Trail Guide News

Some of you may know that we've been using the Trail Guides to US and World Geography for a while now. This year I decided to just work our way through the US Guide. The kids work on daily drills and will have mapping exercises or other geography quests on some days. We've always done geography as part of our unit studies, but the older kids especially like the daily geography work.

There are a lot of really good suggestions for projects in the trail guide that can be used for any geography focus. At the end there is a unit study on Lewis and Clark. I'm about to start a read aloud of The Captain's Dog based on this study.

Here R10 is working on a "signature map" where you write some state fact or name as the perimeter of the state. It was pretty cool when the kids were finished. Can you guess which state that is?

US Trail Guide

There are notebooking pages sold to go with this and the world study. I have the world study at two different levels, but I don't have any of the three (primary, intermediate, secondary) for the US. A must have is the Uncle Josh's Outline Maps. I prefer the CD which has extra maps. I just write out the assignments and occasionally I type them. I write out the mapping assignments on the back of the map they are to do. The kids have a small 1/2" binder with dividers where they keep all of their work.