GeoSafari Laptop

My MIL gave B this GeoSafari Laptop 3 years ago after we announced we were removing B from public school and homeschooling him.  I brought this out a few times and sat him down to play with/learn from it right after he got it and it made him angry.  He didn't know the answers so that made him frustrated and he didn't want to spend the time to learn.  I put away on our homeschool bookcase and decided we'd revisit it another time. And although I would gaze upon it a few times during the past 3 years, I never pulled it back out again, until last week.

Although we got off to a rocky start with our History curriculum, Story of the World, Vol. 2, this "school" year, we've been doing much better since I discovered a free lapbook to accompany SOTW, Vol. 2 last month.  B is enthusiastic about the lapbook because he sees it as "craft time"; the learning is fun.  Every couple of chapters now, we go back and read through our lap book, as well as the review cards in our SOTW Activity Book.  Since B is now retaining more of the History and Geography facts from the Middle Ages with the addition of the lapbook, I decided to bring out the GeoSafari Laptop.

In addition to geography sheets, there are sheets on inventions, Language Arts, Math, quotations, famous people in History, landmarks, animals, weather, anatomy, wars and more.  B had a great time with sheets on continents, bodies of water, world landmarks and ancient wonders of the world.  Succeeding at something is a wonderful incentive to keep doing something.  And it was good to see that what we had be learning for almost 3 years now, was sticking with him.  I like new ways of learning as well as new ways of "testing" retention.  We will definitely be using the GeoSafari Laptop regularly.

Where in the World?

I picked up a geography game - Where in the World, A World Awareness Game - at a yard sale recently for $1.  I love yard sale finds!  It has 6 different levels, ranging from getting familiar with which region of the world a country belongs to, to relating geographic knowledge to current events.  B and I played it twice last week and had fun.  In fact, he's asked me if we can play it again, but we didn't have time.  I need to schedule in game time for the educational games we have!  The game was originally published in 1986 and there have been a lot of country changes since then!  However, when we came upon an "outdated" issue, such as Germany being divided into two separate countries on the board, it became a learning opportunity.  I spoke to B about why Germany was divided into East and West and how they came to be united.

Here's B rolling back and forth on his stability ball as we play.  We played level 1, finding which of the 6 regions - Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania - each country card we were dealt belonged to.  Each card has a picture of the country's flag as well as the following information: capital; population; monetary unit; literacy rate; major languages; major religions; major export; major import; major seacoasts; it's size ranking in that region.  And although details such as population and monetary unit may have significantly changed in the last 26 years, it's still a great way to learn basics (especially for my cost) and I recommend it.

I looked the game up on both Amazon's and Toys R Us' websites to see if they offer the game and how up-to-date it is.  I didn't find date information on Amazon, but the description on Toys R Us referenced the games introduction 16 years ago, so it sound like their copy was last updated in 1996.  But if you find it at a yard sale, give it a try and let me know how you like it!