After listening to a conference with Sonya Shafer, I left feeling empowered: statistics and currency are NOT what opens a child's eyes to the world, culture and customs are. So we began, three years ago, using this three part approach to geography:
1. Map Drill
For a breakdown of how I do map drill, be sure to watch the video. Some of my favorite (you can click the image to shop) map drill resources, beyond a blank paper map, are:
2. Customs and Culture
This is my favorite part of geography. Cooking foods, listening to music, finding out what traditions and daily habits look like, and getting to know a people group that we are unfamiliar with. To teach WORLD geography we use Material World, Hungry Planet, and various library books. We peek through books on language, cook recipes, and view art. For US geography, we are going through The 50 States book, State Capitals Book, learning about the presidents, and then breaking down our cultural studies by region. To do this, we are studying some of the different historical stories of our nation, such as Westward Expansion, The Colonies, the Civil War, etc. Here are some of my favorite resources for that, again, you can just click the image to shop:
3. Exploring New Finds
Last but not least, we often pause our "normal" lessons for an extension of another subject. Examples of this are Five in a Row books, Historical Fiction, Story of the World, Bible History, holidays, cultural opportunities, travel, and interests sparked for various reasons. A cooking class with grandma, a lunch date with someone in your church with a different cultural background, a trip into the city for a festival, all of these are GREAT free resources, as well as the library and Pinterest. Here are some of my favorite extensions:
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