Going into this review I was so excited about diving into all that Let's Go Geography has to offer students. Well, part of homeschooling is working around what life throws us and boy has life thrown me a curveball over the past month. About a month ago I had minor surgery but ended up having MAJOR complications! Well, that definitely affected our homeschool routine and my lofty plans for everything I wanted to do enrichment wise to go along with this curriculum. I am not have utilized everything in the Let's Go Geography weekly curricula but I will say that what my kiddos did get was great. They learned so much and it required nothing on my part.
I used this with my 4th and 6th graders. I know that 6th grade was out of the suggested range but decided that since I was laid up it wouldn't hurt to have her glean what tidbits of informations she could from the curriculum. While I didn't use the full extent of the curricula the whole time my kiddos were able to explore countries and do most of the activities. Kiddos are pretty savvy technology wise and are able to navigate, print, and download on their own. I was a bit apprehensive about them navigating outside of the site though.
Each weeks lesson is clearly laid out in an easy to follow format with instructions and links. Students are instructed to print out maps, flags, and various activities. For the activities a list is given for the materials that you will need.
Throughout the lesson your child will explore the many amazing animals, beautiful landscapes, its people, and their culture that makes each country unique and special. There are so many links that your child will be able to click to explore outside of the site to enrich their learning experience. Crafts give them the opportunity to be creative while learning about something relevant to that particular country. Students will also be given the opportunity to write about each country.
Many of the links are to YouTube. We personally did not have any issues with the links. With that said I always caution parents to please supervise children when letting children use sites such as YouTube.
There are many other links to other sites outside of Let's Go Geography.
I will say that it most definitely does not take a week to complete a lesson. When my daughters were just doing the watching parts of the lessons they got it done in no time flat. We have completed a full lesson with all components and it was more of a two day at the most lesson. Stretching it out over a week would have been way too chopped up. I can see that maybe for K-1 grade this may be a great set-up but for upper grades not so much.
After watching some of the video's my daughter did say, "Some of the videos are like they are trying to sell you a vacation to the country." Since many of the video links are from YouTube there are some that tend to be on the touristy side.
There are some videos that are specifically labeled for the older students. This video
was about the history of Belize.
After coloring their backgrounds by daughters decided that they no longer liked the way their armadillos looked so they turned them around and colored the other side.
One of my daughter's used crayon to create her armadillo craft.
My other daughter used watercolor paints for her armadillo.
Here is a great lay-out of a 3-year plan to over all of the 7 continents using Let's Go Geography.
Overall I was pretty happy with Let's Go Geography. Basing this on my 4th graders progress through the lessons I think that more content needs to be added to truly make this a weeks worth of curriculum for grades 2-4. This would be a great supplement but I would most definitely not consider it a full geography curriculum. I also am not too crazy about utilizing YouTube videos for kiddos in the elementary ages as content on the pages can sometimes be sketchy. I think that Let's Go Geography has the start of something good I just think that they need to add more content. Definitely check out their site. Like I always say, what doesn't work for one family sometimes is the perfect fit for the next family. With that said, I do intent to continue to use Let's Go Geography with my 4th and 6th graders because they both really enjoy it and I know that they are learning.
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