Geography turned out to be a lot of fun. But I had to do a lot of materials, and it turned out to be one of the most fun subjects! So let’s get right to it…

Other Categories and how we use these materials.
Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)

• Materials Useful for learning Geography
• Unit 1 – Introduction to Geography

 

Materials Useful for Learning Geography

Books: (we are great fans of some series that will follow. Great books that we fell in love with and don’t belong to any series are listed first)

• Me on the Map (Dragonfly Books) by Joan Sweeney and Annette Cable – introduction into maps: the girl starts from  drawing maps of her own room to streets, states, world.
• The Magic Schoolbus:

• • The Magic School Bus Kicks Up A Storm: A Book About Weather by Nancy White and Art RuizRookie Read

• • The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen
  • The Magic School Bus Wet All Over: A Book About The Water Cycle by Pat Relf and Carolyn Bracken
  • The Magic School Bus Inside A Hurricane by Joanna Cole, Bruce Degen, and Bruce Degan
• Cat in a Hat:
  • There’s a Map on My Lap!: All About Maps (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe and Aristides Ruiz
  • Oh Say Can You Say What’s the Weather Today?: All About Weather (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe and Aristides Ruiz
• Let’s Read and Find out Science Books:
  • Tornado Alert (Let’s-Read-and-… by Franklyn Mansfield Br…
  • Clouds (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1) by Anne Rockwell
  • Feel the Wind (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Scien… by Arthur Dorros
  • What Will the Weather Be? (Let’s-Read-and-… by Carolyn Croll
  • Down Comes the Rain (Let’s-Read-a… by Franklyn Mansfield
  • Air Is All Around You (Let’s-Read-and-… by John O’Brien
  • Earthquakes (reillustrated) (Let’… by Franklyn Mansfield Br…
  • Grand Canyon (Rookie Read-About Geography) by Lisa Trumbauer
  • Mexico (Rookie Read-About Geography) by David F. Marx
  • … they have book for every continent, and almost for every state or city or wonder
• I can read about… series:
  • Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll by Franklyn Mansfield Branley
  • The Kids’ Book of Weather Forecasting (Williams… by Mark Breen
• Other:
  • Watching the Weather: Watching Nature (Welcome Bo… by Edana Eckart

Web:

• http://www.sciencewithme.com/category.php?cid=3 : login (requires registration, but everything is free) and select “Animal Game” to place animals at the continents where they live.
• http://www.geography4kids.com/ : I think this one is the best for physical geography.
• http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/montessorigeography/ Montessori Teacher blogs the Geography activities that they are doing with kids – fabulous!!!  Every blog contains details on how to prepare these materials and how to use them with kids and even how the kids in her class reacted to it.  Very inspirational!
• http://www.montessorimaterials.org/geo.htm Terrific collection of files: land and water forms, labels, definitions, pictures, continents… all for free.  One our favorite resources.
• Michael Olaf: Landforms and Clay http://www.michaelolaf.com/1CW36earth.html
• http://montessorimom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/links_for_20060_3.html Links to geography Montessori lessons/materials
• Collection of Geography links and description what those sites have: http://www.unc.edu/~jmaxim/web_geography_for_kids.htm
• http://www.maitrilearning.com/downloads.html : has free file with labels that can be pinned/attached to the map

I haven’t tested these ones yet:

• 50 States
• Color Landform Atlas of the United States
• Easy Flag Identifier
• Flags and Maps of the World
• Flags of the World
• Flags of All Countries
• Icon Bazaar
• Jet Punk
• The World Factbook
• World Atlas
• World Flag Database

DVD:

• Magic School Bus: “Kicks Up a Storm“, “Wet All Over“,

·        Around the World in 80 Days – cute cartoon that I really loved back in my childhood.  Although it was originally in English, I was able to locate dvds only in Russian and in Spanish:

Around the World in 80 Days (1972) / 80 Dney Vokrug Sveta (1972)

La Vuelta al Mundo en 80 Dias (Around the World in Eighty Days) [*Ntsc/region 1 & 4 Dvd. Import-latin America] Animated – Mexico
Those who speak Russian, can download and burn it for free from here:
http://multiki.arjlover.net/multiki/

Toy list:

• Take Off:
  Fabulous game, excellent quality, even though it is expensive, it is well worth it. One of the rare games that can be enjoyed by the entire family: parents, my 12 year old nephew, 9 year old niece – al were thrilled. My own preschooler definitely out of league for this one at this point. Can’t wait for him to grow up and join: it is immensely educational and lots of fun!
• USA Map Sound Puzzle: 40 pieces.
  First: my son is not into puzzles, but this is his ABSOLUTE FAVORITE since he was two and a half! This puzzle has 40 wooden pieces (some small states share a puzzle piece), farely small, yet thick enough for kids to handle them with comfort. The best part is: the puzzle names every state and capital! Every state has a picture, so we like to discuss how much fun it is to ski in Colorado or to eat Lobsters in Main. My son used to bring his building trucks and load the pieces into the puzzle that way. First, he would hand me over the piece, and I (actually a building truck assigned to me) would place it on the board, name it, talk to him about it. Then his own trucks took over the job. Now, at four, he just puts this puzzle together all by himself without any toys AND proudly repeats (or even names) every state as he is placing it on the board! I really like that this puzzle, while challenging even for the older kids, can be adopted for the smaller ones as well.
• Melissa & Doug World Map Floor Puzzle:
  33 large pieces, nice quality, cute pictures of animals but I like that there aren’t too many of them. I really like that the pieces are not jigsaw, but rather large and irregular shaped – mostly following the outlines of the continents. Most of the continents are at a single piece of a puzzle – so we can take it and discuss what it is, where it is even before we place it on the map. Good for introduction of Geography and for developing of concentration skills for building larger puzzles.
• Professor Noggin Countries of the World Card Game
  We have a few of Professor Noggin sets. When my son was smaller, we used it as flash cards: just flipped through the pictures, discussing what we see. Each picture has an outline of the country and something important in that country – like sphinx in Egypt. At the back: three easy questions, three hard ones. Older kids can roll the dice and try to answer the questions – it turns flash cards into a game, making learning easier and more fun. My four year old enjoyed these cards more when he was smaller and still liked just flipping through it – at four he is still too small to enjoy naming facts, and too big to simply flip through.

PowerPoint Presentations:

• http://www.childandme.com/encyclopedic-knowledge-geography/
• The Classical Mommy presentations
• The Classical Mommy Friends’ presentations

Units

Unit 1: Introduction to Geography

What are we learning: What is Geography, land/water, maps, continents, North Pole, South Pole, North-South-East-West compass rose, Equator, cold/warm parts of the earth as it rotates around the sun, our own address (as a part of “My Planet Earth” song), land and water forms – island, lake, system of lakes and archipelago; map making.

a.       Books:

• There’s a Map on My Lap!: All About Maps (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) by Tish Rabe and Aristides Ruiz
• Me on the Map (Dragonfly Books) by Joan Sweeney and Annette Cable – introduction into maps: the girl starts from drawing maps of her own room to streets, states, world.

b.      DVD:

• Around the World in 80 days (see my review)

c.       Toys:

• Melissa & Doug World Map Floor Puzzle: see my review

d.      PPT:

• Maps by A.P.P.
• Introduction to Geography by Alenka

e.       Web:

• http://www.sciencewithme.com/category.php?cid=3 – pick “animal game” to place animals to the continents where they live.

f.        Hands On Experiments:

• Put world puzzle together (optional; we used both Melissa&Doug puzzle and our home made felt continents map)
• Felt Continents Map: inspired by the wonderful directions from montessorimakers group in Yahoo. I found the directions very easy.
• I Live On The Planet Earth: Song-Necklace
• Land & Water trays: make with self-hardening clay
  I bought bunch of Tupperware containers, painted the bottom, but all the landforms we are making together. Making every land form with his hands was lots of fun and it helped my son to remember them much better!

a.       Paint the bottom of the containers blue – that’s water.
b.      Make land forms with self-hardening clay.  Use brown clay, or paint it later.
c.       Print cards from here: http://www.montessorimaterials.org/geo.htm
I used…
Land Form Cards donated by Tiffany
Land and Water Form Definitions donated by Katie

d.      Suggestions how to use these trays: http://montessorisecrets.blogspot.com/2009/02/cultural-landforms.html

• Drawing maps (files available at here:Maps and Furniture Pieces)

a.       First I used these pages to cut out “furniture pieces” and arrange maps with them.
b.      Then I quickly drew a plan of our own room and let my son arrange that “furniture” on that plan.
c.       Third we traced that furniture on the plan and admired the resulting map
d.      Last: we drew our own map of different rooms of our house and a few imaginary ones.

---

Related posts:

New Geography Unit for us: Antarctic

---