Geography Binder

I've really fallen in love with using binders our first year of homeschooling, and after showing you our Science Review binder, here's a quick look at our Geography binder:

I made the cover using the free chevron editable covers found here. 

Inside, I have two pencil pouches, a wipe-off world map from the Target dollar bin, and four Avery pocket Big Tab dividers. I have the sections labeled 

Map Drawing

Cycle Maps

Geo. Songs Maps

Coloring Pages

The first pencil pouch, shown above, holds dry erase markers and cloth eraser, crayons, a pencil for map drawing, and a passport book. I loved Brandy's idea at Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood for using the book (more on that in a minute). Click here to go to Brandy's awesome list of Geography resources for Cycle 2.

The second pencil pouch holds our Geography Cards and mini landmarks. I keep them in this cloth pouch for an easy review game. Mary randomly pulls a card or landmark from the pouch and shows me on a map where it's located. Easy and fun!

We took this binder to Anna's dance class last night, and this easy little game kept Mary busy and happy for 45 minutes! I was shocked!

Here's a close-up of the landmarks. We LOVE them! They're on Amazon, of course, but I found them at Hobby Lobby and used their 40% off coupon, which brought the price down to $5. Nice!

Sorry for the sideways pictures. After the pouches, I have the landmark flashcards sorted by country, also from the Target dollar aisle, and the country fact cards. These are just fun to look through every now and then; we don't really use them in any special way right now.

Okay, back to the passport book. Brandy at HAHAW posted not too long ago their plans for Geography, which included putting flag stickers into their passports as they learned the countries (can't seem to find the specific link for that post right now - my apologies). I love this idea, so I copied it, because that's really what I do best. ;) So, in our binder, we keep the passport and the sticker book and use that when we can.

Now, onto what's in each section...

In Map Drawing, I have plain paper in the pocket and Brandy's Continent Blobbing pages in page protectors for tracing.

In Cycle Maps, I have the page copied from the Foundations Guide with all of Cycle 2's memory work on one page, followed by some maps of the world and Europe printed from C3:

I LOVE these maps above made by C3 user heathergwyn. These are the maps we use in our geography review game that I just talked about with the Geo. Cards and landmarks. I love the font she chose, the colors, just everything about these maps are awesome!

The next section is Geo. Songs Maps. My fantabulous husband scanned and printed all of the maps from Kathy Troxel's Geography Songs book, and we have them in page protectors. Once or twice a week, we sing and trace the countries from one of her songs with dry erase markers. We're just on the first one, the British Isles, but we're in no hurry to rush through them.

The final section in the binder is Coloring Pages. I've printed off coloring sheets of the flags of the countries we'll be studying this cycle, and I also have some coloring pages of the famous landmarks.

So, that's it! I keep it all in a 1 1/2 inch Better Binder from Staples. With all of our out-of-the-house activities (doctor appointments, dance class, etc.), I'm glad to have something I can just grab and use anywhere. I really was surprised last night when that little pouch game with the cards kept Mary's attention for so long (stickers for incentives were involved, too!). I'm really pleased with the binder and how it's working out so far!

And here's just a cute shot of my big girl with her landmarks. Paris is new favorite place. Last night she dressed up like the Eiffel Tower (black pants and top) and we watched the tower's light show on YouTube. Pretty awesome! Field trip?? Um... yes, please! ;)