the countries down on their corresponding dates on my big wall calendar. Most every morning, during our family prayer time we pray for that country. And then, at some point during the day, the kids can show me where the country is on our great big schoolroom world map and they get 5 chocolate chips or 5 M & Ms if we have them. They love that!

I just found a really great website where I could "order" printable maps that go along with our daily readings. So, when the kids grab their books to read, they take the maps and look at where they are reading about. Once every few days I do a quick little check up and have them show me some of the places they have been reading about.

Lastly, every so often we read this really cool book called The Book of Marvels. It has a couple pages on some really great places in the world. Some we have heard of like the Panama Canal and The Golden Gate Bridge and others that are in remote places in small countries. We have enjoyed reading the history about the places written about and then Googling recent pictures. The book was published back in the 1950s by a man who personally traveled to all the places.

I am sure there are gaps. And I am willing to live with that but Geography is one of my most favorite parts about homeschooling . . .