Love God – Love Geography!
January 10, 2012
According to Charlotte Mason, our children want the same geographical input and information as adults want, we want to feel the wind in our hair, imagine the journey, sense the feelings of adventure and intrigue – geography is a study and journey into God’s amazing world; no one wants to be bored, especially not this home school Mama!
A Charlotte Mason type education is definitely our pedagogy of choice but I am learning and growing constantly in my understanding of what we want for our children’s education and how my children learn; so as much as I love Miss Masons ways I wouldn’t class myself as a ‘purist’…but more about that another time!
Back to Geography! We’re loving working our way through Ann Voskamps ‘A Child’s Geography’; Ann has a Charlotte Mason approach to her writing and each section is followed by a creative way of ‘narrating’ what you’ve just read about. My children are enjoying taking their journey through the earth’s atmosphere and are at present preparing a simple presentation for Daddy to narrate all they know about the earth’s lower atmosphere (you can be really creative with narration techniques).
Another thing we’re doing is simply learning the countries of the world by going through continent by continent and learning to recognise maps. I do this by choosing one continent at a time, printing off a blank map and each week the children spend time looking at an atlas map of our chosen continent, then they choose two countries, find them on their blank map, colour and label them. We’ve been studying Europe since September and we’re still going; I love listening to the children discussing what countries they’ve found, what shape the country is on the map and which countries they are near; such easy but fascinating learning. My end goal is that my children can instantly find a country on a map; anywhere in the world…all it take is one country at a time, easy hey?
Trust you’re enjoying God’s amazing earth with your children; take time today to soak it in together!
Many blessings
Leah
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2 Comments
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Geography is something I personally struggle with. I'm the one always looking around on the map trying to find the country I"m looking for. I hope to do a better job in teaching it to my kids ( and learn more along the way). My husband is a big help in that area, he lived all around the world. He has the adventure and intrigue to share to make geography come alive, I hope we can make that happen for our kids. Great post!
Thank you Erica – my husband has travelled quite a bit too, real stories are always the BEST hey?! Bless you, hope you pop by again soon, Leah x