Maps from Heritage History

I have written about Heritage History, one of my favorite places for online history and literature books in the public domain.  Besides viewing the books online for free, you can purchase an eBook for a Kindle or other reader for only $1.99 each.

Well, I just found another wonderful resource on their web sites. They have collected a whole series of large, color, historical maps onto their Heritage History Maps page so they can be downloaded.  They are organized by a variety of geographic an cultural categories: African, American, Asian, British, Christian, European, Greek, Hispanic, Moslem, Norse, Roman, and World.  The page lists the region, year (that that map is depicting, not when it was published), and description.  It's an online historical atlas that is a wonderful addition to our history studies!

Maps and More Maps!

Awhile back my mother-in-law gave me a pile of old National Geographic maps, and they have been sitting in the basement waiting to be used.  I bought a large, black, zippered artist portfolio to store them in last year and now I've finally gotten around to doing something with them.

First I actually unfolded them all and placed them into the portfolio.  Excited about using them for homeschooling and knowing how easily maps get torn, I wanted to laminate them.  Dh on the other hand did not want to do anything to them in case a collector was interested in buying them some day (which also means using extreme caution when showing them to the kids).  I mused about having map-sized sheet protectors, and then I realized that they must make something like that to protect nautical charts from getting damaged at sea.  And I discovered they make them for blueprints, too.

I ordered them through Engineering Supplies.  They are certainly too expensive to use like sheet protectors for every map, but I bought one medium and one large one in which to put whatever map I am currently using.  They come with reinforced holes in the edging to hang them and a zip-lock seal on one edge.  Being plastic, we could write on them with dry or wet erase markers and then wipe it away for the next map.  And because these maps are double-sided I can easily make use of the information on both sides of the map.

Yesterday I cataloged the stack of maps so I knew what I had without having to sort through them.  It turns out I have 105 maps dating from 1975 to 2009.  There's a lot of history information in those maps, as well as earth and space science, and, of course, geography.  I really could have used the Great Peoples of the Past maps last year with our ancient history study, so now I am ready to pull one out that relates to whatever we are studying.  Maybe I can use them in much the same way as I do music or art study--hang them up and spend time each week just looking over the make becoming familiar with the geography and history of the world.

Home Geography for the Primary Grades

I downloaded Home Geography for the Primary Grades somewhere along the way from something related to Charlotte Mason, maybe Ambleside Online.  While doing a little spring file cleaning I decided I would try it out at our TORCH co-op with the youngers, four boys ages 5 to 7.

This book is an example of what used to be thought of as geography, what today would be a mix of earth science and social studies.  The lessons are short--we typically cover two or three of them in the 45 minutes we have.  So far we covered direction, measurement, and mapping.  The book includes the lessons, some poetry, and exercises, some hands-on, some written.

This week we learned about mapping.  Here on the board the boys first looked at a picture of a classroom and then drew a plan of the room.  We then went on and used a measuring tape to draw it to scale.

The book is ideal for early elementary kids to give them a nice mix of formal lessons, poetry, copywork, geography, science, and social studies.  So Charlotte Mason, no?

France Projects

We changed the format of our geography group study, God's Country Club, to better suit our younger learners. We have 3 families, 10 kids, the oldest two being 10 years old. Several weeks of presenting material got to be hard on the moms and the younger kids.

For our France segment, we announced the country 2 weeks before the first class. During the first class the lead mother cooks the main dish, while the other two moms bring a side dish and a snack. (I made baguettes, of course.) The kids thoroughly enjoy the food aspect of GCC!

The lead mother next presents all the geographic facts about that country. She then has the kids pick projects to present during the next class in two weeks.

Two weeks later, after another cultural lunch, the kids present their projects. Ds#1 did a report about France during WWII. Ds#2 did a report about the origins of the Tricolore, or French flag. With 8 of the 10 kids presenting projects, the group learned a lot of interesting, if focused, information about France.

We're ending for the year since one of the moms will be having her baby within the next three weeks, but we'll pick up again in September!

Geo Bee, and how to learn facts

Today we had our first Families of Faith Geography Bee focusing on the United States. Our family spent the term creating our own state sheets so my dss would have at least been exposed to states, capitols, nicknames, flowers, birds, and trees. As the bee approached, though, I knew that they knew very few of the facts they filled out over the past several weeks.

I let them play the states and capitols games at sheppardsoftware.com a few times, and before long they knew their state capitols! There's nothing like trivia games for learning facts. We seem to remember even better the ones we get wrong, and we also review what we do know.

I went hunting for other online games for the state nicknames and symbols. I found a web site called purposegames.com that has dozens upon dozens of these games for a variety of subjects. They have simple but nice graphics, and the games are no more than matching, yet they are a fun and effective way to drill facts. I had the kids playing them this morning and by noon they knew a lot of those symbols and nicknames!

You can register for free at purposegames.com and create your own games, too, should you not be able to find just the right one already made. Hmmm, maybe a saints game, since they actually don't appear to have one yet...

Italy study

I am currently leading God's Country Club as we study Italy. Check out what we did this week at God's Country Club blog.