Geography

Homeschooling can be hard... that's a fact. I have learned over the years to use the curriculum that is easiest for me to teach. After all, planning every subject for every child you teach can be a little overwhelming. I have had some great ideas of things that would truly enhance the girls' learning and I think unit studies sound like so much fun, but have always struggled to follow through with them.

Years ago, I came across The Ultimate Guide to Geography and loved the whole idea. It's a unit study, textbook, workbook, all in one book for all grades. (Like Spelling Power if you're familiar with that.) I read through it completely and set out to have the girls become geography experts. We used an overhead projector and drew off an eight foot tall map of Africa, getting ready to learn everything we could about the continent. That's as far as we got.

Fast forward to this year. Most of my girls are still lacking in geography and in need of help. Mary expressed interest in learning more, so I pulled this book back out to see what we could do. She likes creating science notebooks and journals that go along with the Exploring Creation series so a geography notebook seemed right up her alley.

At this point, she has a notebook with sections on Africa, Ancient Bible lands, and will be starting this week on the voyage of the Titanic. Her Africa section already has beautifully drawn maps and animals and should soon have more artwork and papers on other aspects of culture. I want to visit the Titanic exhibit in Atlanta to enhance that section. The hope is that she will end up with a complete notebook with all of the continents researched as well as other fun topics of geography. Other topics I am considering are some of her favorite books and the Civil War.

To keep us accountable, ask Mary to show her notebook to you.