Customer Reviews

Trail Guide To World Geography (Geography Matters)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a lifesaver for homeschoolers. What a great overview of World Geography and provides us with a great jumping off point for learning World Geography. I would recommend this book and the CD that accompanies this book to all homeschooler at ever level. Combine this with Wigger's and Hogan's The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide, old reruns of Globe Trekker from Netflix and you have a winning educational experience.

While the lesson plans and outlines are very useful to a homeschooler, it is not until you've purchased the book and begun to read the Introduction and Overview that you learn you need to outlay another twenty-eight dollars to the author, via their own website, for the student notebook used with the course. You also need to purchase additional books both a current edition of The World Almanac and, depending on the grade level of the student you are teaching, one of three Rand McNally World Atlases. So, while I will use this book to teach geography, I am not pleased to discover that this is solely a Teacher's Manual and not a complete course as the title initially suggests.

This book is excellent if you are teaching kids at mulitple age levels. I do recommend that you get the CD-ROM that goes with it as it is a time-saver! Each week I print out the maps and worksheets, and we sit down to do mapping, pour over a few atlases for information, and go online to look up facts, etc. My kids (ages 5-14) are enjoying it more than any other geography program we have used. It takes very little time to prepare for the week, and not very long to complete the work and learn the material. I love it!! I've already bought the US version for next year! And, the best part, we can save it for future years as it have three levels of learning in the one book and Cd-ROM!

I purchased this book, because it was highly rated in reviews. But I was somewhat disappointed. As one of previous reviewers mentioned, you need more than this.... Beside an atlas and an almanac, which you need anyway, you probably need Student Notebook to go with it. Then, The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide, Geography Through Art and Uncle Josh's Outline Map Book are frequently mentioned through the lessons, so you need those also to fully utilize this book.
In terms of contents, just following this program may not make your students Geography savvy nor give grade level knowledge as students go higher grades. Daily questions are very brief as well as answers at the end of the book.
The best part of purchasing this book was I got to know about The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide. I personally like this book much better than Trail Guide to World Geography, because it covers variety of activities and important facts higher grades students should know. There are suggestions how to apply geographical knowledge to other subjects. You might want to get this one first and decide you want to go further with Trail Guide to World Geography.

Both Trail Guide to World and U.S. Geography are excellent resources. They contain everything that is needed for the study: lesson plans, study questions, activity suggestions, and any forms needed for the student's notebook. You will need outline maps which are easy to find online, an atlas (obviously), and an almanac. Trips to the library for extra research are helpful depending on how in depth you want to study. There are three age levels of study questions. Also, there are suggested schedules for covering the material over a period of one or two years. You decide how in depth a study you want to do with different trail guides and trail blazing activities. This is a very versatile resource.

I am excited to get into this book. It is well written with lessons and ideas laid out for each continent. The fact that it will cover so many age groups is a huge plus for a homeschool co-op.

We have done a lot of geography in our years of homeschooling. This is the best system that I have found yet. I will accomodate several ages of children and really has them explore geography according to age and grade level. Then can also add to their geography notebook every year! This is the last geography curriculum I will buy!