Geography

[MyLittleWonders]

Does anyone teach geography as a subject by itself (elementary ages). We use History Odyssey/Story of the World, so we do some map work (though not a map with every lesson). But, I'm thinking we need something more than that - something that doesn't try and tie itself to half a dozen other curriculum areas. (This has been on my mind lately anyway, but tonight we were watching a ball game and "God Bless America" was sang. Ds#1 wanted to make sure the woman sang "prairie" correctly - and I realized he doesn't know what a prairie really is except from what was described while listening to Little House on the Prairie.)

I'm not sure if I want to buy anything else or just make it up myself. I'm not sure if continent-by-continent would be good. I'm not even 100% sure what all I would want to cover - map reading skills, geographical areas (mountains, deserts, prairie, savannas, etc.), or ... ?

Any ideas? I'm also not totally sure if I want to tie it to anything else (for instance, studying Europe as a whole since we are studying the middle ages) or just have it stand-alone. I'm big on making everything fit together, but sometimes it can get a bit obnoxious.

[Eli&SkyesMom]

I would start with general map reading, reading a compass rose, that sort of thing. Then learn the oceans and the continents. Then break it down a bit smaller, show how each continent has individual countries. That is what we have done so far. Now this year, I plan on starting to learn the states. We are going to do it by region, begining with our own. We will learn the states that surround ours.

We are also using SOTW. For every lesson, I get out the globe and show DS the area we are talking about and point out what is around it. We have also used GoogleEarth to look at those places via satelite.

HTH!

[moominmamma]

Personally I would argue that knowledge of "prairie" gleaned from Little House books is probably more meaningful and robust than knowledge gleaned from looking at a map. Sure it would probably be nice to have both, but I think it's more important to have the meaningful understanding of place than to know how to define it or pick it out on a map.

I'm also of the opinion that the type of learning that flows from something a child is interested in is far more meaningful and more likely to be mastered and retained. So I resist the temptation of chopping things into "subjects" at all. Our school system calls it all "humanities" through to 10th grade, which I love. It's broad and inclusive and doesn't chop the world up into arbitrary compartments.

But back to the nuts and bolts of your question about learning geography. I cannot recommend Google Earth highly enough. It allows you to make the connection between macro-scale views of the earth and micro-scale views of individual landforms and the physical evidence of human activity. Flyovers, zooms, pans, 3D views, the compass, political borders, place names, transportation routes, photographs, rotations, distance measurements, everything infinitely scalable, it's all there. Just by playing around you can learn incredible amounts about geography. Just follow interests ... "Grandpa Dave lived in Nigeria for a few years when he was growing up; let's see what photos they have. First let's fly there..." Or "Remember you were asking about the Panama Canal? I'll bet we could find it." Or "Do you think pyramids will show up if we zoom in?" Or "Remember in that book they talked about how big the railyard was? Let's look and see!" Amazing resource. And free.

Miranda

[LilyGrace]

We did map reading practice with books like Once Upon A Map (lower grades book) and using the Eyeclops on a pirate map.

We break out the Geopuzzles every once in a while to learn our geography through history. We follow SOTW, but the maps there are mostly individual. When we're putting together the puzzle of Europe, for example, we can talk about the stories as we put the country-shaped pieces down adding in other info like where so-n-so lives or where this character in a book came from.

We take pretend trips. And real ones.

We take conversations from stories - yesterday the Kid mentioned mountains and how deep the range was in his fantasy book, and somehow that led to how big real ones are and the Donner party's travels.



There's a LOT of opportunities to learn geography without it needing to stand completely alone.

[LauraLoo]

I don't think everything needs to tie in exactly to what you're studying - Something fun that we did was to make a map of our neighborhood. We just drew it out and then positioned it for N, S, E, W. We didn't get to the point where we talked about scale, but that would have been next.

Making landscapes out of play dough or modeling clay is also fun for a 3-D effect. We did this and then talked about the raised portions of our globe.

Taking a compass in the car is also fun.

Looking at a map and using the mile scale to see how far distances to certain points are from each other can be interesting.

For us, starting out smaller and more local allows for a more meaningful larger association. I'm tired, so I hope that makes sense.

[elizawill]

we've used galloping the globe before and love it. my kids are currently taking it with their co-op. we also have used and enjoy the BCP geography lessons: http://www.cstone.net/~bcp/BCPIntro2.htm (they are divided by grade and month). hth.

[dotnetdiva]

:

We'll be starting SOTW/History Odyssey perhaps this spring, maybe sooner, maybe later, so I'm all ears!

This fall I am going to do some very basic "prep-work" between our prehistory studies and actual history. I have it all planned out to cover the 7 continents and a little about each, maps, directions, whatever it takes to better facilitate learning history.

Using FIAR this spring was a great jumping board to launch an introduction and interest in geography for us.

[dotnetdiva]

Thanks elizawill, that link will come in handy as I plan more stuff! Also took some ideas from the Lesson Pathways site...

[MyLittleWonders]

Thank you all with your suggestions and ideas! You have definitely given me food for thought and some direction.

[elizawill]

i just remembered a good website! i wanted to come back and share while it's on my mind! http://www.geomatters.com/

i can't believe i forgot that!! hth.

[MyLittleWonders]

Thanks for the links elizawill!

[babycarrier]

We use a children's world atlas. My son picks a country from the back, he references the page, we read the page or two on the country, he uses indexcards to draw a pic from the reading or write down a vocab word he picks out. Next, he puts a push pin into a map we have attached to a bulletin board, then he draws a flag of the country and labels the country's name in his "world passport".

Started with his love of maps, used some ideas from the board and incorporate more and more as he gets older.

[emilys_mom1]

We are using the Five in a row for this. Each book is written about a country or state. I have decided to chose the books that are out of the us. We also do the passport to go along with it. We are currently reading The Story of Ping and learning all about China. I usually study for about 2-3 weeks with each book and country.

[riversmommy]

I do! I'm using a book called Children Just Like Me(from UNICEF). We read about a child each week or so. We print out a map and he colors the countries. Sometimes we try to find the country on our big world map on the wall. I didn't really think he was getting it, but he can quickly identify South America and several countries within it. He's also picking up where the tropics are and why they're hot. This is just kindergarten so we're focusing on culture(what they eat, why they wear warm clothes, or no clothes at all, what their families do for a living) and also climate(Anarctica and the Artic are on the bottom and top and are both freezing)!

Also, learn the continent song from Montessori. It's easy and now he knows his continents!

We just learned about a little girl from Brazil and now we get an excuse to listen to bossanova for the rest of the day!

Geography is the BEST subject ever!!!!!