Homeschooling Horizons Magazine
Kristina Garswood
November 2006
Canada

When we first started homeschooling, I didn’t even know how to approach geography – I certainly didn’t realise how exciting it would turn out to be. I expected lots of challenges, and a lot of new memory work for me (where did Nunavut come from, anyway?).

A bit uncertainly, we started playing with the globe. First, we found things that mattered to us, starting with home. Caroline knew it took all day to drive to Nana’s city, but she was surprised at how close it looked on the globe. Armed with that concept, she was somewhat more able to grasp how very far away her aunt and uncle in Italy are. We carried on along those lines for the first year, tying everything into her personal experience, family and friends.

The next year, though, things began to really explode. We were on our way to Ottawa on the 401, and were coming up on the Niagara escarpment. The landmark received only a cursory nod until I remarked casually to the kids, “Isn’t that amazing? Can you imagine how Laura Secord managed to get over that thing, in the dark, barefoot, to bring her message?” They stared at the escarpment with new appreciation.

Last fall, we started using Sonlight curriculum. One of the “necessary resources” for the elementary grades is a “markable map,” a huge, wet-erase black and white map of the world (USA on the reverse). Now we weren’t just pointing things out in an atlas, we were labelling one ourselves!

Whether we were learning about Gladys Aylward rescuing orphans in China, or George Muller founding orphanages in Bristol, we had our maps out. When Xerxes crossed his army over the Hellespont, we were there, our fingers tracing the route, and looking ahead. With a map of the Ancient World before us, Caroline could better understand how the Spartans held off the Persians for eight days at Thermopylae. Fiction was no different; Mr. Popper’s Penguins helped us across America, and even when we’re reading Narnia, we pour over the beautiful accompanying maps.

If the World Were a Village, by David J. Smith, is a good introduction to the world for young learners. Beautifully illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong, it takes the vast numbers and distances of earth, and shrinks them down to a series of manageable concepts for kids – what if all the world were a village of 100 people? The book addresses all the expected topics a geography text would cover, but all within the context of a village-sized earth. Even better, there’s a section at the back on “Teaching Children About the Global Village,” with dozens of useful suggestions.

Ryan and Jimmy, by Herb Shoveller, is an incredible example of geography in action. A perfect social studies book, this is the true story of Ryan Hriejac, a six-year-old from Kemptville, Ontario, who inspired his community to build a well for a community in Africa. This book explores the story from both Ryan’s perspective and from that of Jimmy, a young boy in Agweo, Uganda. It combines the best elements of excellent geography, social awareness, art, creative writing, and the incredible power of a motivated child to make a difference in his world.

In addition to tying it all together wherever we can, we can make geography fun in and of itself. There’s a wealth of geography games online (see suggestions below). Our dining room tabletop is a world map under vinyl – it makes for interesting and fun conversation – “Pass the salt, please – it’s over by Mauritania.” My husband is happy because he dines most evenings in Hawaii – Meredith and Caroline grumbles that there’s nothing but fish down where they are in Antarctica. They’re starting to create their own geographical games using the tabletop, which is pretty neat.

Our girls learned the continents in a single afternoon with a crazy “Twister” type of game by Early Learning Centre, called Globe Trotter. The charm never wore off, though – it keeps coming out regularly to a hilarious tangle of arms and legs (“No, no, keep your left hand on Africa, and reach out your right foot to North America!”).

One of the most delightful additions to our family time in the last couple of months has been Out of the Box Publishing’s series of “10 Days Games.” We have 10 Days in Africa, and the Europe, and USA editions as well, and are eagerly waiting to get our hands on Asia. In these terrific board games, the goal is to travel across the continent in a logical route by foot, air, sea or car. At 8, Caroline understood the game and could play by herself after one round. Best of all, simply travelling round in the game, we found she was speedily picking up the location of states and countries throughout the world. On another happy note: Out of the Box has assured me that they plan to revise their USA edition in the future to round it out properly as “10 Days in North America.”

There are any number of geography puzzles out there for kids, from small wooden puzzles, to giant floor puzzles. If you’re up for a real family adventure, though, nothing can beat the Global Puzzle Collection, particularly The Global Puzzle and The Global Animal Puzzle. In these incredible 600 piece puzzles, every single country, province, territory and state are included, in shaped pieces, with facts on every country filling in every square of open ocean space.

Geography isn’t simply a study of the ball of rock we call earth. It’s not an isolated study of borders, of complicated country names and even more complicated capitals. It includes, inherently, the interaction of people and place. To study one without the other, we risk boredom, and certainly miss out on all the fun.

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