Thursday, September 21, 2017

Let's Go Geography Review


My family had the privilege of trying Let's Go Geography for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. We are excited to show you this homeschool geography curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

Let's Go Geography is a wonderful geography curriculum that is perfect for kids in kindergarten through 4th grade. This can be used by one teacher for all their students in their class(es). Great for homeschool, co-ops, and small classrooms.

This curriculum is a course to introduce younger kids to geography with a different country every week. This curriculum has a total of three complete years of world geography. This covers most of the countries of the world. Each year covers two regions of the US plus 26 or so countries. The subscription is for a full year. You can either choose getting the lessons one semester at a time or the entire year all at once. You can do the lessons online or you also have the option to download the entire semester or year (PDFs) to your computer and do them offline. These are designed to be done in order, but you can also jump around to teach about the countries you are most interested in. You will also get a very handy reminder email every week with the link to the lesson for the following week.


First Year Curriculum Break Down
Semester 1
  • Year 1, Lesson 1: US, the Northeast 
  • Year 1, Lesson 2: US, Hawaii 
  • Year 1, Lesson 3: CANADA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 4: HAITI 
  • Year 1, Lesson 5: NICARAGUA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 6: BELIZE 
  • Year 1, Lesson 7: GREENLAND 
  • Year 1, Lesson 8: CHILE 
  • Year 1, Week 9: Break Week! 
  • Year 1, Lesson 10: COLOMBIA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 11: ECUADOR 
  • Year 1, Lesson 12: REVIEW North & South America 
  • Year 1, Lesson 13: FINLAND 
  • Year 1, Lesson 14: NORWAY 
  • Year 1, Lesson 15: SWEDEN 
  • Year 1, Lesson 16: DENMARK 
  • Year 1, Lesson 17: ICELAND 
  • Year 1, Week 18: Break Week! 
Semester 2 
  • Year 1, Lesson 19: HUNGARY 
  • Year 1, Lesson 20: SOUTH AFRICA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 21: LIBYA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 22: TANZANIA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 23: GHANA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 24: REVIEW Europe & Africa 
  • Year 1, Lesson 25: AFGHANISTAN 
  • Year 1, Lesson 26: IRAN 
  • Year 1, Week 27: Break Week! 
  • Year 1, Lesson 28: CHINA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 29: MONGOLIA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 30: CAMBODIA 
  • Year 1, Lesson 31: THE PHILIPPINES 
  • Year 1, Lesson 32: THAILAND 
  • Year 1, Lesson 33: NEW ZEALAND 
  • Year 1, Lesson 34: REVIEW Asia & Oceania 
  • Year 1, Lesson 35: YEAR 1 REVIEW 
  • Year 1, Week 36: Final Break!

Here is the curriculum syllabus for all 3 years.

Your student can also make a Travel Journal in a 3-ring binder to keep all the geography pages organized. The subscription comes with free printable covers for the journal. The Passport pages are an additional cost to print out (we as crew members did also get this for free). Store all Travel Itinerary, maps, coloring pages, Passports, and projects in the Travel Journal.

The lessons are very hands-on with crafts, activities, and links to engaging videos and other online content. Each weeks lesson takes about an hour and has 6 chapters including: Map It!, The Flag, The Music, Let's Explore, Create!, and Printables. While your student learns, each lesson has all kinds of fun stuff for them to do. Your student will color flags, find countries or landmarks on maps, watch and listen to songs that go with the theme and sing along, watch videos or read books about the country, look at pictures of the highlights for the country on scrapbook pages, write on decorated notebooking pages or color a themed page, and make a craft. These hands-on activities make every lesson more interesting in this fun homeschool geography.

Lesson Overview
  • Chapter 1: Map it! – Print the map, find and color the country on the map, and explore and answer questions they provide about the country using the map. There are also more map activities (like coloring, labeling, and exploring more) you can pick from as well for the older student to do.
  • Chapter 2: The Flag – Print, color, cut, and glue the flag into your Travel Journal or in your Passport.
  • Chapter 3: The Music – Read the lyrics & listen and watch the music of the country with online videos.
  • Chapter 4: Let’s Explore – Go sightseeing! Learn about fascinating facts about the country. Your student could learn about the landscape, about the people, places to visit, etc.. Optional writing assignments are also given so your child can put into writing what they learned. Pictures of country highlights are included to add to the Photo Album part of your student's Travel Journal.
  • Chapter 5: Create! – Color a picture or make a fun craft! These hands-on activities have step-by-step instructions and a list of any supplies you need. Color pages are usually located in the Printables section.
  • Chapter 6: Printables – This section has notebooking pages, extra flags for the classroom, coloring pages and more.

Just some of the many fun pages of Let's Go Geography.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:
I did this with my daughters, who are 9 and 6. We did one lesson per week which put us at 5 lessons during this review period. We picked a Monday to do each lesson every week. We did the lessons in order as they came so I could keep track of them easier. I downloaded all the lessons to my computer so that I would have them there if I needed to use see them while I was offline. We learned about the Northeast part of the US, Hawaii, Canada, Haiti, and Nicaragua so far. We found that the pictures of the flags for the Travel Journal were very small and hard to color with anything, but a very sharpened colored pencil. We loved doing all the hands-on activities: watching videos, coloring, and crafts, etc. while we learned this kids homeschool geography curriculum.

Let's Go Geography Northeast US Lighthouse Craft with a modification.

The Northeast part of the US consists of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. I haven't really visited that many of these states so it was fun to introduce my younger kids to them. I told my daughters that it was Pennsylvania that I would go with my daughter, Tatiana, multiple times for the Life Vessel, treatment therapy she had, that helped her. Massachusetts was also where my husband was born. When we did the Northeast part of the US my girls especially loved making the lighthouses out of cups, paper, and tape. I didn't have any of the smaller plastic cups that were needed so I improvised and cut a 20 fl oz clear soda pop bottle (we used ones with red lids, but black would look cool too) in half (ours had a line to follow all the way around) with a blade. I did this ahead of time for the girls. We used the top half and it fit over the larger red cups perfectly. We didn't have any white tape, so we used white strips of paper taped around the red cup for the stripes. I don't have battery operated tealights, but I placed a small unlit candle in the pop bottle chamber just for show. We used black duct tape for the door and windows instead of black paper or marker.

Let's Go Geography Hawaiian Lei Craft.

For Hawaii I was hoping that they would have a Hawaiian song or Hula dance for the music instead of the US National Anthem again because it would show their culture better. My girls loved making the leis. We had a handful of colored plastic straws that we cut up into pieces to use as spacers for the paper flowers instead of the beads. I told my daughters that my husband used to live in Hawaii while he was in the Navy and my sister Jennifer (their aunt) went on an LDS mission there. I hope to someday visit too.

For Canada we learned about the Canadian flag, learned the anthem, learned that Canadians speak both English and French, about the Inuit people, and Niagara Falls. We learned about the Canadian Maple Leaf and why it is an important symbol to Canada. We also made a craft with the leaf.

For Haiti we learned about the flag and the symbols on it, heard the anthem in French, about its mountains and deforestation, about the crops people grow to earn a living. We also made some Haitian art with a batik feel.

Let's Go Geography Nicaragua Green Sea Turtle Puppet Craft.

For Nicaragua we learned about the flag and its symbols, we heard the anthem in Spanish, watched a volcano erupt, learned ways people earn a living, how a hand-rolled cigar is made (which I thought might not be a good thing to have kids watch even though it is a big part of Nicaraguan culture), learned about animals of the region, specifically sea turtles. We also made a sea turtle paper bag puppet.

We had a great time doing this geography curriculum for kids. I like that there are breaks and review lessons so that your student also retains the knowledge of the previous lessons. It is a great stand alone curriculum for younger children, but for the older kids would be a great supplement to use with another geography program. I recommend this to homeschooling families with kids in Kindergarten through fourth grade. We can't wait to do more of these lessons.


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Full Year -- 1 Semester at a Time is 2 payments of $12.99. Full Year is $21.99. Partial Year -- First 1/2 of Year 1 is $14.99. Subscribe today!

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