24 Mar How to Make Homeschool Geography Fun
When I decided to start homeschooling, I had this grandiose vision for our geography lessons. It was my dream to travel and experience the world first hand with my children. I envisioned us learning Roman history while wandering the Roman Coliseum, and getting a good workout while climbing to Machu Picchu in Peru. I imagined exploring ruined castles in Scotland while learning of raging battles, and combing exotic beaches for even more exotic shells while learning natural history. Then, just as we were entering the period in our life when this was going to be possible, COVID hit and our world shut down. Despite this, we were not willing to accept that our homeschool geography class was going to be boring. Dry textbooks horrified us, and there was no way we were simply going to learn a catchy song to memorize capital cities. We still wanted to experience the beauty of other lands and cultures; we were determined to learn how to make homeschool geography fun. I love how Charlotte Mason put it in Home Education:
The peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas, and to furnish the imagination with pictures. Herein lies the educational value of geography.
There are Many Ways to Make Homeschool Geography Fun
There are so many ways to keep homeschool interesting, and to “furnish the imagination with pictures” – especially when studying geography! Today, we’d like to invite you to follow along as we do a geography lesson.
Despite our children being 3 grade levels apart, we do geography together for a couple of reasons:
- Geography can easily be combined with all of your children. Each child will get out what they can from the lesson, while older children can take things further, as their interest allows.
- Geography is actually so fascinating, so inspiring, and so much fun that everyone wants to have a part in it, including Mom!
How Our Family Studies Geography
I usually let my children choose what country or area of the world we are going to explore. When the children choose this themselves, they are much more invested in the topic and eager to learn. If you are reading living books every day, and if you are discussing world events at the dinner table, your children will never be at a lack when it comes to what they would like to learn about. For this geography lesson, because of current world events, they have asked to learn about the Ukraine.
We start almost every one of our geography lessons with this book: Maps: Deluxe Edition by Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielinska. A homeschool mom recommended it to me. It’s a beautiful coffee-table style book, which children will pour over for hours. Believe me when I say, it’s worth the money!
Using this book, we look at where the country is, in relation to the world. We identify landforms and rivers, the population and the flag, notable cities, native plants and animals. The children will often be drawn to something in particular – sometimes it’s the traditional clothing, sometimes it’s the animals. We take the time to learn a little about each of these interests. Today, it was the food.
Traditional Ukrainian Food
I’m not sad that we are focusing on traditional Ukrainian food today. As one blogger put it, “If you haven’t tasted traditional Ukrainian food, you have not lived.” There is something warm and hearty about almost every dish we tried. Ukrainian food drops to the bottom of your belly and stays there. It’s perfect for cold, damp days when the sun is hiding behind the clouds.
We sat down together a couple of days before to plan our Ukrainian food day. Using Pinterest, we found some recipes that we thought we would like:
- For breakfast we chose Syrniki (Ukrainian Cheese Pancakes) from Lena’s Kitchen
- For lunch we chose Ukrainian Mushroom Soup from Lavender and Macarons and Pampushki (Ukrainian Garlic Bread) from Tara’s Multicultural Table
- For dinner we chose Traditional Ukrainian Perogies from The House and Homestead
Making Ukrainian Food is a Lot of Work!
I may have over-committed for this project, as it was a lot of work! Quality home-cooking is always a serious commitment, but Ukrainian cooking amped this up a few notches.
Breakfast
We enjoy pancakes about once a week. My daughter will often get up a little early on Sunday so that she can make them for the family. Pancakes are always a special treat, and Syrniki are no exception. I got up a little earlier than I usually do to make these Ukrainian cheese pancakes, and I’m glad I did because they were quite a bit more work than our usual pancakes. These called for farmer’s cheese, which we did not have, so we had to play around with some substitutions.
Either way, these cheese pancakes were a big hit and we gobbled them up completely. In fact, my son, declared them better than our originals (which is kind of a big deal, and somewhat sacrilegious) and asked if we could change out the recipe.
Lunch
Lunch was started the night before as the pampushky had to be proofed in the refridgerator overnight. I always find these types of recipes a little over-whelming because who is so organized that they plan the rolls they’re going to eat the night before? Once I got over the idea of this, however, the pampushky recipe was actually very simple and quick. As soon as breakfast was cleaned up, I got the rolls rising.
I then moved on to making the Ukrainian mushroom soup, while pampushky rose and the children did their math. Can I just tell you – I was not prepared for the amount of time it would take – there was a lot of cutting! I didn’t get back to focusing on the kids until after we finished eating lunch! In fact, lunch was such a production that it didn’t get served until about 1:30 pm and by that time every one was HANGRY!
The mushroom soup was a bit of a risk, because my kids aren’t huge fans of mushrooms. They did participate in choosing it, though, and I loved the fact that they were open to trying new things. The final verdict was divided – half of the family loved it, and half did not. I thought it was the heartiest mushroom soup I had ever had, and I loved that it was full of veggies. As for the garlic rolls, we devoured them.
Following this hearty and delayed lunch, no one was actually remotely interested in dinner.
We ended up saving our Ukrainian dinner for the next day – and boy, was I glad for that! Our perogies turned out to be quite the production!
Dinner
For dinner, we chose traditional Ukrainian perogies, which was kind of cheating, because we already knew we loved perogies. This may or may not have been an opportunity to have one of my faves. However, our experience with perogies had been limited to the premade frozen perogies at the supermarket. We had never made homemade perogies before, so this was a learning experience.
I was once again rather surprised at how much work these took! I’m talking HOURS. It was, however, a chance to work in the kitchen with my daughter – and that’s always a win.
We cooked up some onions and bacon to put over our perogies, then topped them with sour cream. Pure deliciousness.
Just like the other Ukrainian meals we made, this one was also extremely filling. Delicious. But FILLING!
The best news is that the recipe made several dozen perogies. I was able to pack them all up and put them in the freezer for a later date.
There are many ways to make homeschool geography fun. We don’t always make 3 massive meals to commemorate our homeschool geography class, but I can promise you, our children (and myself!) will always remember with enjoyment our study of the Ukraine.
P.S. As you do your geography studies, be sure to document the countries visited in your Passports, which you can find as a free download HERE.
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