Hands On Geography TOS Review

We were given the opportunity to review Hands On Geography from Bright Ideas Press through The Old Schoolhouse.

Books like these are my absolute favorite resources. The book gives you a lot of fun, easy to implement ideas for Geography. Not only are they great ideas but they are incredibly easy to tweak slightly to fit your needs.

I didn't have a lot of time to get to many projects ( due to my own error not the companies) but I did read through the entire book and by the time I finished reading it I was once again excited about learning Geography with my children.

The idea we chose to use first was the Writing and Geography idea. The goal is to collect a piece of mail from each of the 50 states over a year.
One idea I thought was particularly neat was to write to the Chamber of Commerce of each state and ask them to send you state information. I thought this was a fabulous idea but didn't really feel like my kids were ready for that degree of writing or that much information. ( We WILL do that in a couple years though because it's really a wonderful idea)
We decided to ask family and friends to send us postcards from different states. I also posted on a message board I frequent asking for volunteers. In addition to receiving postcards my children are writing each person back and marking on a map where each card came from.

I can tell you my kids have learned more in 2 weeks of doing this than they did in a year of doing geography puzzles and going over the state locations. They are also learning the skills of writing to people and writing addresses properly.

This book is full of great ideas that you can use as is or make them your own easily. For just $14.95 it is a great deal and well worth the ideas. 

I think this would work for most any elementary age child with little variation from their ideas.

To read what other crew mates thought of their products go here

Our Map with the postcards we've received thus far.

 Amelia working on writing back.

If you're interested in helping us out by sending a postcard ( and we'll send you one back) we still need Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin.