Easy & Effective Let’s Go Geography

Review of a Homeschool Geography Curriculum by Let’s Go Geography

I was very excited to be given the opportunity to review a homeschool geography curriculum from Let’s Go Geography, but I was not prepared for how easily and effectively  I could apply the lessons for my high schoolers.

I was not familiar with Let’s Go Geography before we began this review and I might easily have passed it over as an option for my high schoolers, as it is designed for younger children. But that would have been a mistake. The curriculum is so easy to tune to older children and effectively teaches geography even to reluctant students. You can also adapt the lessons to meet the interests of your child without trouble. And so this homeschool geography curriculum, really is both easy and effective for all ages.

 

 

What You Get With Let’s Go Geography

• Subscription to a year of lessons
• Online access to weekly PDF lessons (include embedded links to videos and other resources)
• Cover 28 countries each year (one country each week, with a break scheduled every eight weeks and three review weeks)
• Total of 3 years of available curriculum (a total of 64 countries to study)

Typical Week Teaching Let’s Go Geography

Each week you get an email from Carol Henderson at Let’s Go Geography to introduce you to the country you and your children will study during the week. The email includes a bit of general information about the country as well as a link to retrieve the lesson of the week from the website.

You download the PDF lesson from the Let’s Go Geography website, and then you can print activities and use the embedded video links to watch pieces of documentaries about the country with your children as you read the general country information to them. There are activities common to every lesson that include a study of the country flag, the national anthem, and the country map. Then each week slightly different activities are added.

This curriculum is easily adjusted to fit your family so you can do the lessons together as a group, or assign the lessons to one child.

Time Required to Teach Lessons

If you use all the materials that come with this curriculum as suggested in a homeschooling setting, you will find you spend about an hour a week prepping and one half-day teaching. The way that we adjusted the curriculum for my teens, we ended up spending 2-3 hours on Friday afternoons studying each new country. My children looked forward to these lessons each week and really loved ending their week with Let’s Go Geography!

• Time Spent By Yourself Preparing: 20-30 minutes (I used this time to pull out folk tales and fables about each country, load the documentaries up in our video queue, and locate and queue up traditional music, in addition to reading the lesson through)
• Reading Lesson/Watching Videos: 20-25 minutes (includes plenty of time to discuss what your children really enjoy about the country)
• Time for Student to complete activity or craft: 30-45 minutes
• Time to Complete Optional Passport: 5-10 minutes

Overall time you spend weekly: 75 to 110 minutes

How Many Days A Week Are Required?

We worked through the lesson in one sitting, but if you have younger children you might find it easier to do each activity on a different day. They wonderful part about Let’s Go Geography is that it is so very flexible that it can be used exactly as your family learns best and your children will still learn all about each country.

Teaching More Than One Child Is Easy

The great part about this curriculum is that it works so well when used in so many different ways. You could use it for one young child, or twin teenagers (as I did), or even teach the curriculum to a large family that spans everywhere from pre-schoolers to high school seniors. Even the little ones can learn along with their older siblings, making this a great curriculum for large families as well.

How We Used The Curriculum

We began by following the recommended resources closely so that I could see what would work for my kids, and what I needed to adjust.

There are a wide range of possible activities to choose from as you work your way through a new country each week. Fundamentally, the curriculum focuses on teaching children where countries are in the world, basic political and geographical features of that country, a bit of exposure to the music and art of the culture, and then a host of other options.

It was the music that drew my daughter to the curriculum. Both my kids love two things above all others: music and stories. So when I adapted the curriculum to suit them, we focused each country study on the folk or traditional music and it’s stories and legends and coupled that with a study of the general politics, economics, animal life, and notable geographical features. This very easily turned a curriculum designed for younger children into one that is engaging and interesting and challenging for older kids as well.

All in all this worked well. The material is written very clearly and designed so you, as the teacher, can easily teach your child, even if you are actually learning along side her.

How We Liked It

My children love Let’s Go Geography! The look forward to each Friday afternoon when we sit down to learn about a different country. As they watch the documentaries and listen to the music and the fables, my children toss about an inflatable globe we have had since they were young and try to find the country on the globe.

I have tried to successfully teach geography to my children since they were 3rd graders. But nothing I tried worked. My own youth was filled with writing country and capital names endlessly in blank maps, which taught me the names of the countries but nothing at all about them. I did not want that approach for my children.

Let’s Go Geography fits so well in our homeschool! My children enjoy it and I get to learn and explore alongside them. I recommend it to every homeschooling family!