A Geography Refresher

Our first week of school we started back with activities and books that were a refresher on geography terms for the girls and an intro to our geography studies for Zachary.

One of my favorite books that we have on hand is from Rand McNally ~ Geography & Map Activities: Beginner and we used this throughout the week along with the different books that we read.

Here's the breakdown of our week to introduce and review:

Monday

• What is a map? Why do we use maps? How do they help us?
  
• How to identify features on a map {water, land, mountains, etc...}
• Maps vs. Globes - looking at how the two are different from each other
  
• Continents and Oceans {use song to review}
  
• How to use a map - reading the keys, knowing directions
  
• North, South, East and West
• Making a map - drew a map of our backyard 'bird's eye view'
  

Tuesday

• Using a compass rose
• Getting out of a maze following N/S/E/W directions
• Making a treasure map - had kids hide a special treasure and then make a map to find it
  
• Learned about the different hemispheres -
  
• Talked about the Equator and Prime Meridian
  

Wednesday

• What are longitude and latitude?
• Map legends and how to read them
  
• How to read physical maps

Thursday

• Time zones
• Political maps
• Put together continent puzzle
• Label the continents and oceans on a blank map
  

Here are some of the fun books we read and used along with our studies this week:


And for those of you that are scratching your heads and thinking..."Ummm, didn't she mention that they are in their fourth week of school already?" ~ the answer is yes, we are. I am giving myself a little bit of a buffer for posting our studies this year and wanted to get back into the swing of things before I started posting all that we are doing...it's all still coming!!

Next week....we're moving onto Spain!!