10/7: Final Review of Trail Guide to World Geography

 We did it - we finished World Geography!  I'm giving both of the high schoolers 1 credit World Geography on their transcripts.  

Altogether, it took us 6 months to get through this unit study.

For World Geography, we did:

• Trail Guide to World Geography
• Mapping the World with Art, by Ellen McHenry
• Literature that takes place in different countries around the world
• It's A Jungle Out There (South America)
• A Long Walk to Water (Sudan)
• Hatchet (Canada)
• Born Free (Africa)
• Red Scarf Girl (China) - EXCELLENT book
• Gandhi (movie version - India)
• Around the World in 80 Days (movie)

Trail Guide to World Geography

• We made it through the guide using a large, dry erase markable map sold by Rainbow Resource:  https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/001554/USA-World-Double-Sided-Laminated-Map.html?
• It's recommended to buy Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide, but we did not use it as much as I hoped.  We mostly used the internet, National Geography videos on Youtube, etc.
• We did not do the Around the World in 80 Days unit at the end of the Trail Guide, because I had added so many other things to the course
• There is an absolute ton of map work in this course.
• Altogether, this was an absolutely wonderful unit study.  This was one of my favorite curricula - ever (in 13 years of homeschooling).

Mapping the World with Art

• This was a wonderful resource to add onto the Trail Guide.  It's a series of DVDs (I think she might have downloads now, I'm not sure).  On the videos, she guides the kids into drawing the entire world.  You just need the videos, paper, pencil, ruler and sometimes a protractor and compass.  There is also a PDF with notes about each region, and she has a YouTube channel with videos.
• The girls ended up drawing the entire world.  

Literature

• All of these books were excellent, but we particularly enjoyed Hatchet and Red Scarf Girl.  Red Scarf Girl is absolutely an incredible book.  It's an autobiography of a girl who lives during the Cultural Revolution in China.  High school age is probably best for Red Scarf Girl, in my opinion.  We ended up having a lot of conversations about communism, how the Communist Party tried to erase Chinese culture, etc.  Hatchet - that was a book I had never read before, but we listened to the audiobook during lunch, etc and we all really enjoyed it.  Even the 6 year-old liked the book.