Since i no longer have any home ed to blog about 
I am going to have to regularly blog about all the lovely books I have bought, begged or borrowed 
. This one is going to be about geography, as it is something that for ages we have read interesting books, but not something that we have included into our regular attention. Now we have started to do some more regularly, in part enthused by Kirsty and her uni degree 
.Well it is a mixture of about geography and geology!!
Some backbone texts
Only 2 this time. The first chapter of galore park starts with OS maps, and we have to help and look at other maps and make it fun to get through it to the other chapters, but actually once started, it wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. A bit more ‘fun’ is the Letts series. These have contextualised story based knowledge and is one of the easier ways of looking at the subject. i have to say, that unlike history, where we are following predominantly a chronological history scheme with additional situational learning, here we are dotting about all over the place, just following the order of the random books we pick up however, spurred on by other friends interest, we are looking more at geology, and have some books to go along with that too [obviously!]. When real science 4 kids get their geology book out, we may give that a look too, as their resources are available online.
Various supplemental books/workbooks
SB has really enjoyed the DK project books, and we have had them in a number of areas. You read various facts first, then there are pages with further depth and stickers to put in, and finally at the end more of a quiz about whether you have actually learnt anything. She flits between the two and likes the mixture of page types she says. The dk rock and fossil book has also been greatly enjoyed. It also has ‘experiments’ in it which are rather fun too.
Assorted reading books
There are lots of books out there in the library, some more reading story styles, some mostly pictures, some facts and experiments, some comics and above is a selection of different ones. SB likes to read a variety of styles, as does BB, so it is useful for us to dot between different ways of presenting the same thing, but obviously some children have a more steady book style We have liked all of them, but have to pay special attention to those books by Meredith Hooper who has a particular way of writing and illustrating that makes these books particularly beautiful.
Other Resources
We have done lots of things with ‘practical geography’ such as geocaching, postcrossing, going fossil hunting, pebble collecting etc. We also have a few games…
Previous resource Posts
Thinking Dinosaur
oooh lovely
Thank you for all of them. I can get access to OS Digimap with my uni account which would be fab if my 2 were more interested in maps. Maybe one day 
I am really loving geology and learning about it all, probably because I really don’t think I had much knowledge about it all before so it’s all quite exciting and new and also at a level I can share with the kids. Helps to have someone excited with me.
Shall see how our project books go and if ok shall get A the rocks and minerals one as she is very much into her minerals at the moment
Will be interested to see whether SB’s interest is caught by the middle chapters of SYRWTL Geog – all that social geography can be quite hard-going! I don’t think Ernest would be keen to do it at all – the earth sciences bits are much more appealing. Gwenny was rather glad to get to chapter 5 and do ‘proper’ (according to her!) geography about where countries are and so on
it will be a while before we get there, as we do it in such bite size chunks :), and if it does get tough, we will pause for a while
[and update] the letts is a far easier proposition. reading the various books does us well though, and looking out for some interesting dvd – a david attenborough for geology would be good 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earth-Power-Planet-Complete-BBC/dp/B00105BO0Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1289684001&sr=1-3 This one looks ok? It’s the same man who does the How Earth Made Us thing on BBC atm.
Same bloke
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vjs17/Making_Scotlands_Landscape_Scotlands_Trees/ & http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qbvyc/How_Earth_Made_Us_Deep_Earth/#recommendSource=tv_episode_page
Have just put on the first one now
05/12/2010 – 1:imm6Ip0tando el proceder de Marca (eso de acordarse de los rivales cuando quieren), y pidiendo perdón por anticipado por bajar tanto de calidad, voy a poner un ejemplo de retraso bastante importante: el Madrid llegó en el 98 1 hora y 15 minutos tarde a la… final de la champions!!! (desconozco las causas)Que quiero decir con esto? Pues que Marca es el periódico más parcial que existe y que los retrasos no son algo criminal, no deberÃa enfadarse nadie (y menos este panfleto) porque se retrase un rato el partido, son cosas que pasan y ya está
Classic.Sugar is definitely a drug and you are having withdrawals. Stay the course of your diet but drink a TON of water to flush that garbage out of you.
ooh, thankyou kirsty
Love Meredith hooper books.