Friday Five~ Geography

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Today we are sharing some of my favorite Montessori items! I love love love the way Montessori treats Geography! It is like an adventure to meet new friends and find new places to play! I think that every kid should be able to view the world as an exciting and interesting place to visit! So how do we do this? By puzzle maps, continent boxes, and just plain exploring! So here are my Friday Five picks!

1) Continent Boxes: These are so much fun! Each continent gets a box and inside are pictures, items, and other things that help the child get a collective idea of what each continent is about! In ours we have pictures of landmarks, people, food, instruments, birds, and animals that are from the continent. I also have souvenirs, money, animal figures, etc from different countries in the continent! What do we do with these? Explore them! Its fun to take a tour. Plus for Bunny, I ask her to find a picture that she likes and we research it more! By the way, I made my own cards (took DAYS) but you can buy them at Montessori Print Shop! Right now they are having a sale! Here is a link for the 20% off!

2) Puzzle Maps: LOVE these! All of a sudden learning where countires are is a game! We have the contient puzzle and we use it all the time! I use the puzzle pieces for stencils, we use it for learning where things are, and my girls loved to match the puzzle pieces to the other contient things in the school room!

3) Sandpaper Globe/ Continet Globe: If you can buy only one, go for the colored one! We use it all the time! Not just for geography but also for space work too, and for our celebration of life birthday tradition! Plus its small for little hands to use!

4) True Books Continent Collection: This is a great set of books to have on hand so when someone decides that they love a certain continent, you can have a place to start researching! I got the whole collection at Rainbow Resources for only $28! I can see us using these a lot this year since we will be doing one continent at month!

5) Global Babies/ Children Around the World: These books are some that we have on our shelves at home. Global Babies is great book that I love to give to small kids. It is a board book filled with pictures of babies all over the world! I find that little one love looking at other babies, and this book is a fun way to start geography. The Children Around the World book is published by UNICEF. It is a bit out dated, but still offer an interesting (if slightly narrow) look into the lives on children in other countries. It shows their favorite food, where they go to school, what their families look like, and other bits about the children. It is not the perfect picture of each country, but it is a great place to start! My kids found it interesting to look at the differences and the similarities between them selves and other kids. It is a really good book!

So those are my pick! As always, I would love to see what you would choose! Be sure to pop over to Montessori Moments and see what other homeschoolers picked as their favorite resources in geography! Plus, link up while you are there! We love it when people play along! I hope you are all having a great week! Happy Schooling!