Product Review—Lets Go Geography, Year 2

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in
exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I
compensated in any other way.

A couple of years ago, we had the privilege of reviewing Year 1 of Let’s Go Geography. Mr. Imagination loved it and badly wanted to continue doing it, but last year it was one of the things that completely went by the wayside when I was pregnant. This year I decided to make a point of getting back to it—and then had the opportunity to review Let’s Go Geography,Year 2! He and Little Miss were very excited about getting to be part of this review. I have Mr. Sweetie join in, too, although he isn’t nearly as enthusiastic. We’re really enjoying it, although I didn’t get quite as far during the first few weeks of having it as I would have liked.

So far, we have studied the North and South American continents in general, and created dividers for our ring binders for those continents and Europe. These dividers are something new with the program, which I really like. Having the binder makes it easy to keep the pages together, which was something we struggled with when we did Year 1 awhile back. I gave each of the three children their own binder, and we 2-hole punch all the pages to put in the binders (3-ring binders are almost non-existent in this country—we have to order them online if we want them!). We have also studied the Pacific Northwest states and the Mountain West states. One of the videos we watched for the Pacific Northwest study was about Mount St. Helens. Mr. Sweetie was so intrigued by that that he wanted to write about the volcano for our writing group. He didn’t know enough about it, though, so we’re reading a book I had on the shelf. I love it when their interest in something is sparked by a lesson like that! One of the videos from the Mountain West states was about potato growing in Idaho, and Mr. Imagination wrote about that for his summary of what he learned about those states. He shared that story at our writing group. As we worked through the next lessons, we’re looking forward to studying Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela and several other Central and South American countries, and then move on to Europe, where, among others, we’ll study England, France and Germany. I’m not sure what contries are studied in the second half of the year, because I haven’t looked ahead at that semester yet. It sure looks fun to “travel” around the world this way, though! Each lesson is laid out in the same format. We start with map work. On a map of the continent, we color the country we’re studying, and then color a flag of that country and glue it onto a page with another map of the continent. We listen to the national anthem and a song from the country, and watch several videos on safeYouTube about the country or region, then write on a notebooking page that’s provided about what we learned. Then, there is a coloring picture, and a craft. Mr. Sweetie’s favorite part of each lesson is watching the videos, and I think Mr. Imagination and Little Miss love the crafts best. So far, we got to do some painting for the first one, with a mountain scene (which inspired Mr. Imagination to paint his own version immediately afterward!), and then we cut and glued paper to make a desert sunset with cactuses silhouetted in front. The day we were working on that one, we had just started when we had a surprise visit of a few people, including two young girls, from a local, very restrictive religious commune. The girls were very shy, and I was praying desperately about what we could do with them, and got the idea to include them in the craft. It was the perfect thing to get them doing something with our children, and they seemed to enjoy it. So, the timing was perfect with that—praise God! I’m loving Let’s Go Geography for several reasons. The most obvious is, of course, that we get some geography lessons in and learn about different parts of the world. Another benefit is that we sometimes get a story for our writing group out of the lesson! This program is also providing some art lessons for my children, which is something we have really lacked. I’m excited to be able to provide my little ones with more ways to be creative, since I don’t have the imagination to come up with projects on my own. If you would like to include geography into your homeschool, check out Let’s Go Geography—it’s great for the primary grades! Forty-nine homeschool families have been using this program lately. Click the image below to read what they have to say about this great program!