Early Childhood Home School Geography

Video Transcript

In the early elementary years, a child's concept of geography is growing. He knows that his house and grandma's house are in two different locations. He knows how to get to Wal-Mart from home; he's learning his right from his left, so his concept of direction is developing. He knows that there are all sorts of different people in the world, even if the only one's different from himself are seen on television. Children at this stage of geographical literacy development should be exposed to maps on a daily basis. We have a large map of the world as well as an American map on the wall in our school room. As soon as our children are two and three years old, we are reading them lots of stories that take place all over the world. One of our kids? favorites at about three years old is "The Story about Ping". This is a story of a little duck and it takes place in China. When we read that book we have them mark with a little disk with a duck drawn on it, the country of China. When we read the book about Lentil, our children put a little disk on the state of Ohio, because that is where Lentil lives. When we take a trip and visit grandma or visit an aunt in Wisconsin, we put a star on the map that shows where we have been so in that way they begin to form relationships with different places on the map that they have been personally. We point out to them the capitals of the United States and of Canada because I am Canadian and my husband is American, so in that way they can relate to those two locations as part of our family heritage. When they get a little bit older, say five or six, we will begin to allow them to construct simple geography notebooks. These are often based on the places we have gone or on the places that we are studying. This year, all four of our children are constructing a world notebook. Even the five and seven year olds on a Monday morning can be found coloring their maps along side the older children. Theirs does not have much detail, but they are involved in the process and they are becoming familiar with the countries of the world, their shapes and relative locations. Every day with the little ones, we do a daily review of the things that they know. We ask them to point out the continents and the oceans as well as other important landmarks on the map. It is amazing how much a five, six and seven year old child can retain if you are willing to just do a little bit every day. The other thing that children in the early elementary years have going for them in terms of developing geographical literacy is their curiosity. This is a great age to start checking out the National Geographic documentaries from your library and allowing your children to be exposed to other places, other people and other cultures through their television sets. Later mark those places on the map so that they can have a tangible location for the stories that they have seen. Another way to record what your children are learning is through what Charlotte Mason called narration, which is simply a retelling of what they have learned. You can write that down and add it to their world notebooks. Another great activity to do with a four, five, or six year old is to have them map their house. This is great if you are also working on health and safety because you can design your family's fire escape plan and call it geography all at the same time. Teach them direction, teach them relative size and location by mapping the house and the yard, and later the neighborhood. If you brainstorm and you think about what your child's interests are as well as what your goals are for teaching geography, you will be able to think of lots of activities to do with your early elementary students that will introduce them to the greater themes of geography.

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