A Mom's Quest to Teach is a regular column covering elements of teaching and learning (with an eye towards homeschooling), parenting, crafting, and all of the discoveries, joys, and daily roller coaster rides that occur while being a mom.
I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of
this book from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not
required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.
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We added an additional workbook into our homeschool routine to supplement our fifth grader's lessons. We used Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 5, courtesy of Timberdoodle, to study the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical systems, and human systems.
Concepts and Lessons
Unlike the second-grade workbook, I didn't assign all the lessons to our son out of the fifth-grade workbook. Some lessons didn't fit into our studies or our worldview. And we also skipped several hands-on activities.
There were quite a few lessons that were great supplements to our regular social studies and history lessons. For example, both hands-on activities from The World in Spatial Terms allowed our son to work on real-world skills. He had to map a route and plan a vacation in Europe using trains. These were great activities that focused on skills he may someday need. We don't just rely upon GPS or Google maps for directions. Physical maps are key to getting where you need to go.
Another lesson in the Human Sytems unit allowed us to talk about farming, crops, and ingredients. From reading about terrace farming to examining food in our pantry for wheat, corn, or rice, our son explored food and farms.
We still have three experiments or hands-on activities saved to supplement our science and geography lessons. We will be making a rain gauge, making mountains with graham crackers, and an igloo.
Units We Skipped
There were more than a few pages, lessons, and units we skipped. Some were a little too complicated to do at this time (dinosaur dig hands-on activity using bones of a whole chicken) and the solar oven. Others discussed ideas we don't necessarily agree with, while many of the application activities did not supplement our lessons. But that is the great thing about homeschooling. You can pick and choose what to use and teach.
My Final Thoughts
Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 5 provided many supplemental lessons for our fifth grader. While I don't think I would purchase the grade 6 workbook, I am very happy we were able to review grade 5. If you are looking to add additional geography lessons to your homeschool day, check out the Evan-Moor series of Skills Sharpeners at Timberdoodle.
I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of
this book from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not
required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.
This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Terms
of Use and Disclosure Policy page for more information. Thank you.
There are several subjects that sometimes get pushed to the side when planning homeschool lessons. Electives like music and art, along with studies that are more like sub-subjects (word?) such as spelling and geography. These subjects may be skipped or shortchanged. With Evan-Moor's Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 2, you can easily incorporate educational, interesting, and fun geography lessons. Including geography in your homeschool has never been easier!
Timberdoodle includes Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 in their second-grade curriculum kits. We were lucky enough to receive both the second-grade and the fifth-grade books to review and use in our homeschool. Our daughter has been using the second-grade workbook for several months as part of her normal homeschool lessons, and it has been very useful.
About the Book
Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 is a 144-page consumable paperback book. The pages are perforated, so you could pull them out to work on specific pages. And some of the pages are meant to be pulled out, so you can use those with the hands-on activity at the end of the lessons. Including geography in your homeschool with this workbook is easy, as the units include a lot of different topics and ideas.
There are six units that include:
The World in Spatial Terms
Places and Regions
Physical Systems
Human Systems
Environment and Safety
The Use of Geography
Each lesson with the unit has a specific concept and skills that will help your child learn about the world around them. The lessons include:
reading selections
vocabulary and vocabulary activities
visual literacy
what I learned from activities
hands-on activities
A Look at a Lesson
In the "A World Map" lesson, our daughter learned about continents and oceans. She is now able to define the ocean, world, and continent, as well as interpret a map of the oceans. Her hands-on activity had her cutting out the continents and properly gluing them on the map.
My Thoughts
I enjoyed using Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 to include geography in our homeschool lessons. The fact that each lesson included a hands-on activity was great! Because our daughter was finishing up second grade when we started the book, I could easily assign lessons to her, and she would work on those independently. Sometimes, she did have questions, and they were easily answered. I didn't even need to refer to the answer key at the back of the book.
While some workbooks are geared more toward school than homeschool, I didn't find any activities or questions that we needed to adapt as homeschoolers (although we haven't finished every lesson yet). Questions were about the state or neighborhood and not the school or classroom.
The pages are very colorful. All the graphics are colorful clipart or photographs. This makes it easier to identify what each image is of when completing exercises. Sometimes, workbooks are only in black-and-white, which makes assignments difficult to complete.
While the lessons do build on each other, you could do them out of order to accompany your history or social studies lessons with a few modifications. For example, you could include the reading for "A Product Map of Kansas" with lessons on the state of Kansas or "An Ocean Habitat" when studying coastal states or islands.
Our daughter enjoyed this workbook so much that she would complete extra pages after dinner. She asked me on more than one occasion, "How many more pages can I do?" What parent doesn't love it when their child willingly and excitedly completes homeschool assignments?
Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade 2 is perfect for ages 7-9. You could easily use it with an older first grader or a younger third grader. I would recommend second grade for use in your homeschool. This was a perfect way to help us include geography in our homeschool.
I'll be sharing my review of the fifth-grade book soon!
If you are interested in more from Timberdoodle, please check out my posts about other products here:
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No matter how you approach schooling or homeschooling, you might decide that you want to continue studying one or more subject areas during a school break. Perhaps you feel the need to continue with your lessons over a homeschool break because your kids really love learning. Maybe the learning needs to continue to catch up on certain subjects or plans. Whatever your reason, teaching history during a school break can be quite easy and fun.
Over the Summer
The most obvious break in school routine – whether you homeschool or not – is summer break. Many homeschooling families take breaks during the summer so that their children will have a similar time off as their friends who attend public or private schools. For many, they also want to be able to spend the time outdoors – perhaps working on the farm or homestead – or visiting nearby sites and attractions. Of course, some homeschooling families school during the summer and take breaks at other times of the year because the summer is too hot to be outdoors.
Visit Places of Historic Interest
What is the easiest way to continue with your history studies during a summer break? Field trips! When you plan a vacation, see if there is some way to incorporate a visit to a historical site. In some locations, it might be a lot easier to plan these side-trips (if visiting historical sites is not the focus of your vacation). For example, when visiting Charleston, SC, it was very easy for my husband and me to visit numerous historical sites, including Fort Sumter, Boone Hall, etc. The town is rich in history from the pre-Colonial era to modern-day history. But what about if you are visiting a beach town or a resort? Well, maybe the history might not be so obvious, but most towns have historical markers, and some even have historical societies that will open their doors for research. If it is a rainy day, why not see if there are any museums or historical societies you can visit for an afternoon?
Holiday & Seasonal Celebrations
One of the ways to easily incorporate history during the various holiday and seasonal celebrations is to study the history behind each holiday. There are many places you can go to for resources, including one of my favorites – SchoolhouseTeachers.com. You can see all of their offerings for Seasonal Resources and find just what you need to plan in advance – or if you are like me – find things for the holiday the day before.
You can find Adventures with Books where the lesson designers have listed books on themes like Pumpkins and provided activities to do in conjunction with the reading of those books, lessons to teach art with a holiday theme, or even Everyday Games with seasonal themes. We downloaded quite a few of the Fall ones to complete with our children.
Use Resources Available to Teach about the Holidays
Another great part of having a membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com is their Christmas Corner. I am able to share a great number of Christmas-themed programs with our children. For example, last year we watched The Candy Maker's Christmas, which tells the tale of candy canes. There is a worksheet that accompanies the video we could fill out if wanted to and there are other lessons on SchoolhouseTeachers.com about candy canes, too. We can spend the entire month of December using resources from SchoolhouseTeachers.com that help us study the history of Christmas.
My Teaching Library also offers great seasonal resources, and while these may not focus upon the history of the seasons or holidays, you can easily find worksheets, lapbooks, and notebooking pages that you can use supplement your homeschool lessons. I like that there are notebooking pages that let the children write down what they are learning and experiencing during the holiday season.
Within these downloadable packets were several pages that focused upon the holidays during the month of October.
Go to the Movies
Whether you visit a real movie theater or just watch movies at home, you can spend time during your homeschooling break watching documentaries or movies based upon real events. There are so many to choose from that you can probably find a movie for almost every area of history you might be studying in your homeschool.
One of my favorite things to do with historical movies is to spend time comparing and contrasting the real events with those depicted in the movie. You can very easily watch the movie (or movies) during your break and then incorporate the lessons during your normal homeschooling schedule. For example, watch one or more movies about Queen Elizabeth and then read her speeches, read the works of her contemporaries, and compare them to the events depicted on the silver screen.
Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product
through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not
required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains
affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure
Policy page. Thank you.
Our first grader loves to learn about the world, examine maps, and study different cultures. So when the opportunity to review Let's Go Geography (specifically Let's Go Geography, Year 2) was provided to us, we were very happy to take a look and use this wonderful curriculum in our homeschool. Let's Go Geography offers two years of a geography homeschool curriculum that examines and explores different cultures and countries around the world for grades K-5. (Year 3 is currently in production at the time of this post.)
What is Let's Go Geography?
Let's Go Geography follows a very similar pattern with each lesson. Week by week, children are introduced to a new place around the world (or even in their backyard). The goal is to open the eyes of children to the world around them. Not everyone looks the same as them, eats the same food as they do, or lives in the same type of house as they do and Let's Go Geography helps children learn about these differences.
Each lesson contains similar activities:
Explore maps (finding locations and coloring countries or states)
Cutting out flags to include in a passport or on the flag page
Listening to the music of the countries (including their national anthems)
Taking notes on pages provided as part of the curriculum
Looking at a variety of pictures provided in the curriculum
Watching videos provided through YouTube safe links
Reading suggested library books or Internet sites (and as we have done, you can select your own books that are more readily available to you)
Color-themed coloring pages provided in the curriculum
Create one craft a week that coincides with the country or area of the world you are studying
How Are We Using Let's Go Geography, Year 2?
As soon as we received access to the site and Let's Go Geography, Year 2, I downloaded the first two lessons and read through them to see what we would need when we started the curriculum. We had several options as the course can be used for grades K-5. So far, we are using the majority of the materials.
All the information was very easy to find on the website. First, I gained access to Year 2:
And then once I was in Year 2, I was able to access each individual lesson to download the material. You can see that all the lessons for one semester are listed on the right hand side of the screen while the lesson you have open is on the left side of the screen. Everything was very easy to navigate.
Once I started printing out the materials (cover page, map, note-taking worksheets, etc.), I put together a folder for our first grader (and one for our preschooler because she loves working alongside her older brother). The course recommends a binder and we may transfer all our materials to one in the future but for now the folder works fine for us.
Each homeschool day, we have been following the lesson. On some days we are even completing more than one activity as our son has been really enjoying Let's Go Geography. The flexibility of the program is fantastic – allowing us to do what works best for our family. And because of the variety of activities, on some occasions our preschooler can join us.
If you want, you could print out the entire lesson or just read it from your computer or tablet. I have been printing the necessary pages for our children and reading the plans on the laptop. This makes it very easy to then click through the YouTube safe videos (which we love). I love the fact that Let's Go Geography includes videos to show culture, geography, and more. For example, we watched a video about a lumber mill, the Golden Gate Bridge, traffic in Cairo, Egypt; and the Hoover Dam.
The links for the videos are often accompanied with facts and interesting details about the country.
In addition to reading about the country and watching videos, your children can also use the notebooking pages to write down what they are learning to include with their maps, coloring pages, and other activities. The curriculum truly encourages note-taking and reading comprehension. Our son was very excited to research the different areas and take notes on his findings. There are suggested books, an online site, and even a brief description as to where to find geography books in your library. Flexibility again plays a part in how great this program is because we are able to use books we already own or borrow those available to us from our library. For example, I was able to share some of the many books I own on Ancient Egypt with our first grader to help him complete the coloring page.
Each week contains a different coloring page. Here is our son's partial completely one for Egypt.
What Did We Think?
This has been such an easy curriculum to incorporate into our homeschool day. To prepare for each week, all I need to do is read through the PDF and print the applicable pages. Sometimes I need to make a trip the library if I can't find appropriate sites for our son to use for his research and on occasion I needed to purchase a few items for the crafts (most of the materials we already have in our home), but in general it does not take long to prep for each week.
There is a checklist at the beginning of each file. If you print this page, your child can work their way easily through the week. And if your homeschooling children need consistency in their day, you will see the checklist is very similar from week to week as they will be completing a map activity, a flag activity, listening to music from the country, exploring the country through videos and books, and finally completing an arts and crafts activity.
The checklists make it easy to keep track of what we have done and need to do.
And there is also a list of craft supplies which I really appreciated. It was quite simple to look ahead to the next week and see what materials we would need. I could put them all together in our folder or set them aside with our other homeschooling materials for the week. In the screenshot below, you can see the craft supplies needed for studying England.
Our son loves having the opportunity to read about different places and decide what he wants to write down on the notebooking pages provided in the curriculum. He finds it fun to do the research. He also enjoys the videos and the crafts. His favorite video so far was one about the Sequoia known as the "President" which was included as part of the Pacific Northwest Lesson Plan. Of the four crafts we have completed, his favorite so far was the first one: using watercolor paints to recreate the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
I think one of the favorite parts of the curriculum was the weekly crafts we completed. Each week was a bit different. We painted a picture of the mountains, recreated a sunset in the desert, made a standard barn, and a picture of a camel next to the great pyramids so far. (This week we will be making a lion craft as it is the national animal of Ethiopia.) The three crafts shared below were all from the second to fourth weeks while studying the United States.
Painting mountains of the Pacific Northwest
Creating desert sunset scene while studying the Mountain West
Crafting a traditional barn while studying the South Atlantic states
As I have said before, I really like the flexibility of Let's Go Geography, Year 2. During the review period, we started with the first four lessons and then we skipped ahead to lessons 21 and then 22 as our son wanted to study Egypt (and then I picked Ethiopia next). I figure during the first week of March, we will study Ireland – just in time to create a cool Shamrock craft and learn about Ireland before St. Patrick's Day. (And even though we haven't used Year 1, I do not think that is a detriment to our using Year 2. The flexibility is great!)
Who would enjoy using Let's Go Geography, Year 2 in their homeschool? I think anyone looking for a flexible and fun geography curriculum for teaching multiple ages at the same time. As this curriculum is for grades K-5, you can use it for all of your elementary students. Our first grader thinks that a child who likes history would enjoy using this curriculum and I agree.
Let's Go Geography is also very easy to incorporate other activities into your week that connect – like cooking food from the country or visiting local museums so that you can learn more about the place you are studying. The Let's Go Geography geography curriculum is fun and exciting!
Do You Want to Learn More?
Our family was not the only homeschooling family who was studying geography these past few months. Please check out the other reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.
Let's Go Geography provides an excellent overview in this video:
.jpg "A Mom's Quest to Teach: Including Geography in Your Homeschool: A Review of Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 2")
