Geography - Charlotte Mason Style

We finally started Map Study. It took awhile to get up and running because I wanted to find just the right Atlas to refer to during our work. I had thought a Children's Atlas would be best and really liked this one. But we ended up going with this one from the adult section because it was available without mail order. The key to me was showing both the physical map of the region as well as the political map and then breaking down the regions into countries with the political and physical regions within that country.

As planned we started with North America because that is home to us. Froggy was not able to identify anything on the blank map initially but I expected that and made sure she was not disappointed in herself. Alaska was tricky. She wanted it to be a country of its own. We looked at the colors on the map and I explained how map makers use color to show differences and similarities and a light bulb went off. "It is my country" Yes. I also pointed out Hawaii which initially went unnoticed. I wanted her to color the countries on her map but she would not.

The most significant change we will make before continuing map study is enlarging the blank image. I revised our selection of blank maps and we ended up using this one because it printed out bigger than the others but it was still too small to label well. If I had prepared better I would have enlarged it before giving it to her but next week will be better.