Travel The World: A Review

As a member of the 2010-2011 The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew (TOS CREW),  I received (without charge for purposes of review), 

The June Module of the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner:

TRAVEL THE WORLD.

This e-book curriculum is very easy to use, is fun, is educational, requires little preparation and only a minimal amount of printing.  My 3 and 6 year olds were intrigued with the new information this curriculum introduced to them. 

One reason I love homeschooling is the freedom and ability to introduce topics (such as map/globe reading) that others say are way out of their range of understanding.  My boys LOVED to explore the world with this curriculum and only after a few days working with the curriculum my 3 year old announced to his daddy "Here is North America and here is the Indian Ocean and this (Antarctica) is the REALLY, REALLY cold place!"

Travel the World is an e-book, published by The Old Schoolhouse,  it can be purchased at The Old Schoolhouse Store for a very reasonable $ 7.95.

TRAVEL THE WORLD is jam packed full of hyperlinks but also contains:

** Great easy to understand explanations of geographical terms such as: axis, latitude, longitude, oceans, bays, continents, peninsulas and more.

** Worksheets to help your student with comprehension.  These include: coloring sheets, copywork in manuscript and cursive, word search, word scramble, crossword puzzles, fill in the blank and directions to make a GEOGRAPHY acrostic poem.

**  Easy lapbooking activities, as well as instructions for those who have not lapbooked before.

** Supplemental activities for your older students including:  an introduction to the history of Matthew Fontaine Maury and his division of geography into three areas (mathematical, physical, and political), more advanced word searching, an entrepreneurial business activity tracking the geography needed for selling a product, research and report writing assignments, as well as mapping of events from history/wars, classical literature and from the biographies of authors. 

In order to utilize this curriculum to it's fullest it would be helpful if the student and teacher could look at a globe, a world map and possibly maps of each continent.  These maps do not have to be highly detailed, nor are they absolutely necessary.  We happened to have plastic world map dinner place mats and a globe already.  My boys really enjoyed touching their way through our lessons.  However, these items would in no way be required to succeed in teaching the basic world geography lessons found in Travel the World.

Look at all these cool pages!!

 Travel the World contains over 50 pages of information, hyperlinks to more information/games, activities, a song, recipes, and lots of scripture showing how the Earth is the stage for God's greatness to take place.

Do you see the page on the bottom row in the middle.   That is part of the lapbooking activities.  It is called "My Travel Book."  The children are supposed to pick some place on Earth they would want to visit, learn about it and then make their own mini-book about the place they chose.  Otto chose Africa and then decided to draw as many animals from the savanna as he could.  Here is a peak at his drawings (OH, and please don't tell him I took his book apart to take this picture......I *think* I got it all back in the right order.)

My 6 and 3 year old boys loved how Travel the World taught them more about our globe and how the globe and a world map show the same things yet look pretty different.  They also loved the introduction to our oceans and continents and I was very impressed with how many of the fill-in-the-blank and crossword puzzle answers they were able to give me after reading just the first 11 pages.

Our first day with this curriculum I spent introducing basic geography.  We then spent some time cutting out our lapbook projects (A matchbook for each continent and The Travel Book shown above).  During the next several days we read through and studied the information and links as we wrote in our Continent Matchbooks.  At the very end my oldest son chose the continent he wanted to know more about, we worked through the information in Travel the World, he created his book and we then created our first ever lapbook with all of the pieces. 

I highly recommend this e-book for ANY child.

It does a great job introducing the basics of map and globe reading in an understandable manner for the newer/younger student.

It would also be a great refresher for those who have already studied the basics of geography.

The activities along the way will challenge the beginner as well as the geography buff and many of these activities utilize links to sites such as National Geographic and World Atlas.com.

I also found the highschool supplemental activities very intriguing.  They made ME want to research Matthew Maury or map out the places that influenced famous people from the past such as Benjamin Franklin or Jane Austin.

There are THREE things that I REALLY like about this product:
1) It is reusable so I will be able to pull it out again and again as my children reach different stages and ages.
2) It is so versatile I really think that Travel the World could be used with the same child(ren) multiple times.  It is jam packed full of information and possibilities.

3) It is not only easy to use but it does not require me to print a TON of pages.  Printer ink and paper are expensive!  So being able to print only a small amount of pages and yet feel fulfilled with the amount of information to study is a very high selling point for this buyer.

Why don't you visit The Old Schoolhouse Store today and check it out for yourself?

For more reviews on this product or other products that have been reviewed by the TOS Crew please visit their website.

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Disclaimer:  I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse 2010-2011 Crew and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review.  Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews.  My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences on the products and services that I receive.