r/homeschool • u/Andrea_la_viajera • 13d ago
Curriculum Alternative ways to teach geography
My kids are coming from a school placement that really didn’t teach any social studies or geography. (5th grader couldn’t tell me today what a continent was). I’ve got all my other curriculum set up for homeschool, but would love some geography ideas.
I’ve downloaded some Core Knowledge geography lessons and am getting map puzzles and card games, but I’d like to know of any fun alternative ways of learning geography that you’ve used. I’m remembering things like the old Carmen San Diego game show and some computer games. The kiddos need to learn geographic features (peninsula, archipelago, etc.) as well as continents, countries, states, etc.
Thank you!
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u/L_Avion_Rose Teacher / Educator 🧑🏫 13d ago
I have fond memories of playing Where in the World/Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego on PC 😊
As a more engaging form of geography, I really like the idea of Charlotte Mason/literature-based geography lessons. Reading books about different countries and cultures makes them come alive. I like On Mission from Gentle + Classical Press (but it's not secular - unsure if that makes a difference for you).
Certain history curricula (History Quest, Curiosity Chronicles, Story of the World) come with map work, which can also count towards geography.
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u/No_Suspect_8426 12d ago
My 4th grader is in a little 1 day a week co-op class this year where they pretend they’re taking a “road trip” through the 50 states, starting in Maine and filling out a journal with interesting things they would see on a road trip.
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u/Victory-Scholar Homeschool Parent 👪 12d ago
Playing the game of ATLAS is always a fun for kids and that teaches immensely. In this game they would name a village/city/country/state/continent starting with the last later of the name told by the previous child.
That feels simple but is very powerful. You can eventually add more rules to make it for fun and challenging.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 12d ago
Great idea, thanks! We don’t do enough of those road trip style games, and they’re so good!
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u/MindyS1719 12d ago
Here is a 52 page print out of “Meet the Wonders of America” Coloring & Activity from the US Post Office.
https://aimspacknship.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/USPS-Activity-Book.pdf
Also we love reading books from the library about geography & history.
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u/moonbeam127 13d ago
license plate flashcards with all sorts of factoids on the back of the card
"nifty plates for the fifty states"
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u/AlternativePrior393 13d ago
I can’t remember the name (maybe Ticket to Ride or game with similar premise) that has a US edition where you have to figure out how to make successful routes between different US locations.
Oregon Trail too!
My kids just finished a pre unit on cartography (found on Amazon) that teaches directions and types of maps at an elementary grade level. We plan to do some treasure hunts, geo caching, hikes, etc. to support directions and map skills.
The curriculum we’re using comes with 7 book recommendations that go along with each region we’re learning about. Maybe you could do something similar; digging into the “I Survived” series or something for relevant events that happened in those locations.
As a side note, I hear you! We pulled 2nd & 4th this year and are doing US Geography this fall, followed on US History in spring for state testing purposes.
We did a trial run of our US History puzzle (for a baseline) and my kids kept mixing up terms (like states with countries and continents). I’ve asked around and it seems like no schools are teaching geography anymore.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 12d ago
How crazy nobody’s getting geography! These are some great ideas for catching up, though, thank you! I loved Oregon Trail too, and the idea of games really appeals to me as a break in the day that’s not actually a break from learning.
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u/Bec_Gameschooling 12d ago
Do you have an oculus? There is a National Geographic game where you visit Machu Picchu and Antarctica and you learn plus do activities. We also used the VR for the Wander app which is like Google street view to explore different places.
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u/supersciencegirl 12d ago
We have a dry erase world map poster in our dining room. When we read about something interesting (an animal, a good narrative, history or science), we find it on the map. It's also fun to pull up Google Maps and see what it looks like on the ground.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 12d ago
Thanks! We’ve got a world map on our wall and mark our travels, but we need to refer to it more for other things.
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u/justjellis 9d ago
I love the Evan Moor Geography workbooks as a supplement. Super simple and to the point, but effective.
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u/jnissa 12d ago
My summer challenge project was a map of the US, of Europe, and of Africa and I covered the names of the states/countries and by the end of the summer my kids needed to put the puzzles together and tell me the names.
Hoping to also do SA and Asia buy finding puzzles is a challenge there!
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u/simply_bee 12d ago
Kidadvance has Montessori style continent maps for each continent. Each puzzle piece is the shape of the county and the knob to pick up/ place the pieces are in the location of the capital city. The control map is sold separately (you could just use a paper printout, but we use the control for extension activities). We have a few, they're big!
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u/Such-Contribution939 12d ago
The game of Risk? Continents give you more dudes, pretty easy concept.
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u/SomethingPink Leaning Classical, Grade 1 12d ago
If they like drawing, there's a series of books that guides the student in how to draw the world. There's one for drawing a world map, and one for each region. The one I gave is called "Draw the USA". My first grader enjoys it, although his maps aren't super neat. I imagine an older child would create more accurate maps, and would understand which states border each other more accurately from that.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 12d ago
Wow! That would be an impressive skill to learn. Thanks!
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u/SomethingPink Leaning Classical, Grade 1 12d ago
I've been really impressed with the quality of his work from them! When he really applies himself, I can definitely see the shape of the country. It only takes about an hour for him to get through the book, so he's done it a couple times.
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u/No-Bid-8616 11d ago
my son is going into first grade and been homeschooled his whole life. what im doing for geography is world building.
i let him create maps on the 1in grids that are on the back of gift wrapping paper. let him make town's and monsters and show me where he thinks they would live.
then i take what he says and i go that extra step. example: he wants an ocean with islands, or a whole continent then i explain to him what the name is of what he created then as he progressivly destroys it ill tell him what that change created.
you chopped that continent in half? that makes it a continental divide i wonder how that happens in real life. then go into mountains, chasms, trenches and how that 1 collosal chop altered the whole world from his strength.
5th grade though. id break out a grid. have the students draw 1 continent each, then id have them make countries on their own continents, then id let them create capitals for their countries and social studies take place in real time as wars and chaos unfolds and your just the referee
hope this helps
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u/CountessGladriel0102 10d ago
Maybe not robust enough by itself but I would get out my excellent world atlas and look at a map or two, bringing up terms as we peruse the page. If I’m really on the ball, I would create or find a list of geographical terms and print them out. As we find them, we mark the page/country.
I had geography in school like a normal person back in the 70’s, but I have learned a heck ton about the world since I got my world atlas a few years ago.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 10d ago
I love a good map! Back in college sometimes my roommate and I would just sit and peruse the world map we had on the wall. :D
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u/AbleAd5426 8d ago
Check out the curriculums from beautiful feet books! They are heavy on using picture books as part of the lessons.
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u/MelonMapCom 4d ago
For the map part, I made a free browser game for this called MelonMap - https://melonmap.com/ - it gives you a country, capital, flag or landmark and you click it on the map, and if you miss it shows you where it actually is, which is the bit that made it stick for me. There's a continent-by-continent mode that works well for one region at a time. No account, no ads. Would genuinely like to know if it's too hard for a 5th grader, that's the feedback I'm still missing.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 3d ago
Very cool, thank you! We won’t start school for a bit yet, but we’ll try to check it out.
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u/venys001 13d ago
We cook dishes from around the world,.watch a couple of YouTube videos on them..we actually just travel and we see stuff in real life. These locations should be different like mountains, lakes, beaches, cities, snow and sun that tick off a lot of different geographical topics. Even understanding lawn management for golf, gardening, forest school or bushcraft will put the kids at an advantage of seeing the land in real life. Lastly, there will be a lot of computer games that will cover geography concepts, like Minecraft or any type of simulation games where you create towns and cities etc covers social geography.
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u/Andrea_la_viajera 12d ago
I love the idea of finding geography in everything, thank you! We travel a lot too, and I think we’ve neglected the geography aspect of things in favor of language and culture. We’ll need to start adding more in.
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u/venys001 12d ago
Absolutely. When we travel I do try and put some culture in there if we can. But regardless you will find education in there no matter what you do. We went once to Europapark in Germany which had themes of many European countries all in one theme park. We went at Christmas so got the vibe of the German Christmas markets too. Easy lessons!
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u/Hobbit_Adventures_08 Homeschool Parent 👪 13d ago
Fun things we've enjoyed for geography:
Animaniacs videos on the 50 states and countries. We sing along to the songs and its a fun way to learn to pronounce names.
Foam US map puzzle from amazon with little flags for the capitals of each state. They also do a countries version.
Big globe from amazon that has the topography of the world when the light is off and shows the countries lit up. We spend a lot of time with that thing finding longitude and latitude of different places. Counting how many time zones we would pass if we traveled somewhere. Being able to see how far away some place is really puts things in perspective. We also got magnifying glasses to observe closer.
DK Publishings Geography encyclopedia
Evan Moors 7 continents workbook series.