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You are here: Home / Social Studies / Geography / 5 Fun and Easy Ways to Include Geography in Your Homeschool

5 Fun and Easy Ways to Include Geography in Your Homeschool

September 5, 2017 By Kris Bales · Disclosure: This Post May Contain Affiliate Links. {I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.}

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5 Fun and Easy Ways to Include Geography in Your Homeschool is a post from contributing writer Kris Bales of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Geography doesn't have to be intimidating! Here are 5 ways to be more intentional about adding geography in your homeschool day and have fun doing it! | RealLifeAtHome.com

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I ran into a future homeschool mom at a curriculum fair this summer. She was a homeschool grad who is planning to homeschool her own children someday. She was looking for something to help her get a better grasp on geography, an area in which she felt she had a learning gap.

I really admired the fact that she didn’t look at this fact as a shortcoming of her own homeschool education – just an opportunity for life-long learning. It also made me determined to be more intentional about teaching my kids geography, though.

We already do incorporate a lot of geography since we’re using curriculum published by a company that loves geography. Still, there were lots of homeschool years before we discovered the curriculum we’re using now. So, we’ve added some extra geography to our school day while continuing to incorporate geography like we were before.

5 Fun and Easy Ways to Include Geography in Your Homeschool

Daily geography drills

In order to be more intentional about teaching (and learning) geography, I’ve added daily geography drills to our day. I got the concept from Trail Guide to World Geography and Trail Guide to U.S. Geography. We do things a bit differently than the books suggest, but the general idea is the same.

I set our timer for 5 minutes. That assures two things:

  1. Nobody grumbles because, hey, we’re only talking 5 minutes
  2. We don’t let the time get away from us since we already have a crazy busy day.

I put the globe in the middle of the table and I call on a kid (because otherwise Josh would sit back and let Megan do it all) and I call out something for them to find:

  • The equator, lines of latitude and longitude, the poles, Earth’s axis
  • The northern or southern hemisphere
  • Oceans
  • Continents
  • Countries

I’ve kept it pretty simple, so far, by using just the globe. Once that gets easy, I’m thinking we’ll work on finding things in an atlas.

Use maps across the curriculum

Maps aren’t just for geography-specific studies. They’re great for history and literature and even science and art. It’s easy to see their use in history, but they’re often great in literature, too. If you’re reading a book set in real places, it’s fun to look them up and get a sense of where all the action is taking place.

I guess the science part I’m thinking of is technically history, but it’s fun to find the home countries of famous scientists on a map. You can to the same with famous artists, but you can also learn more about the culture of a place through its art.

Build models

We always enjoy building models to help us understand concepts, including geography. We’ve made:

  • Salt-dough maps
  • Cookie maps
  • Paper mache maps
  • Paper mache globes

Salt Dough Map of Japan from Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Keep a globe handy

It sounds simple, but we have started making sure we keep a globe handy. If it’s in reach, we’re much more likely to grab it to quickly find something or some place that we’re reading about.

Learn quirky facts

Back when we were doing our 50 State Fridays, we loved to learn quirky facts about the states we studied. Do you know which state boasts the bolo tie as its official state neck wear? Which state is home to the city that is artichoke capital of the world? Which state was home to Mike the Headless Chicken?

See? These are important facts to know – plus, fun facts tend to stick in your head better than the usual boring ones. 50 States Facts and Trivia is my favorite spot for learning quirky facts.

Studying United States geography and state facts? You'll love this free U.S. State Facts Crossword Puzzle Printable! | state facts | state crossword | United States crossword puzzle

Make a meal

Finally, we love to make meals when we study states, regions, or countries. It wraps up your home ec, geography, history, and hands-on learning in one easy-to-store package. Yes, we love hands-on projects that we can eat! Not only that, but making meals helps you learn about the cultural history of the places you’re studying.

We enjoy cookbooks such as: Eat Your Way Through the USA and Eat Your Way Around the World, but there are lots of free, online resources, as well.

What are some of the ways your family enjoys incorporating geography with your other school subjects?

Other Geography Helps for You:

great geography games for your family

Free U.S. Geography Resources for Teaching Homeschoolers

Free World Geography Resources


5 ways to add geography to your homeschool day and have fun doing it | reallifeathome.com

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. They don’t change the price you pay. However, when you shop through them, we may receive a small compensation.

5 Fun and Easy Ways to Include Geography in Your Homeschool was originally published on October 4, 2013. It was most recently updated in September 2017.

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Filed Under: Geography, Homeschool Planning

About Kris Bales

Kris Bales is the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest voice that founded Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She and her husband are parents of three amazing homeschool grads. Kris has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. She also seems intent on becoming the crazy cat lady long before she's old and alone.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Christy says

    October 4, 2013 at 7:59 am

    I love those ideas! The cookie map, now, why didn’t I think of that? 🙂

    Reply
    • Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers says

      October 6, 2013 at 8:26 pm

      It’s the tastiest kind of map…and you don’t have to worry about storing it. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Cassie says

    October 4, 2013 at 10:39 am

    Great ideas! I think we will implement many of these 🙂

    Reply
  3. Sarah says

    October 4, 2013 at 2:19 pm

    One thing we have started doing is map tracing. I print out an outline map I find online, and the kids use tracing paper, pencils & markers to trace. Right now we are learning different landmarks in co-op so they have traced the maps for the continents we have covered so far. Even my 5 year old can do this & loves it!

    Reply
    • Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers says

      October 6, 2013 at 8:27 pm

      I read online this week of someone else doing that. It’s a great idea!

      Reply
  4. Jeremy says

    October 5, 2013 at 5:43 am

    Cool ideas! My boys recently made their own Risk game with an atlas and army guys. That was a fun, spontaneous geography lesson.

    Reply
  5. Missy says

    October 5, 2013 at 10:56 pm

    We just joined a Canadian post card swap to swap post cards with other homeschoolers in Canada 🙂 We have our Canada map on the wall and are going to put our post cards up by their province when we get them. Plus, the kids are going to be sending their own post cards, which is a great way to get them writing 🙂 We’ve made a salt dough map before, but now I don’t know what to do with it. I think next time a cookie map will be a much better idea. I won’t have to worry about what to do with that when we’re done 🙂

    Thanks for sharing these great ideas!

    Reply
    • Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers says

      October 6, 2013 at 8:28 pm

      The salt dough map? Take photos and toss it. Shhh…I’ll never tell. 🙂

      Reply

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