Monday, October 19, 2009

TOS Crew Review: Hands On Geography

I was delighted to receive and review an actual hard copy of the book Hands on Geography- "Easy and Fun Activities for Exploring God's World" by Maggie Hogan, published by Bright Ideas Press. I'm not sure how to start this review except to go ahead and blurt out, "I love it!!" This is hands down my favorite Crew Review item thus far and I'm so excited that I get to keep the book.


Here's a look at the table of contents:
  • National Geography Bee
  • Homemade Games
  • Homemade Books
  • The Country Notebook
  • Passport Fair
  • Joseph's Journey
  • Missionary Geography
  • Genealogy Geography
  • Nature and Geography
  • Language Arts and Geography
  • History and Geography
  • Maps Galore
  • Teaching through the Five Themes of Geography
  • Outline Maps
  • Geography in a Flash
  • Geography Resources
One of the things I like best about this book is that it makes a great resource item for you to pull ideas on any study you are doing. The chapter entitled Maps Galore for example, is full of themed maps you can use for any topic you are engaged in. The possibilities seem endless because it sparks your imagination on what else you can map. There are many specific ideas and projects in the book, but it also helps you to nurture more ideas.

For fun I had E11 map the concert schedule of his favorite bands- Jars of Clay and Go Fish.
Cost: $14.95 for paperback book
$10.46 currently at CurrClick for an electronic copy

This book really works for us as a unit study family because it has so many resources and ideas for using with unit studies you have planned and it also can be the basis for some really nice unit studies like a missionary study. We used the genealogy geography as part of our study of George Washington Carver last week which is E11's current study. He had already done the family tree and was able to use the information on birthplaces to construct a map of his heritage.

There is even information on how to prepare for and direct a group of students toward the National Geography Bee. That is valuable information for the homeschooling community.

I encourage you to get a copy of this resource. It's one I will keep very handy!

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think I am going to have to put this on our wish list.
Blessings
Diane

October 20, 2009 at 4:31 PM
Unknown said...

I appreciate this review. It sounds like a valuable resource to put on the shelf. I need some more geography resources. Of course, maps and atlases are probably the best thing to use, but sometimes it's just nice to copy a page to use as a base. I'm going to look more closely at this. And thanks for the link to Currclick. I love knowing WHERE I can get things.

October 25, 2009 at 11:02 PM
Saille said...

Is this likely to be useful for non-Christian homeschoolers? The Geography Bee information alone would interest me.

October 26, 2009 at 8:39 AM
Heather said...

Yes Saille, based on the table on contents there's a lot there that is not specifically Christian.

I think it's a great starting point for many ideas we probably have lurking in our heads!

October 26, 2009 at 7:11 PM

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