Let’s Go Geography (Elementary Review)

Let’s Go Geography offers a geography program for kids K-4th grade that covers many of the world's countries (and some regions) over a three year course. I was happy to review this with my youngest (even though he's a smidge older than the target group), as it's been awhile since we focused on geography in a somewhat systematic manner.

For this review I was given a one year subscription, which allowed me to use any of the lessons for all of the countries included in the 1st year of the curriculum. While I considered hopping around a fair amount based on interest or coordination with other studies, I finally decided that we would do the lessons mostly in order. Part of my reasoning for this was to take advantage of the focus on one continent at a time (within the continents I am choosing to go "out of order" depending on outside studies or current events).

Here is an introduction and look at a Let's Go Geography Lesson: 

As you can tell, these lessons incorporate visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning with reading, map-work, music, video and craft options. I love it when all the learning styles are incorporated!

Let's Go Geography doesn't cover EVERY country in the world over the three years cycle, but it does cover a vast majority, giving a pretty good overview by the time it is completed, and at a pace that should make it easy for your child to recall the information learned. You can see in the graphic below that each continent (color-coded) is visited every year, which is also a great way to reinforce where countries are found ("Remember when we studied Belize last year? On what Continent is Belize found? Well, we're going to study another country in South America: Guatemala!" )

While you have the option, as I mentioned, of using the lessons in any order, you can take the "remembering and planning" task out of the equation, and rely on a weekly email to remind you to open/download up each week's lesson if you prefer to go in order. 

As mentioned in the video above, each lesson is set up in the following format:

1. Map It ~ as the name suggests, this section has mapwork, both for the individual country/region, as well as where it is found on the appropriate continent

2. The Flag ~ Color in the flag

3. The Music ~ Links to listen to the National Anthem, and sometimes another song

4. Let's Explore ~ interesting information and photos to help learn more about the country, as well as links to "see" the country via a video tour (usually on YouTube) 

5. Let's Create ~ a Craft of some sort that relates

6. Printables (for the teacher) ~ anything that isn't linked that needs to be printed 

A quick note here also about the layout of each year~ Every 9th week is a BREAK week, or "catch-up" week to finish anything left undone. Every 12th week is a REVIEW week. The review weeks are well set up, with blank maps to fill in the correct country, a match the flag to the country as well as a match an image (from the country) to the correct country. There are other activities as well. For instance, the first review week introduces Latitude and Longitude, with fill in the blank and test your knowledge activities. 

While I appreciated the map-work (perhaps more than my son did), he particularly enjoyed the linked video explorations of each region or country. Many of these are National Geographic and other high quality videos that give a very nice overview of the countries they cover.

I wish the flag pages had an option to print strictly black and white, and just a little larger (they could probably gain 1/2" in both directions and still fit on the map page). This would allow printing with a printer that only uses black ink, and with the increase in size, the ability to color in the whole flag (our American flag has a field of stars on a black background...), instead of having portions of it already colored...

We didn't utilize some of the other activities that are geared more toward the younger set (coloring page and most crafts), but a few years ago he would have loved the coloring pages provided for every country!

Here is one of the crafts we *did* do, for the country of Haiti~ a wax-resist (batik) market scene...

Let's Go Geography offers a well thought out overview of geography for the early elementary ages, with just enough variety in the activities, and solid map-work to give your youngster a firm foundation in where things are in the world.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Let’s Go Geography
• Product: Let’s Go Geography
• Ages: K-4th grade
• Price: 
• One Year Subscription $21.99
• One Year Subscription in 2 payments $12.99 each
• Semester Subscription $14.99
• Some Individual Titles $ 2.49
• There are other options, and at the time of posting a 25% off coupon was available for the subscription options

You can visit Let's Go Geography on Facebook and Pinterest

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Blessings~

 #hsreviews  #geography #homeschoolgeography #geographyforkids