TOS Review: June Schoolhouse Planner 2010: Travel the World

The June module for the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner is titled Travel the World. (You do not need to have the TOS Schoolhouse Planner in order to use any of the modules, including this one.)

After taking a quick peek at it myself, I sat down with the kids and started reading it. I love how this book starts out talking about geography being "God's handwriting on the earth"--something you won't read in a library book on geography.

The first part of the book is a quick overview of geography, including information about globes, maps and the oceans. Precise Prince (my nickname for my son) loved learning about latitude and longitude. He wanted to keep finding places on the globe using them.

Next there is a short section on each of the seven continents. These sections give a quick synopsis of the continent with many links to online information for further study. Each continent includes at least one link to an online geography game pertaining to that continent. I let the kids each choose one continent and we followed a couple of the links for them. Creative Princess chose Africa and Precise Prince chose Europe. Having grown up never actually taking a geography class (a result of moving often with my dad in the Navy and not being homeschooled), I had no idea that the boundary between Europe and Asia is more than just some imaginary line someone decided to use. (Do you know what it is that forms the natural boundary between these two continents?)

The next section contains a fair amount of printouts you could use. There is a word scramble, a fill in the blank worksheet, word search, crossword puzzle, rebus puzzle, copy work pages in both print and cursive and various other printables. In addition, there are print outs that would work well to make a lapbook though this e-book is not about making a lapbook (if you are unfamiliar with lapbooks there are links to information about lapbooking in this e-book.)


There is a section at the end of the book with more information and activities for high school so that you could use this e-book for all ages. As we aren't dealing with high school yet, I merely skimmed through that section. One of the activities asks about biblical influence on a particular scientist. I always appreciate when a book has us thinking about the Bible and God in reference to what it is about.

I thought this book was a good introduction to geography. There are many internet links throughout the book so that you could study any of the parts in a little more depth. The school house planner books are touted as mini-unit studies and I think the June module was a good mini-unit study on geography!

The cost for this module is $7.95 and can be found here. You can see other reviews about this product here.

This e-book was given to me for free in exchange for my honest review about the book. No other compensation was given.