Where in the world? (Pt. 2)

…continuing from last post

Since I’m not really good at most of the world yet (I only just got all 50 states memorized by shape/location recently!), I need some training first, so here’s where I will be going first…Sheppard Software has an excellent geography section of their website that includes all different levels of learning all the different areas of the world. Just choose the area you want to learn, then start with the tutorial and work your way through up to 9 different levels! Its fun and its FREE! (*note: I couldn’t get Firefox to play some of the games, so I had to use Internet Explorer…So if you have a similar problem, try switching to a different browser.)

If you have an iPhone, there’s an excellent app called “GeoMaster” (no longer available) that I highly recommend once you’ve become familiar with the area you are studying. This is a great game for drilling yourself on the area in a fun game format. Through this game alone I’ve managed to finally master all the U.S. states! The free version is just the U.S. and the paid version, only .99 when I bought it, has the rest of the world! Well worth the money!

Facebook has a game called “Geo Challenge” (now available in the Apple app store!!) that is also fun for drilling yourself on geography facts in a game format. I’ve really enjoyed this game a lot, and even get to learn country flags! For a small fee you can upgrade to “Pro” and have more specific maps to work on.

Another thing I’ve found really neat are laminated maps. I find them in the dollar section of Target every year around “Back-to-School” time. They come with a dry erase pen and on one side is the map of the U.S. or the world continents with labels…

…on the reverse, no labels for drilling yourself or your child. They are really fun to do challenges with the kiddos to see who can fill in the most states or areas correctly! (Target always has really neat things in their dollar section around “Back-to-School” time…I check them out regularly!

There’s also lots of places online to get blank maps for printing. A quick Google search turned up this one by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers.

Another great thing for learning geography, I think, is the “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” phenomenon. They used to have a tv series, both cartoon and game show, and computer games. Searching online I just found out they actually have a new (to me) website! And there’s a link there to their Facebook game. Unfortunately, like all Facebook games, it does require you to involve friends…here’s a website that talks about why you may want to skip it.

It is a shame, though, since it’s really a neat game!

More to come in the next post…