This week’s book focuses on one of our favorite things – maps and geography!
My boys have been interested in geography lately. It all started with this awesome video of US geography and continued on to this even more awesome video about world geography. My oldest has listened to the Tour the States song so many times, he wrote down all the words and they read and sing the song all the time. It’s wonderful, I love it!
Because of our sudden interest in geography, this book has been especially fun – it’s the Children’s Activity Atlas: An Interactive & Fun Way to Explore Your World from Sterling Publishing.
The very first thing my boys did was flip through and find all the flag stickers at the back. They studied the flags for a good 20 minutes before even turning back to look at the rest of the book.
They pointed out all kinds of interesting flags and named the countries they belonged to, they found country’s flags they are familiar with, they were enthralled by all these tiny flags.
We read the first layout which talks all about how to use a map – they were particularly interested in the biome key and learning about map grids.
Then the book takes you on a trip around the world starting with North America. There’s loads of information on each page besides the map – there are little pictures depicting what kinds of things are native to different parts of the continent (logging, beavers, maple syrup, grizzly bears, etc.), a “Fact File” with interesting tidbits about the continent, and most importantly, pictures of the flags for each country. Baby Ike reaally wanted to read too…
The flags are faintly colored and meant to be covered up with the flag stickers from the back of the book. My two boys completely loved scouring the sticker pages for the North American country maps. They found them all and then searched for some of the less well known countries on the map.
The book also includes a passport – it’s a little booklet with a set of pages for each continent with even more information about that continent PLUS some fun map questions to answer. For each continent there are 5 items in the passport to find on the map. There’s a little picture and description and once you find the picture on the map, you record the item’s grid location in the passport. Once you find all 5 items you have successfully completed a visit to that continent and get a sticker to put in the passport.
Besides the passport and the more than 250 stickers, the book includes 6 cutout postcards – each from a different continent – they can write on and mail to share their travels with friends.
This book has been a really fun way for my kids to explore this new geography interest they’ve discovered and learn more about the world, maps, and flags. We’ll be supplementing this book with some puzzles, other geography games, and some YouTube videos for a complete geography unit that is turning out to be so fun for our whole family!
