My friend Christy Gould did this amazing study with her kids on geography I love it! I hope you enjoy it as well.
Last spring, a sort of perfect storm of book acquisition
spiraled us into studying world geography this year. I was browsing a used
curriculum sale when a world geography
book (for practically free) caught my eye. As I tucked it away on a shelf
for “future use,” a workbook
on famous missionaries that I’d purchased a few months earlier caught my
eye. (Clearly, I have a problem with buying things without a clear intention to
use them.)
With both of those
things in hand, I decided to splurge on a literature guide I’d heard great
things about. GiveYour Child the World, by Jamie Martin, is sort of like Honeyfor a Child’s Heart with a global focus: lists of books – the best books – divided up by age and
continent. I jotted down a quick plan for the year – a global overview in
September, and one continent per month after that – and made a note of which
missionaries we’d study for each. Then I opened up Give Your Child the World and went absolutely nuts putting books on
hold at the library!
Since the beginning of September, lunch time has become our
geography read-aloud time. I keep all of the related books in one place, so the
kids or I can grab one or two every day and bring it to the table. We’ve had
excellent discussions on food, water, poverty, disease, architecture, and more.
The missionary studies are best suited for older elementary, so my oldest has
done those on his own, while his next-younger brother helps with the generic
geography text. Here they are, using our big wall world map to find rivers and
lakes in Africa:
In order to synthesize the different information we’re
taking in through fiction and nonfiction children’s books as well as the
geography workbook, we’re making posters of each continent. I (well, my
husband, truthfully) used the projector at church to project continent outlines
onto the wall, where I taped up poster board and traced it on in pencil. Each
time we read a story about a new country, I label that country in Sharpie. The
boys have added mountains, big cities, rivers, lakes, and topography with
markers as they learned about them.
Among the books I got from the library in September were two
kids’ cookbooks. My children are not
adventurous eaters, but I thought this might help broaden their palates. Sure,
they all eagerly agreed that they would LOVE to try sweet raisin couscous for
breakfast when we stood in the grocery store aisle and picked it out, but it
was unanimously voted down the next morning. (By the children, that is. My husband
and I loved it!) We’ll keep trying, anyway.
All of these pictures are of our Africa study, because that
was our October focus. We’re well into North America at the time of this
writing, and it continues to be a favorite subject as we read good literature
and add details to our poster! We’re learning how to use the encyclopedia set
to look up country facts, we’re reading chapter books set in different
countries, we’re studying artwork and noticing differences between those children
and ourselves. I made the decision to study geography this year on a whim, but
I’m so glad I did!
Christy Gould is the wife of a pastor and a homeschooling stay-at-home mom to five boys under eight. When she’s not refereeing little-boy disputes, you can find her in the kitchen, whipping up real-food meals and toiletries in equal measure. She chronicles her adventures in homeschooling and life at www.workbepraise.blogspot.com.
