HELP YOUR CHILD SUCCEED Book Seven: HELP YOUR CHILD LEARN GEOGRAPHY WITH ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN under 10 years of age. Help your child develop the ability to use maps and to develop mental maps of the world so that your child can do better in life!

SNEAK PEAK:

HELPING YOUR CHILD LEARN GEOGRAPHY

Edited by Russell J. Hall

Foreword

Remember thumbing through an atlas or encyclopaedia as a child,
imagining yourself as a world traveller on a safari in Africa, or
boating up the Mississippi River, climbing the peaks of the
Himalayas, visiting ancient cathedrals and castles of Europe, the
Great Wall of China? We do. The world seemed full of faraway,
exotic, and wonderful places that we wanted to know more about.

Today, we would like to believe that youngsters are growing up
similarly inquisitive about the world. Perhaps they are, but
recent studies and reports indicate that, if such imaginings are
stirring in our youngsters, they're not being translated into
knowledge. Not that there ever was a "golden age" when all our
young and all our citizens were conversant about the peoples and
places of the globe. Still, there is considerable evidence that
such knowledge among young people has dipped to an alarming low.

Last year, a nine-nation survey found that one in five young
Americans (18- to 24-year-olds) could not locate the United
States on an outline map of the world. The UK situation is a
little better, but there is still much room for improvement.

Learning should not be restricted to the classroom. Parents are a
child's first teachers and can do much to advance a youngster's
geographic knowledge. This booklet suggests some ways to do so.

It is based on a fundamental assumption: that children generally
learn what adults around them value. The significance attached to
geography at home or at school can be estimated in a glance at
the walls and bookshelves.

Simply put, youngsters who grow up around maps and atlases are
more likely to get the "map habit" than youngsters who do not.
Where there are maps, atlases, and globes, discussions of world
events (at whatever intellectual level) are more likely to
include at least a passing glance at their physical location.
Turning to maps and atlases frequently leads youngsters to
fashion, over time, their own "mental maps" of the world -- maps
that serve not only to organise in their minds the peoples,
places, and things they see and hear about in the news, but also
to suggest why certain events unfold in particular places.

Helping every child develop his or her ability to use maps and to
develop mental maps of the world ought to become a priority in
our homes and schools. For, as we all know, our lives are
becoming an ever tighter weave of interactions with people around
the world. If our businesses are to fare well in tomorrow's world
markets, if our national policies are to achieve our aims in the
future, and if our relationships with other peoples are to grow
resilient and mutually enriching, our children must grow to know
what in the world is where.

This booklet is designed to help parents stir children's
curiosity and steer that curiosity toward geographic questions
and knowledge. It is organised around the five themes recently
set forth by geographers and geography educators -- the physical
location of a place, the character of a place, relationships
between places, movement of people and things, and phenomena that
cause us to group places into particular regions.

We encourage parents to get to the fun part -- that is, the
activities. The games, maps, and suggested activities that
follow, while informal and easy to do, can help lay a solid
foundation in experience for children's later, more academic
forays into geography.

INTRODUCTION

Children are playing in the sand. They make roads for cars. One
builds a castle where a doll can live. Another scoops out a hole,
uses the dirt to make a hill, and pours some water in the hole to
make a lake. Sticks become bridges and trees. The children name
the streets, and may even use a watering can to make rain.

Although they don't know it, these children are learning the
principles of geography. They are locating things, seeing how
people interact with he Earth, manipulating the environment,
learning how weather changes the character of a place, and
looking at how places relate to each other through the movement
of things from one place to another.

With this book, we hope you, as parents, will get ideas for
activities that will use your children's play to informally help
them learn more geography -- the study of the Earth.

Most of the suggestions in this book are geared to children under
10 years of age.

TO BE CONTINUED... Buy now and enjoy the contents in full!