unSocialized Educated at Home; Engaging the World

(Geocaching at Skidaway Island State Park, GA)

My son likes to study maps and to draw up his own. He has always enjoyed learning about landforms and the locations of continents, countries, mountain ranges, bodies of water, etc., so geography has never been something he dreads. (Grammar and spelling, however, are another matter entirely). 

Most kids are going to find at least one subject distasteful, an offense to have to study, which is why we homeschool Moms and Dads are always on the lookout for ways to make those subjects more palatable. (If anyone's found something that works for Algebra and other higher math, please let me know).

One way to make geography fun is with geocaching. It's like an outdoor treasure hunting game in which participants, using GPS devices, navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. Kids can learn about and sharpen such concepts as direction and mapping, coordinates, longitude, and latitude. 

• Geography and Cultures Links: I use Pearltrees to catalog all the links I've been collecting these past couple of years. Here is one for cultures and geography which currently has 19 links.

​Knowledge Quest  ​is offering its free Globalmania ​world history e-book. Globalmania is a seven-month program, with each month broken down to  four weekly lessons. Links to online games, puzzles, and quizzes are provided, as well as color world and continent maps, labeled and unlabeled. You can download the entire ebook, or just the parts you want.

What would your life be like if you were born and lived in a different country? The site ​If It Were My Home ​lets you answer that question. They have a comparison tool that enables you to pull up stats on living conditions in other countries and how they match up with the U.S. and each other. 

I tried it out by doing a comparison between the U.S. and Slovakia, (where my husband's paternal grandparents were born and emigrated from). I was presented with a Google map that showed the size of the country in relation to the U.S. In this case, Slovakia was shown overlaying Greenville, SC. You can also view a full "zoomable " world map. 

It told me that if Slovakia were my home instead of the U.S. I would....

• consume about 75% less oil
• use about 58% less electricity
• spend about 81% less money on health care, but also make 54% less money and have 30% more chance of not having a job
• life expectancy  is lower there, too, by about 2.5 years

The site gives additional basic information on the country, and recommended reading lists for further information (none were listed for Slovakia). You can also vote on whether or not you'd rather live in said country, (no, thanks), and "sound off" about your decision in their comments section.

 Kind of a different way of doing a geography lesson.