Geography Teaching Resources

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Yup, geography! That’s one of those subjects that easily gets neglected around my home, unless I’m intentional about remembering to teach it. In other words, I’ll forget if I don’t put it on my to-do list!

Below I’ve listed my favorite Geography Teaching Resources, many of which are free and available online. These are the tools I use to make sure I don’t forget to cover this important topic. 🙂

Goals for Teaching Geography

In 1984, the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers created five themes that help teachers determine what to teach for geography.

1. Location
2. Place – the physical and human characteristics of a location
3. Human-Environment Interaction
4. Movement of Humans
5. Region

(You can learn more about these here.)

As you can see, you could come at the subject of geography from many different angles.

• Sometimes the easiest approach for a busy mom is to simply obtain an inexpensive textbook and use that as your foundation. I have picked up books at thrift shops for 50 cents! You could try searching at PaperbackSwap.
• Many homeschooling publishers have written geography texts. My personal favorites are from Bob Jones, ABeka, or even CurrClick.
• You could use a homeschool-specific curriculum, such as A Child’s Geography or resources from Love to Learn. My Father’s World has created an entire year designed to introduce children to geography before continuing other studies.
• You could use your existing history curriculum and base your geography studies on that. An excellent resource is Christine Miller’s All Through the Ages, or Terri Johnson’s MapTrek.
• Don’t forget to use Genesis 10 and other Scripture references to nations and locations.

Be sure you have plenty of maps in your home.

Make It Fun

Here are some resources we use in our home to make geography come alive.

• Lots of maps on the walls! Our favorite is the markable map from Sonlight. We also love the maps that come in each issue of God’s World magazine.
• Flat Stanleys are a great way to personally get to know people in other parts of the world.
• We enjoy praying about each part of the world, using Operation World.

Websites We Use

• Quick Maps of the World by Theodora
• Student’s Friend
• Country Reports
• Jayzee Bear USA Map and World Map
• Resources for Teaching Geography
• Resources for Preparing for a Geography Bee (lots of good things here)