Speaking of the Ukraine, Hands-On Geography Can Help You Find It

Posted by Lorren on November 16, 2009

When something is relevant to you, or builds upon something you already know, you are more likely to remember something that you come across. My daughter has always been interested in finding Italy on a map, for example, because she was born there.

Hands-On Geography is a resource that homeschoolers can use to make geography more interesting to kids. We all have heard of one statistic or another where most Americans can’t find a large state like California or Texas on a map. Perhaps our schools don’t spend enough time on geography. Although I remember maps in the classroom as a kid, the only geography I ever remember having to learn was the location of all the counties in my state… considering that I don’t live in that state any more, that sure helps a lot to know. However, geography is relevant. I was sent a copy of Hands-On Geography to review, and I’m happy to say, this book gives a lot of great ideas to make geography relevant… and fun!

Hands-On Geography is geared towards Christian homeschoolers, but the concepts in the book could work for any homeschooler. It could even work for caregivers that wanted to teach their children more about geography than what they are getting in school, or kids that were going to visit another country, or kids that wanted to prepare for something like the National Geography Bee. There are a lot of fun activities that could work for kids of any age, or for multiple kids at a time.

Take one of the activities from the book: make a memory game. This is a great activity because you can tailor it to your kids’ abilities. My daughter likes to do memory matching. You can take pictures from several different countries and make a memory game out of it. For older kids, you can match pictures to their descriptions, country names to their capitals, and so forth. Whenever I make a game out of something, my kids tend to enjoy it more (and learn more too).

Another idea that I like is using maps to identify places in books and on the news. This book includes outline maps that you can photocopy and use in your activities. I’d like to get the next book in the Sarah’s Wish books and map it. The Olympics are coming up; we can use these outline maps to keep track of the places where the winning Olympians come from. This book has a lot of great ideas, from mapping Bible events (which can help you understand the Bible more), looking up missionaries, and more.

While most homeschooling books can be used for one year for each child, this is a reference that you can use over and over again. It may not replace your current curriculum (although it could if you were really creative), but it can add a little extra interest (and learning) to your child’s curriculum.