Let's Go Geography {Review}

This review was originally published September 2017 on our Gypsy Road site.

While we enjoy travelling around the USA as part of hubby’s job, we’ve never had the opportunity to explore beyond its borders.  World travel is something that fascinates the children, as it does most children, because they are interested in various cultures and how people are the same and different.  We can’t jump on a trans-Atlantic flight, but we CAN use programs such as this homeschool geography course from Let’s Go Geography to bring the world into our homeschool!  Lately, we’ve been using their downloadable curriculum to explore countries from every corner!

Let’s Go Geography is a three-year voyage around all six inhabited continents – each one is touched upon each year.  It is a subscription curriculum geared toward elementary-aged children, but we were able to tweak it a bit to make it interesting to our middle schooler, too.  (We prefer to study history and geography together.)  Subscriptions are offered by the semester or by the year.  A full year includes thirty-six weeks of lessons (as the average school year is thirty-six weeks long).  They are delivered to your inbox weekly, or you have the option of downloading all of them after signing up.  As our internet is option spotty, we opted for the latter.  It was nice to see everything that was coming up, and where they would be travelling, from the get-go.

As an example of the variety of places visited, for the first semester, we visited the Northeast US, Hawaii, Canada, Haiti, Nicaragua, Belize, Greenland, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland.  If you choose to follow the (probably much easier) weekly inbox downloads, then you simply click on the link each week, download the materials, and go!

Each lesson includes map work, learning the basic country facts, listening to music, watching videos (like a virtual tourist), doing crafts and coloring pages, reading books, and learning about the flag.  The books are referenced by call number (though honestly, I would also prefer that the publisher cite BOTH the call number and title, because then we’d be able to request materials online at our library ahead of time).  The crafts do not require fancy materials, but instead use basics that you have laying around the house, such as plastic cups, paper towel tubes, crayons, and glue.  There are printable coloring pages and activities, as well as passport documents to put into your downloadable passport once the country study has been completed.

Before starting the lessons, we printed each child a passport, where he would keep a record of the countries ‘visited.’  We started with the Northeast US, partly because it was the first lesson and partly because we’ve been there many times and wanted to see how the lesson lined up with our own experiences.  The boys were not terribly impressed at the depth of coverage, but it did set off an entire morning of “remember when…” conversations about our trips to the area.  Given that reaction, I decided to allow each of them to pick a country they were interested in from the remainder of the year, and we started skipping around.  While this curriculum is designed to be used in order, it is set up in a way that makes it completely feasible to skip around without issue.

For our next stop, we hit Finland, home of their uncle’s ancestors, and “a really pretty place.”  While, as a teacher, I must admit that the depth of information and setup was identical to that of the Northeast US, this lesson was much more interesting to them, and I can only ascertain that it is because we have never visited Finland.  They enjoyed the virtual tours through the video clips, as well as getting to make their own reindeer. 

Then, we jumped over to China, where we learned about the Forbidden City, walked on the Great Wall of China, went underground to see the Terracotta Warriors, and made our own Chinese New Year dragons.  Once again, they enjoyed ‘visiting’ and touring the country via the video clips (which are hosted through YouTube).  By the third country, my middle schooler was feeling a bit underwhelmed…but then again, this is not designed for middle school-aged children.  I gave him a research project to do about the country and had him report back to us – and he appreciated the challenge.

Every nine weeks, there is a review lesson that goes back and covers all of the things learned in the previous nine weeks.  This includes map work, flag matching, coloring pages, and basic geography (such as latitude & longitude).  There were no crafts this week.  I think having the review is a good idea because it reinforces that knowledge.  Also worth noting is that once every nine weeks, there is a ‘break lesson,’ meaning that there is no lesson offered and students are to take a break.  So, essentially, this curriculum is only thirty-two lessons, not thirty-six.

The publisher recommends creating a binder for each child and then storing the lessons and printables in the binder, so that you have a ‘trip around the world’ at the end of the year.  They provide printable tabs to divide it up by continent, and you can put the continent map and ‘flags of {the continent}” page in the front of each divider section.  (Each country also comes with its own map.) 

It is recommended that the curriculum be used one hour per week.  Personally, I do not think that this is enough instruction to call this product an actual “curriculum,” and would be more apt to label it as a “supplement” to a geography curriculum.  That said, it’s a fun, hands-on supplement that will make young learners more apt to remember the things they are studying.

Check out the link below for more information about Let’s Go Geography, and see what others are saying at the Homeschool Review Crew!