Geography

Geography has always just been something I've integrated into our day- we have maps on the walls, a globe or three and atlases, we go on hikes and use compasses, we plot our trips, we've made maps of our street and looked up places we've heard and read about. We've made land and water forms out of play dough, we've climbed mountains and surveyed the land from on high.
But....
I've been feeling a need for a little more.
Next year we'll start with ancient civilizations, and I plan on working through historical maps of the world and the regions we study, but this year calls for an over view, something fun and light, some review of basic knowledge, and some interesting ways to use that knowledge.
So:
We will, of course, be locating the areas we learn about on the map. And we're going all over this year- First Peoples of North America, Vikings, Marco Polo, the New World Explorers, Manifest Destiny.
I also bought this cool book "Earthsearch" and Avery will work through that- it's a Klutz book, so it'll be fun and not too serious, but there's some good stuff in there about garbage and population, resource allotment, exploration, and the interconnectedness of humanity.
Here's the 36 week plan, with fingers sort of crossed that Avery really likes this book and goes ahead of schedule, stopping here and there to try out the suggested activities and games and make up his own:
1-2: review oceans and continents
review compass & map skills, plot journey, lead group hike
3: Earthsearch intro- page 6
4: 7-12 Lives of a Pop Can
5: 13-14 Garbage- make a chart with pictures of what is recyclable here, how long things take to break down, etc.
6: 15-21 Paper- set up a paper reduce-reuse-recycle program for our home
7: 22-23 Germs
8: 24-26 enlist others in creating a "dot map" of our own to study germ movements
9: 27-30 "lines" on the globe
10: 33-37 play "Get Lost" game
11: 38-41 make a tennis ball earth (round-flat distortion)
12: 43-46 make contour map of hand
13: 47-50 inclinometer
14: 51-54 earth's axis
15: 56-58 how did the earth get started?
16: 59-61 solar system model- outside
17: 62-64 earth's shell
18-19: review land & water forms
20: 65-67 earthquakes
21: 68-71 land formation
22: 72-75 land formation
23: 76 arable land-apple model
24: 77-79 human evolution
25: 80-83 population growth
26: 84-85 counting millions
27: 86-87 calorie allotment
28: 88-89 group game- m&ms/wealth/food
29: 90-92 skin color
30: 93-95 shared air
31: 96-97 we're all related
32: 98-99 ocean currents
33: 100-101 world market
34: 102-103 Geobear activity- come up with something similar
35-36: review basic themes, terminologies, facts