By Terri Johnson
Are you ever surprised by how little geography most kids know these days? Are you
surprised by how little geography you learned yourself back when you were in school?
American students, in general, have a very limited understanding of world geography in
comparison with students from around the world. European students, for example, have a
much better handle not only of their own surrounding geography but of the entire world as
well. It is the same with students from many parts of Asia and other regions of the world.
Perhaps you are thinking that I am only referring to public school students. But in reality,
homeschooling students often suffer from a lack of knowledge in this subject area as well.
The two subjects most neglected in the homeschooling arena are writing and geography.
Why is this so? Skill areas, such as math, grammar and spelling are easier to measure
than the artful skill of writing and so it gets pushed aside. Similarly, history and science
require such large portions of time that the pursuit of geographical knowledge is often left
out in the cold.
Since writing is not my expertise, we’ll just tackle the subject of geography here in this
short, but effective, ebook. How can we beef up our children’s knowledge of geography in a
way that will not require too much time or proficiency on our part as parents and teachers?
Further, how can we introduce or accelerate this subject in a way that will be enjoyable,
even painless, for our students as well as for ourselves?
Here is my seven month plan that will help you help your students master world and U.S.
geography is just seven months. Think I’m crazy? Follow this step-by-step program and
take my challenge over the course of the next seven month time period (note: this can run
into or through the summer months as your kids will not consider this “school work”). If
your students have not improved drastically in their knowledge of geography, please write to
me and tell me that I am off my rocker and that it doesn’t work. Here is my email address
– terri@kqpublishing.net. On the contrary, if you do see dramatic improvement,
even mastery, in the subject of world and U.S. geography, write to me at the above address
also. I would like to celebrate with you in this wonderful accomplishment!
Let’s dive in… We will divide our program into seven 1-month increments. This is the only
part of this program where you will need to make a decision. Each of the seven months,
your student/s will study a different continent or geographical area and you get to decide
the order in which these will be tackled. Here are the seven geographical areas:
Asia
Africa
Europe
United States
North America
South America
Australasia/Antarctica