This kids homeschool geography curriculum is an online subscription program that sends you weekly emails with the next lesson geared for K- 4th grade. The author, Carol Henderson, has 5 grown children whom she homeschooled and she has taught homeschool geography in large co-ops for many years. If you'd prefer to explore you can download the entire year and pick and choose which countries you focus on.
Going in order does allow you to get to the review weeks in a "sequential" way, but you could use them at the end of the year as a final 'test'. Each year (right now there are plans for 3 years) will cover 26 countries and 2 regions of the United States. So far we've covered the Northeast, Hawaii, and then Canada, Haiti. This week we are working on Nicaragua followed by Belize. (I'm a little excited about Belize since I went there for a month long mission trip when I was 16 and have ALWAYS wanted to return!) We did get a little behind due to the Hurricane Irma (who turned into a Tropical Storm for us) scare we had last week ... we pretty much didn't do much school for like 10 days so we could prepare for the hurricane and then we didn't quite get what was anticipated here.
We might also start skipping a little because I saw that both Ghana and Mongolia are later in the year, but we are just talking about them in our history. I love being able to combine our learning. Another thing I love is the library offerings that are given in each lesson by giving you the call letters to find books on this topic. She also includes an online reading link if you'd prefer that.
What else will you find in this inclusive homeschool world geography curriculum? You will start with the basic information about the country followed by the map work with both a close up map of the country and then one where the country is within it's continent. The student will get to cut out a map and glue it around the 'world map' and if you have the Passport you could include it there. (We had some minor printing issues at the beginning of this review and then I have forgotten to get cardstock the last few times I've gone to the store.) Eventually I'll get it printed and he will be able to add the flag into his passport. I think I might add that as his "review craft" when we get to review week!
Next comes the music from the country - usually it's the national anthem. After all of that, and answering questions about the maps, we move on to learning more about the specific country. We use the you tube links to watch videos about the country, the way people live and work in the country, what are it's famous locations, and other such things. Some of my son's favorite were the volcanoes of Hawaii and the cannonball collection at an abandoned castle in Haiti.
After we've watched all the videos I have him write down some of the things he's learned about on the handwriting sheet. Usually I have him tell me and I write down his words on a white board and he copies it neatly onto the sheet. Then we look at the included pictures. I generally print out the pictures, worksheets, and coloring sheets and once they are all completed we hole punch them and place them into his Travel Binder. The travel binder is just a 3 ring binder that we purchased and then used one of the binder covers he liked to decorate it. Then we work on the craft for the week.
Sometimes this takes 2 days to cover the lessons, but it really depends on how many books we are reading and how many videos we need to watch. All in all this has been a fantastic program and my son has REALLY enjoyed it. So much so that his sisters have been known to watch the videos with us, and do the crafts and some writing about the countries as well.
Because we have been going through the weeks in order we haven't made it yet to the built in Review Weeks. So I skipped ahead to take a look and see how this lesson was similar and what was different about it. So as with the other mapping activities you have to find and label all the countries and items you know. But you also have to find things like latitude, longitude, the equator, and to work with a compass.
You also have a map with flags all around it so you have to match the country to the flag. Another matching activity includes joining together pictures to the name of the country they had studied. There are also some additional coloring pages and some more handwriting pages, but no additional "crafts" during the review. I think my son will really enjoy these reviews and I can't wait to see how well he does.
I feel that having so much hands-on activities within this kids homeschool geography program is what sets Let's Go Geography apart from other programs. Be sure to check how others on the Crew used and tested the curriculum by clicking the link below. You can also find out more about Let's Go Geography on Facebook and Pinterest.
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