Progress of Geography

I just realised I had not posted anything about our Geography Studies for this whole year. So this is an update and a record with all what we have done so far.

The books were are using for this year and also for the Primary years Inshaa Allaah could be found in detail here. We were unable to take full advantage of all the books mentioned there due to relocation and we hope to take the best out of them next year bi idhnillaah.

The Curriculum Guideline that we are using could be found here, even though we are not sticking to it 100%, this is just a guideline for us Inshaa Allaah.

So the main books we are using so far are the Developing Map Skills and Evan Moors Daily Geography Practice Grade 1.

Evan Moors Daily Geography is too easy for Maimoonah but it is a good practice anyway and she likes the format of it and she finishes each chapter pretty fast and she likes the colouring part of it. Also this book made her Familiar with the all the States of the United States of America.

Few of the things we have covered from this book so far includes

• What is a Map
• Using A Map to Find Places
• Map Keys
• Picturing a Map
• Maps of Different Places like the Farm, Stree, Town, City, State, Fun Park, Zoo Maps
• Introduction to the Globe
• Oceans and Continents

 

The Map Skills book is also a very good book for instilling the basics of Map Skills.It starts from the basics like learning the position words, direction and slowly gets on to real map skills.

Some important skills we have covered so far includes the following:

• A Compass Rose
• Using a Ruler
• Measuring Distances on a Map
• Using a Map Grid
• Mapping a Grid
• Map Symbols
• Reading a Road Map
• Cardinal Directions

Each Chapter has some hands on activities to be done by the students which makes it easy to understand the concepts. For Example Maimoonah made a city following directions. Also she made cardboard house. It also encourages the students to draw their own maps using map keys and based upon the contents of each chapter they have studied.

 

 

Here are some of the other activities on the Map Skills Book.

 

 I like the emphasis on the UK National Geography Curriculum to do field work on the topics to be covered. And I hope to do more field work with Maimoonah next year after the basic skills are learnt, even though she uses Google Maps to guide us when we are lost we need to make it more interesting with field work Inshaa Allaah.

Continents and Oceans Study what we did last year could be found at the below links.
http://ummmaimoonahrecords.blogspot.com/2011/12/continents-and-nations.html
http://ummmaimoonahrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/continents-and-nations-study-south.html
http://ummmaimoonahrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/continents-and-nations-europe-review.html