Why does your child need to study geography? The truth is, geography is often overlooked when planning a child’s education. If covered, it is typically blended in here and there with other school topics.
What exactly is geography?
Geography is the study of the physical features of the Earth and the behaviors of the people in each area. For these reasons and more, it really does necessitate attention as a standalone subject in your child’s education.
6 Reasons Why Your Child Needs to Study Geography
- Your child needs to know where places are.
With the news filled with information from around the world, the understanding of basic geography is vital. From understanding where news reports are coming from to how they affect your child on a personal and world level.
Knowing where places in the world are and how to find new places on a map or globe can help your child understand what is happening around them.
- Knowing how to read a map is a vital life skill
While we do have GPS available to us now to make finding our way around easy, what happens when GPS goes down or the signal is poor? Teaching your child to read a map helps them understand how to find their way around, even when GPS is not an option.
Geocaching is a great way to teach your children how to find their way around. The best part? It is done in a fun and active way, which makes this vital geography skill easy to learn.
- Understanding the Earth and how it was formed and changes over time.
Through the study of geography, our children learn about landforms and plate tectonics. For them to understand how the land is changed and shaped over time, your child needs to understand what the basic landforms are and how they were formed.
This particular topic allows for getting hands-on with geography! Using salt dough to make landforms and even demonstrating plates crashing together to form mountains are both great ways to make geography fun and exciting.
- Understanding basic Earth systems
To understand how the Earth works, from weather to the flow of rivers, you need to understand the geography that makes up the Earth.
Understanding geography makes it easier to understand why the desert does not get rain while the mountains next to it are covered in snow.
- Connect to history in new ways.
From reading and comparing old maps to modern ones to learning about the locations of major historical events, geography is an important part of your studies of history.
Map work is a great way to help your child make connections to history, bringing it to life.
- Learn about the cultures of the world.
To understand others, we need to take a look at where they are from and the culture they have grown up in.
Exploring the world through culture studies, including traditions, music, and food allows your child to really get to understand others in a new and exciting way.
The world is full of new places to learn about and explore. Make geography fun by choosing a location you are studying in history or grab a globe and choose a random place to study.
Geography can be taught in many ways, so don’t be afraid to dive in! Not sure how to get started? Try out the US Geography Challenge below!
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- Geography Printables, Monthly Challenge Printables
US Geography Challenge Calendar
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