World Geography

I have FINALLY nearly finished our World Geography Plans. A couple of days ago I got really stuck into it, in order to finish it.

As always I'm a major tweaker, I can never leave anything alone! So hopefully this post should provide some good resources and links for everyone.

Galloping the Globe - Although I didn't use/purchase this, I took ideas from people all over the web whom are using it. I originally like the idea of the book itself, till I looked at the sample, its good for springboard ideas, but not for a main spine resource for us. There are many other people whom have been happy with it though.

Expedition Earth - This is our main "springboard" spine. I love it. The lady in question has managed to gather so many different resources into the one curriculum. It it Christian based-but very easy to secularize, just removed the prayer bits from the curriculum, voila! A secular geography program! She has living books, crafts, lapbook components, and so much more!

Homeschool Creations - You cannot mention Geography without mentioning this lady, she used Galloping the Globe, and managed to create gourgeous colourful worksheets, and a bunch of really cool ideas. I always check her site out first for notebook pages, flags, mapping etc, and for some really cool resource links.

Montessori for Everyone - I adore this lady. She really does make "Montessori for Everyone!" We are planning to have Continent Boxes to go along with our Geo plans, and she had some really cool cards, and fact sheets for the boxes.

Montessori Print Shop - Is another place that has some nice cards.

Counting Coconuts - Do you want to be inspired for your continent boxes? Just check out this lady's!

Globes etc- Items I would recommend for Geography are: Oregon Scientific Smartglobe, Leapfrog Interactive Globes, Leapfrog Tag and World Map, Leapfrog Explorer and Globe Game.

For the moment, until the youngest is of school age, we are concentrating on "human" geography. We have items fo Physical and others, but are mostly concentrating on the Kids/culture side of things. Another idea for those that like to include movies, is to google "Movies set in ....." this will bring up a Wiki page that is worth scrolling through.

Other resources: Virtual Field Trip (I cannot say how much I love this book, the colouring in pages, ideas, are all ideal for PreK-2), A Trip Around the World/Another Trip/A New Trip. Theres a few other things I have purchased, but I don't find them valuable enough to mention.

Shepperd Software - Has free geography games!

Now lets go into seperate areas:

Intro to World - Evan Moors Beginning Geography, Intellego Unit Studies (Both K-2 Maps, and K-2 Continents)
China - Expedition China by Amanda Bennett (Movies: Kung Fu Panda, Big Bird in China, Mulan)
South Korea - Evan Moor Around the World Series - South Korea (Movies: TV Show Mash)
Japan - FUNtastic Folders - J is for Japan (we purchased both Prek & Primary ones) (Movies: 3 Ninjas movie series)
India - None, we just did a search round DLTK and Activity Villlage, and a few other places (Mistress of Spices, Jungle Book, Bridge & Prejudice)
Israel - Expedition Israel by Amanda Bennett (Movies: None, replaced with Veggietales movies)
Thailand - None, Just some more searching (Movies: None)
Russia - None found, just did googling (Movies: Anastasia, An American Tale)
Great Britain - None (Mary Poppins, Garfield: Tale of Two Kitties, Chicken Run)
France - None (Aristocats, Ratatouille, Mr. Beans Holiday)
Italy - Pizza Party by Amanda Bennett (Lizzy McQuire Movie, Sabrina goes to Rome, When in Rome (Olsen Twins)
Germany - None (Movies: None, but I haven't finished researching this yet)

As always with us, everything is more targeted at our Prek-1 audience, so there is a lot more available to older kids, its just a little hard to find resources for the younger ones! There is also a series called "A Family from....." that might be helpful for those going the more doco route. We have enough docos for history, and serious movies for other subjects, that I just wanted things a bit more silly/fun for Geo. We're also doing Geo as a mutiple year program so the items listed above are just the countries for the 1st year.

Guest Hollow - Also has some cool downloads in her Countries & Cultures Lapbook section, including the best Toy Passport we've seen and a Menu Lapbook, perfect for Geo food nights :)

Suitcase - We're using a folder as per Virtual Field Trip (link for this near top)

Tickets - We printed tickets from a very cool place, click on the link, the kids adore them!

xxx
Miss E.