Geography Educational Resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGRawGD2r5Y

The current environment means that nearly every child in the world is schooling from home. I shared many of my family's favorite geography educational resources at the 2017 annual meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS). I have also presented geographic topics at homeschool conferences for both teens (How Maps Lie; Maps and the Scriptures) and adults (Without Geography, You're Nowhere). Those presentations are filled with resources and information, and I wanted to encapsulate some of our favorites here.

Have geography resources you love? Let me know, and I will add it!

(Full disclosure: I provide links to Amazon as an aide to you, and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Many of these can be obtained through other sources, such as your local library!)

Computer Resources

Printable Maps

• I've put together a series of printable maps of both the US and the world.

• worksheetworks.com This website has many free country- and state-level fill-in-the-blank maps that are customizable.

• National Geographic MapMaker 1-Page Maps Great tool to create quick, printable, black-and-white maps with various layers. (Requires Flash)

Map Exploration and Games

• Google Maps Our children spend hours exploring the earth with Google Maps. They've even taken their own virtual road trips using StreetView.

• Google Earth Google now has a web-based Google Earth platform that includes games as well as a desktop platform that has increased functionality. I love the aerial imagery time slider. You can see what your neighborhood looked like decades ago!

• Geoguessr This is a web-based game where you are dropped into a Google StreetView scene and you have to use context clues to guess where you are. The closer you are, the more points you get.

• The True Size Of... An fun exploratory website to help understand the some map projections distort area. You can highlight a state or country and move it around the world to see how it compares in size to other places.

Books

Hard-Copy Maps and Atlases

• World atlas (lots of options, but Goode's World Atlas is the standard student atlas in academia; the big ones are really nice to have on-hand, if your budget can afford it: National Geographic, Oxford, The Times)

• Children’s atlas (we’ve really liked the now-out-of-print The Reader’s Digest Children’s Atlas of the World)

• Road atlas (Rand McNally is my favorite)

• Large world wall map (equal-earth.com has some great free, detailed, downloadable world maps both political and physical)

• Large US wall map (highly recommend The Essential Geography of the United States of America, imusgeographics.com)

• Hand-drawn map of North America. You'll fall in love as soon as you see it.

Books

• Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller; children's picture book

• Train of States by Peter Sis; children's visual reference book

• How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein; just what it says: an interesting and informative treatise about how each state got its shape. Lots of maps!

• How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monmonier; great for teens to understand how maps work

• Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti. A beautiful book with some astounding maps and other visualizations.

• Maphead by Ken Jennings

• Maps and Geography: Junior Genius Guide by Ken Jennings

• From Pie Town to Yum Yum: Weird and Wacky Place Names Across the United States by Debbie Herman

Games

• USA board puzzle (if you can find it, I highly recommend Ryan’s Room USA Map Puzzle)

• World map puzzle

• Map jigsaw puzzles (for example, this illustrated world puzzle)

• Scrambled States of America (card game that goes along with the book)

• Global Pursuit (old National Geographic board game)

• Five-State Rummy (School Zone Publishing)