Friday, 21 April 2017

Charlotte Mason and Geography

Welcome to day five of the Homeschool Review Crew annual blog hop. Today I would like to encourage you to teach the subject of geography holistically and not as an isolated subject within your homeschool. One of the things I appreciate about Charlotte Mason approach is making geography an integrated and living aspect of your education process.
"The panoramic method unrolls the landscape of the world, region by region, before the eyes of the scholar with in every region its own conditions of climate, its productions, its people, their industries and their history. This way of teaching the most delightful of all subjects has the effect of giving to a map of a country or region the brilliancy of colour and the wealth of detail which a panorama might afford, together with a sense of proportion and a knowledge of general principles.” Charlotte Mason Vol 6 p 228

Geography is often thought of synonymously with mapping but this is only a small part of geography.  Geography is all about places to begin with but ultimately it's about the people and those places. C. C. LONG, Ph.D. had this to say:
Geography may be divided into the geography of the home and the geography of the world at large. A knowledge of the home must be obtained by direct observation; of the rest of the world, through the imagination assisted by information. Ideas acquired by direct observation form a basis for imagining those things which are distant and unknown.
Geography begins with finding the content you are learning about and then it drills down to countries and finally cities.  It has taken me a few years to discover what a living geography text is but the journey has been worthwhile.  The first living geography books I ever read were by Holling Clancy Holling.
The process was so easy.  Read the book, find the place on the map at the end of each reading. Learning to know the names of places takes practice and for each family this needs to take on it's own form.  Some families print maps and fill them in daily, others use tracing paper and trace the maps and fill them in until through route it is learned and others use geography songs.


I am directionally challenged and am eternally grateful that gps navigation is now at my finger tips.  As immigrants we posses an un-quenching desire to see the world around us and as such love to explore new places.  I find there is no better way to learn geography then to go for trips both short and long.  Stop and read memorials where ever you go and you will soon build a repertoire of places and people.  Many signs will explain things of significance and these days the information on geology and ecology abound in public places.

I have found some amazing resources and explanations on teaching Geography from a Charlotte Mason perspective, that I would rather not reinvent the wheel but would encourage you to grab a warm cuppa and read a few of the posts I have found below.

The Parents Review - Geography

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture
Edited by Charlotte Mason


On the WWW
Thank you for joining me in a look at geography in homeschool.  What are your favourite resources?

Blessings
Chareen

There are some pretty fabulous posts the crew have been sharing and I would encourage you to grab a cuppa and spend some time cruising the blog hop list at the bottom of this post. 
5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017


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