Geography in Kindergarten?
Yes, because we follow the Charlotte Mason (CM) educational philosophy in homeschooling.
I actually cannot remember having a Geography subject in school. (It would fall under Araling Panlipunan or Makabansa if we want to align it with DepEd’s prescribed subjects). Not in elementary, not in high school, not even in college. That is why I am so ignorant when it comes to locating places.
I do remember, though, being drilled one or two times when I was in Grade 3 or 4 (in Sibika?) in which province a city is located, e.g., “Which province is Iloilo in?” That type of drill.
Which wasn’t effective because, even after graduating from college, if you would ask me where a particular city or town is located, I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it’s in Luzon, Visayas, or Mindanao. (Actually, I’m not the only one who’s like this).
Fortunately, my dear daughter (DD) is unlike me. She is actually more knowledgeable in geography than me when I was her age. And I credit that to CM which includes the subject in a child’s curriculum as soon as s/he starts school.
So unlike me, my DD is already familiar with several (popular) countries (the ones that usually gets mentioned in history and stories) and can identify, more or less, which continent they belong to and can, more or less, locate them in a map.
As for me… to be honest, there are some countries and places that I learned to locate only at the same time as my child did, meaning I only learned about them while/because I am homeschooling my child.
That’s how ignorant I am when it comes to geography, or how pathetic the state of our educational system is, take your pick.
So how did we introduce Geography?
Through living books, of course. And maps.
Curriculum/Book list
We used several books for Geography, but didn’t use them all at the same time. They include:
- Little Folks of Many Lands.
- Children of Other Lands (supplement).
- Geography from A to Z (supplement).
- Me on the Map (for Map Work)
- Mapmaking with Children (teacher/parent resource).
Insert pics of books
Choosing a book
Give him… intimate knowledge, with the fullest details, of any country or region of the world, any county or district of his own country. It is not necessary that he should learn at this stage what is called the ‘geography’ of the countries of Europe, the continents of the world—mere strings of names for the most part: he may learn these, but it is tolerably certain that he will not remember them. But let him be at home in any single region; let him see, with the mind’s eye, the people at their work and at their play, the flowers and fruits in their seasons, the beasts, each in its habitat; and let him see all sympathetically, that is, let him follow the adventures of a traveller; and he knows more, is better furished with ideas, than if he had learnt all the names on all the maps… every illustrative anecdote, every bit of description, is so much towards the child’s education.
Volume 1, pages 274-275
There were five (5) books I actually considered for my DD’s Kindergarten Geography:
(1) Little Folks of Many Lands by Lulu Maud Chance, (2) The Seven Little Sisters Who Live On The Round Ball That Floats In The Air by Jane Andrews, (3) Little Folk of Many Lands by Louise Jordan Miln, (4) Children of Other Lands by Watty Piper—yes, the author of The Little Engine That Could, and (5) Children of Many Lands, where an earlier edition goes by the title Children of Foreign Lands, by Elizabeth McCrady.
(1) Little Folks of Many Lands are stories of the lives of children in other countries and, therefore, introduces children to other cultures of the world.
There are a lot of CM curriculums, as far as I can tell, that recommend Little Folks of Many Lands for early years Geography.
I chose to use it only for the reason that it features a Filipino girl in one of its stories which I thought would be cool.
One-third through the book, however, I wanted to quit as I find it dragging (just a personal opinion). The story of the Filipino girl, however, was listed second from the last (among eight) stories. But because I still wanted to read it in spite of finding the book a drag, I pressed on.
Only after finishing the book did I realize that I need not read the stories chronologically, that I didn’t have to wait to reach that part of the book. I could have read the Filipino story anytime and ditched the book early on.
Oh well. At least I can say I soldiered on with a book I didn’t like. Haha.
(2) The Seven Little Sisters is similar to Little Folks as it tells the stories of seven (7) children in each continent and how they lived a century ago.
I also find this book recommended by several CM curriculums for preschool Geography. But I didn’t choose to use this book because the continent where each child supposedly lives is not given, i.e., the reader is left to identify which continent is referred to in the story.
If it was written otherwise, I might have used The Seven Little Sisters. But I don’t want to be left guessing. And, personally, I prefer to “teach” the concept of countries first before the concept of continents.
But I actually want to read this as a free read because there are not a few reviews I’ve read that deem it racist and offensive for the present day. I am, thus, intrigued, and want to find out for myself what the issue with the book is.
(3) Little Folk of Many Lands (without an “s” in “Folk”) is, if I am not mistaken, a book listed in a PNEU programme for Form IB (Year 1 to Year 2 students) back during CM’s time. I didn’t use this book because I couldn’t locate a copy of it at the time I was planning for my DD’s Kindergarten year.
(4) Children of Other Lands. Since I already decided on using Little Folks, we just read this as a supplement/free read, i.e., no narration, after finishing Little Folks. I think I would use this, however, when my dear son (DS) starts Kindergarten later.
(5) Children of Many Lands/Children of Foreign Lands. We didn’t have the time to read this anymore as we already reached the end of the school year after finishing books (1) and (4).
Another supplement we used was Geography from A to Z which we read during our Morning Time. It is like a glossary of physical geographic features with pictures.
We read one or two or three geographic features per lesson, depending on their length, and because the pictures in the book are cartoonish, we would google them afterwards to see what they actually look like.
Ideally, the earth’s physical geography should be learned through outdoor excursions or during Nature Study.
…the child gets his rudimentary notions of geography as he gets his first notions of natural science, in those long hours out of doors.
Volume 1, page 273
But since we couldn’t travel around (since my dear husband passed) and since we were given this book (might as well use it), we just settled with using a book and Google.
Subject/Book review
My dear daughter (DD) said she likes Geography and that she liked the Little Folks book.
But I think what she really meant was that she specifically liked the story of the eskimo boy in the book and (maybe) not the book in general because when I ask her what she likes about the book, she just refers to the eskimo story consistently because she said she wanted to see snow.
(On a side note: I’ve learned that “eskimo” is not a politically correct term anymore).
Map Work
…geography should be learned chiefly from maps. Pictorial readings and talks introduce him to the subject, but… they are to be learned, in the first place, from the map… he should begin this study by learning the meaning of a map and how to use it. He must learn to draw a plan of his schoolroom, etc.
Volume 1, page 278
I was initially at a loss how to teach maps to a Kindergartener. I have been googling for quite some time and was already feeling frustrated when I, finally, stumbled upon Me on the Map which I think is the perfect book to teach maps to very young kids.
I actually have no idea what a living book on teaching maps would be like but I think Me on the Map was exactly what I was looking for.
It is actually a short children’s picture book that teaches maps in a very practical, and I’d say ingenious and engaging, way.
It “tells a story” of a child showing a map of her bedroom then, slowly, zooms out of the child’s room, page by page, to a map of her house, then to her neighborhood, then her town, her state next, her country, then lastly out to the earth.
Then it zooms back in reverse back to the child’s room.
The book is a first person narrative by a child.
I told my DD to pretend that she is the child in the book but before doing so, I replaced terms of places in the book with our local counterparts, e.g., “province” instead of “state”, the name of our province instead of “Kansas”, “Philippines” (and used a map of the Philippines, as well) instead of “USA”.
We did not read the book in one sitting but did one page-spread at a time, letting my child draw a map per lesson.
I think the book is very cool and is very much in line with CM principles and philosophies so it is definitely a living book.
Below are my DD’s map renderings after each of our lesson from Me on the Map. Because my DD is still in Kindergarten, of course her maps are not perfect but they are, actually, quite accurate.
Mapmaking activities
After Me on the Map, we did the activities in the book Mapmaking with Children. It is not a lesson book to be read by children but a resource for teachers/parents on how to teach mapmaking to children.
The book is intended for children to develop a “sense of place” with their immediate environment (e.g., one own’s backyard and neighborhood) which, the author believes, children need to develop first before they would be able to understand maps and related concepts (e.g., scale, location, direction, scope, perspective, etc).
The hands-on activities, designed according to the developmental stages of children, serve as scaffolds in developing spatial literacy in children.
As it is a resource book for teachers, the activities are designed for a class, but it can be adapted for home use.
The book has specific chapters for specific ages or grade levels so it is a book that is meant to be used until 12 years old or until Year 6.
My DD loved the activities in the book. One example was building a model of a classroom (in our case we built a model of our house, both the 1st and 2nd floors) using toy blocks. I then asked my child to look for coins in the actual places (in the house) based on the locations I identified in the model.
Another activity in the book is mapping the route to a child’s school, but since we homeschool, we substituted instead a destination we always frequent, the church we go to.
The activities for the five- to six-year olds culmimated in a treasure hunt which we did in our village’s clubhouse.
I made puzzle-piece clues which, upon completion, indicated where I have hidden a treasure (located at the round-about at our village’s entrance).
The “treasure” I made was just a piece of paper with a note that they could buy an ice cream and a lollipop from the sari-sari store. It was simple but it’s already a treat for them.
My DD loved the activity and is begging to do another round of treasure hunting.
Another thing we did for Map Work was, whenever we encounter a place in any lesson in any subject, we locate it in a map and put a label on it.
We also mapped the course of the sun in a day as well as the course of the sun in a year.
I think Geography is the subject where we had the most “hands-on” activities, unlike the rest of the subjects where we simply read and narrated.