Geography Archives - Growing In Grace

5 hands-on ways to homeschool Geography

September 11, 2017Tracy

It’s sometimes hard to engage our busy learners in the study of facts. So many of the traditional methods of teaching a subject are just not a good fit for our movers and shakers. Thankfully, geography is one of those subject areas that lends itself to a lot of variety and hands-on fun. There are so many ways to teach geography in your homeschool, but here are five of my favorite ways to teach geography to my busy learners.

5 hands-on ways to homeschool geography

Create Clay, Salt Dough, or Cookie maps. We homeschool geography in a variety of ways, but getting our hands dirty with clay or dough is always a sure winner for my active, creative ADHD kiddos. When we studied Egypt, we took sugar cookie dough and sculpted the country of Egypt, complete with a frosted Nile and colored sugar sprinkle dessert. (This was pre-ADHD diet, but something that could be easily modified for food sensitivities.)

Six years later, we still love to create maps this way. This year, we began our geography by sculpting imaginary lands and geographic features in clay. I handed them my Geography from A to Z picture glossary, let them choose their favorites and include them in a map of an imaginary world, and then create that world out of clay.

Read Living Books. Reading about places around the world and connecting a story to a place is a powerful way to homeschool geography. Read about children, animals, or fairy tales from around the world. For instance, for one unit study early on in our adventure, we read the children’s adapted version of Around the World in 80 Days and followed our read-aloud on our map. How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World is another fun book that teaches geography with ingredients and a recipe!

Another of our favorites are the Legends and Leagues series. I usually start my kids in the original series in first grade, when they are old enough to read fairly well independently. The other Legends and Leagues books (North, South, East, and West) I usually assign a couple each year. These geography living books are silly, funny, and engaging. If your child likes Life of Fred math, he will enjoy Legends and Leagues.

Sharpen Map Skills by Drawing. Instead of the facts of where a country is located, have your child learn the skills of map reading and map making by drawing his own— of his bedroom, of your neighborhood, of a trip to the park. Depending on your child’s age and ability, have him complete the activity with map keys, compass rose, or grid locations.

Get hands-on with maps (literally). Rather than a map on the wall, I’ve opted for some more hands-on map variations through the years. One year, I printed an enlarged map that we’d been studying and glued it to a poster board, allowing my son to both color the map and then enact the story of Hannibal with his toy soldiers on our enlarged map.

We’ve done the beach-ball globe for quite awhile, which my kids have loved to toss around as well as look up countries we are reading about. And just last year, we added our new favorite, the scrunch map. This map is such an unusual texture. The kids love to spread it out on the floor, laying all over it to find what they are looking for. And equally as much fun is wadding the map back up and scrunching it back into it’s little bag. My kids are literally all over a map, and this close up sensory exploration fuels their love for learning geography.

Pray around the World. A simple way to homeschool geography is through praying for the world. Unreached people groups, current events, persecuted Christians—there are so many opportunities for our children to learn about the world around them through prayer. One of my favorite activities with my kids is to get out our scrunch map and have them pray for a country with their fingers on the location. Adding that little bit of extra sensory input really helps to engage my busy kiddos. We read about the country, about the people, about their struggles, and then all together touch the country on our map and pray for it.

Geography is a fantastic way for your hands-on learner to explore all of their world with all of their senses. Let them read, imagine, and create. Let them use their imagination to better understand the real world, every feature of it. And as they gain a love and appreciation for their world, they will also be fueled by a desire to discover more about that world.

Hands-on Geography

November 13, 2013Tracy

I will admit, as I planned and plotted for this year, I wondered if maybe—just maybe—I’d tried to do too much. After all, the activities of 3 different geography curriculums did seem a little excessive. But I couldn’t help but love how the three complimented each other so well, one filling in for the gaps of the other two and vice versa.

Surprisingly, we’ve had plenty of time for everything! I’m stunned and amazed at how smoothly all of the components have fit together. Just to clue you in, Oldest does the maps from Tapestry of Grace on our magnet board; this is probably his most intensive mapwork. Then, Oldest and Middlest complete the simpler map work from Story of the World before listening to their audio history lesson, and we play Mr. Sprinkle with that map. Quite honestly, this map time is more for Middlest, but Oldest enjoys the fun activity and review.

Last but not least, I added Leagues and Legends to our geography mix. Here’s why: my son needed to know how to use a map, not just how to locate Scandinavia and Normandy. L&L, as we affectionately call it, covers the equator, longitude and latitude, directions on a compass, how to draw your own map, and much more. The storybook tells a funny, memorable dialogue among three men, Mr. Tardy, Mr. Longitude, and Mr. Latitude. It’s short and thorough, and very entertaining.

Then, there’s the activity book, which has been a highlight for Oldest. There are enough activities to work one a week for about half the year. Some of the activities include toilet paper roll puppets for the characters, drawing a map of your room or neighborhood, coloring the different points on a compass, making your own compass, etc. And best of all, most of the activities are things he can complete by himself with a little instruction.

Rather than one more thing to do, Leagues and Legends has been another hands-on component to geography that my son looks forward to every week.

“Where in the world…” Geography game

October 4, 2013Tracy

I love pinterest. It’s an amazing place to find ideas, and this geography game idea has to be one of my new favorites.

"Where in the world is Mr. Sprinkle?" — “Where in the world is Mr. Sprinkle?”

Really, the game is a fun quiz. After the teaching has been done, I get out the sprinkles, place a few sprinkles on some of the places we are studying, and then call out “Mr. Sprinkle is in [fill in the blank].” For instance, “Mr. Sprinkle is in Rome,” “Mr. Sprinkle is in the Mediterranean Sea,” “Mr. Sprinkle is in the North Sea,” “Mr. Sprinkle…”—you get the idea.

The kids find the sprinkle and eat it! So awesome! Of course, you could do this with any candy or treat. But, as the original poster suggested, a sprinkle is not a lot of sugar to feel guilty about feeding your kids. They won’t ruin their lunch with this game. And, as an added bonus, the maps stay relatively clean. (But you could always put them in a sheet protector if you are concerned about smudges.)

Another fun part about this game is that Middlest can play and learn, too. If she seems stumped, I give her a clue by the color of the sprinkle. “Look for a blue sprinkle.” And that helps her to find it more quickly.

Most of all, the quiz becomes something to look forward to rather than a dreaded exercise. I love making learning fun, and this is a definite winner!

To read the original post about Mr. Sprinkle, click here.

Making Memory Work Memorable

April 17, 2013Tracy1 Comment

I love homeschooling. And one of the things I love most about it is getting to play with my kids (that’s right, we play!) But we play with a purpose.

We make art, we sing and do chants, we read stories, we solve puzzles—and we learn. And while I prescribe to the classical idea that young children are equipped for an amazing comprehension of facts, I don’t think all that memory work has to be dull drill. In fact, I think my kids would tell you that we have tons of fun.

As I’ve tried to actively incorporate memory work into every subject, I’ve also tried to actively vary how we do the memory work and repetition. For instance, we do have some flashcards—for math, for phonics, even for our history. But that’s not all we do.

Songs and chants

It amazes me just how much a child can learn when something is put to a tune or a rhythm. Last year, they memorized tons of countries they could barely pronounce simply because they loved the music. This year, we’re following the same concept. As much as I can, we sing what we want to learn, finding most of our music on either iTunes or youtube.

Hand Motions

When we aren’t singing, we’re moving (and often, we’re doing both). Hand gestures help to anchor the word pictures and concepts we are memorizing. We use hand gestures for Bible memory, poetry, and our history timeline. And I don’t come up with all of them on my own! Often, I’ll recruit their help to find a motion that will help them remember the ideas.

Flashcards

Okay, so it’s not all fun and games. But even the drill can be fun. For instance, sometimes I’ve taken our stack of flashcards outside to our favorite spot on the bridge. Sometimes, I let Middlest’s favorite monkey answer for her; we check to see how much Monkey has learned. Then, there’s the motivation that Dad just might “whup up” on them at our next unit celebration; after all their Daddy is a smart Daddy.

Lapbooks

I’ve also embraced lapbooking over the last couple of months. I resisted it for awhile because it’s messy, it takes some advanced planning, and it takes some space to store all of those projects. But I’ve also really liked them for a few reasons: lapbooking is a fun way to review memory work (who doesn’t like a flap book?); lapbooking allows us to get the big picture from all of the little facts we memorize (i.e. we can see the whole human body coming together as we memorize one organ and system at a time); lapbooking provides a means for me to begin teaching concepts of display and presentation for when they get older (think poster boards, display boards, and science fairs).

We lapbooked the kings of Israel and Judah. I wrote the names on popsicle sticks, and they matched them to the list in their lapbook. We also incorporated chant and rhythm as we recited our list. We didn't memorize the whole list, but they became very familiar with which kings were good and which were evil. — We lapbooked the kings of Israel and Judah. I wrote the names on popsicle sticks, and they matched them to the list in their lapbook. We also incorporated chant and rhythm as we recited our list. We didn’t memorize the whole list, but they became very familiar with which kings were good and which were evil.

So while we have a ton of memory work incorporated into our day from math, phonics, history, Bible, and science, it honestly just feels like a lot of playtime, which is exactly what I was going for—memory work that makes for fun memories.

Fun with Maps

April 10, 2013Tracy7 Comments

We’ve done a lot of experimenting this year as we’ve launched our first year of classical curriculum. I knew that would be the case, which has helped me to keep an open mind when things haven’t gone as well as I had hoped. Map work is one of those areas where we’ve done a lot of experimenting, trying to find the best method for learning our maps.

I love map work. It is a definite kinesthetic activity to add to a history study, and there are lots of different ways to explore them. I know, because I’ve tried several.

First, I made labels for the kids to stick to the maps as we learned the different areas. That worked okay, but I wasn’t thrilled. It was hard to review everyday, and they only got to put the stickers on once a week (not to mention it took a lot of label making).

Then, I put the map for the week in a page protector and had Oldest trace it each day with a dry-erase marker. He enjoyed that, but I wasn’t convinced that he was really learning all that I wanted him to learn. And it did demand a little bit of fine motor skills.

So we’re on our third attempt. And right now, I’m thrilled with it. I keep the answer key map in a page protector in his assignment notebook for him to review (we also review together during our read-aloud time). Then, I have a blank version of the map magnetized to the side of our file cabinet. I made “labels” (strips of an index card with a piece of adhesive magnet tape on the back) for him to stick to the map as he reviews.

Each day, I have assigned three or four new magnet labels for him to find on his map and label on the blank map. He adds his new magnets and reviews the old magnets each day. The activity is pretty independent, as he has the answers in his notebook. He has to find the sea or the city or the island name, etc., on his own. Of course, he loves to show me his work, and I review with him once he’s found the places.

It’s an activity that he is enjoying doing over and over again. After all, what kid doesn’t like to play with magnets. He’s really learning these locations from all the review. And though it takes a little more time for me to prep at the beginning of each week, it doesn’t take as much one-on-one during the week.

I also am going to be more selective with my maps and try to select maps that build a broader view each week, rather than skipping around the region. That way, I can reuse and review the magnets that I have made, and Oldest will get a better view of where his maps fit in with the big picture.

So far, it’s been a big win all around.

Notebooking Egypt

October 31, 2012Tracy

Last year was our first year to delve into notebooking with our geography study. But this year, I feel like I’m really embracing the process—adding more lapbooking elements, letting the kids create, and weaning ourselves from pre-made pages.

The result has been beautiful, in every sense. My son has really taken ownership of the process, letting me know what he’d like to do. I still have narration elements for some of the more complicated ideas that I want him to remember. But overall, he learns, he creates, he remembers.

Two of my favorites lately have been his Pharaoh page, which he completed shortly after our double-crown craft, and “The 10 Plagues” that included a flip book he colored and cut out (totally his idea, I just folded the paper to help him cut it out evenly).

And I will add that I am now a huge fan of colored paper for notebooking.

Little Pharaohs

October 26, 2012Tracy1 Comment

Another fun Egypt activity that we’ve done was to make the double-crown of Egypt that represented the Upper and Lower kingdoms. (idea from Pyramids! 50 hands-on activities to experience ancient Egypt)

This was super easy: wax paper, construction paper, and aluminum foil (for the cobra). No patterns or templates. I basically free-handed the entire thing, which is why the cobra is not recognizable on its own without explanation. Though the project wasn’t difficult, it made a huge impression on the kids who instantly ran off to play Pharaohs. (I was later told that one of my daughter’s dolls had been selected to be mummified, and they were using the baby-doll cradle as a sarcophagus.)

Honestly, just to be open and vulnerable, I don’t always feel like making the mess and doing the crafts. But when I see how much the kids learn, and I watch their studies come alive for them, I never regret the sacrifice of time, energy, or orderliness. We’ll only have this day once.