Our first week of school we started back with activities and books that were a refresher on geography terms for the girls and an intro to our geography studies for Zachary.

One of my favorite books that we have on hand is from Rand McNally ~ Geography & Map Activities: Beginner and we used this throughout the week along with the different books that we read.

Here’s the breakdown of our week to introduce and review:

Monday

• What is a map? Why do we use maps? How do they help us?
• How to identify features on a map {water, land, mountains, etc…}
• Maps vs. Globes – looking at how the two are different from each other
• Continents and Oceans {use song to review}
• How to use a map – reading the keys, knowing directions
• North, South, East and West
• Making a map – drew a map of our backyard ‘bird’s eye view’

Tuesday

• Using a compass rose
• Getting out of a maze following N/S/E/W directions
• Making a treasure map – had kids hide a special treasure and then make a map to find it
• Learned about the different hemispheres –
• Talked about the Equator and Prime Meridian

Wednesday

• What are longitude and latitude?
• Map legends and how to read them
• How to read physical maps

Thursday

• Time zones
• Political maps
• Put together continent puzzle
• Label the continents and oceans on a blank map

Here are some of the fun books we read and used along with our studies this week:

Next week….we’re moving onto Spain!!

I’ve had several of you ask me recently what books I would recommend to use along with geography studies. What I started out using at the beginning of this year and what we are wrapping up our year using most are very different. Some of the changes have been because of the ages of our kids and others are just because we found some great books that we love!

These were some of our favorite resources that we referred to over and over during our ‘world travels’:

• Rand McNally’s Schoolhouse Beginner’s World Atlas
• Heaven’s Heroes
• Missionary Stories with the Millers {available new through Geography Matters}
• Children Just Like Me

I’ve put in an Amazon carousel below so if you click on one of the picks it will take you to Amazon. I usually buy most of my books through them since they offer free shipping on orders over $25 {which sadly is too easy to come up with…or you can always use Prime shipping}.

• Ten Boys & Girls Books ~ all four of the books have short stories about girls and boys who later grew up to be missionaries or help others in some way. These books are usually $6.99 at Amazon and are included right now in the 4 for 3 promotion {buy 4 eligible items and get the lowest priced one free}. We used the ‘changed the world’ and ‘made history’ books {4 total}
• Around the World in 80 Tales ~ I wrote a review of this book earlier. Our kids literally beg for us to read a story from it each time we start a new country.
• Rand McNally Schoolhouse Beginner Geography & Map Activities ~ we bought these to go along with the Beginner Atlas. It starts out with basic map/geography activities and then breaks it up by continent.
• Pocket Factfiles: Mammals ~ small little book, but ever-so-handy for quick reference and look up
• Children’s World Atlas – this one has links to the internet. Very handy!
• GeoPuzzles ~ these are some of the best puzzles we’ve found and they have helped the kids learn and place countries too. There are puzzles for almost all of the continents. Ages 4 and up
• Draw Write Now ~ we’ve used these to help us draw different animals from the countries that we are studying. I’m working on a list to post of the books/animals from different continents. We bought the whole set because the kids really enjoy them and they also provide journaling information
• Draw Write Now ~ we picked this up from Rainbow Resource at a convention and the kids and I have learned the countries on the continents by singing our way through them. LOVE it!