Geography I from Memoria Press is a 4th-8th grade set covering the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, and includes a Student Text, Student Workbook, and the Teacher Guide. You can also choose to get both the United States Student Workbook and the United States Teacher key, Quizzes and Tests to review previously learned States and Capitals.
The Student Text is 103 pages, and begins with an introduction to Geography. This section gives a basic overview of geography, hemisphere, countries, capital cities, resources, and climate types.
The rest of the text contains overviews for each region followed by information for each country in that region. The overviews for the regions include Story of the Land (ancient history), Land of the Story (modern information), and Fast facts (countries, people, religions, languages, landforms, rulers in history, climates, and/or resources). You’ll also find maps and pictures on these pages.
Next come the individual countries which cover History’s Headlines (delving into ancient history), Tour of Today (modern information), Fun Facts (similar but also includes capitals, major cities, population, flag, etc.), maps and pictures.
At the very back of the book, there are color pictures of all the flags so your student can color their flags correctly.
The Student Workbook is simple fill in the blank/fill in the map type work. On some pages, the student identifies the countries numbered on the map, and writes them on the designated lines.
On the individual countries, the student fills in the country’s name, capital, and ancient name. Then they fill in fun facts for each one. Next, they copy the names of both the country and capital three times for spelling practice.
Finally, they label the map with the names found in the word bank. Review is built in throughout the workbook.
The Teacher’s Guide is basically an answer key. Each book has a one page Teaching Guidelines (same guidelines) to give you an idea how to use the books.
First of all, we adopted a method to use this that would work for my son (13) since he has chronic head pain, and struggles a little with school at the moment. Too much reading and writing seem to aggravate the pain. So my daughter read the text to him, asked him what answers to fill in, and did the writing for him. The Teacher’s Guide is only used to check answers if needed.
We chose to not use the US text and workbook at this time because we haven’t done enough learning on the states and capitals for it to be an effective review. Memoria Press designed it to be a followup to previous Geography grade levels. It’s much the same fill in the blank type format with quizzes included.
I decided to review this curriculum because geography has been one of those subjects we’ve neglected for the more obvious ones. The text is interesting, and we love how it presents both ancient history, and today’s information. It’s more a quick overview of the country, and would be fun to use along with a more in depth look at each country.
The workbook is simple fill in style, and for the most part, they found it easy. However, both said that figuring out the ancient name was a bit puzzling at times because the book isn’t always clear.
Geography I could be used fairly independently. If your student isn’t a strong reader, I would suggest reading the text to them. As for the workbook, they should be able to do it on their own for the most part, but again, the ancient name might throw them from time to time.
Geography I: Middle East, North Africa, and Europe Student Text – $14.95
Geography I: Middle East, North Africa, and Europe Student Workbook – $11.95
Geography I: Middle East, North Africa, and Europe Teacher Guide – $12.95
United States Student Workbook – $5.00
United States Teacher Key, Quizzes, and Tests – $7.95
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