Geography Curriculum Review: Passport to the World by Craig Froman

Do you enjoy learning and teaching geography in a fun way? In our many years of homeschooling we have gone through a number of geography curricula plus created a few of our own. I have always been very keen on my son knowing that the world is much larger than our back yard and that there are people in other parts of the globe as important as those in his own country. [You can read about our personal choices for geography curricula in Geography Curriculum Choices 101.]

A few years ago I was teaching geography in a small co-op group. We had children of different ages and different geography levels, but we united our dynamic group with Passport to the World: Your A to Z Guided Tour by Craig Froman. Even though this Christian curriculum is recommended for 3^rd to 6^th grade, my children ranged from 1^st to 8^th grade and we all learned a lot (including the teacher) and had fun on top of it.

How Is Passport to the World: Your A to Z Guided Language Tour Structured?

In this book, your children will travel around the world crossing continents and countries, speaking different languages and making various native meals. They will do all that with a passport in their hands; every country they enter will provide them with an immigration stamp. The curriculum offers detailed daily schedule for the teacher which takes the guessing out of the planning stages.

During the first semester, the Passport to the World textbook dedicates two pages to each country. The knowledge learned is followed by well-structured worksheets that help to reinforce the information and keep it in the long-term memory. In addition to these, it supports activity-based learning with a special activity added to each lesson.

During the second semester, Children’s Atlas of God’s World is used for a textbook. Similarly, there are two to four pages of facts used per country but this time there is much more information included than found in the first semester book. It also covers ecosystems, biomes, and great civilizations.

How Did We Use Passport to the World: Your A to Z Guided Tour?

While still including all the resources offered in Passport to the World, Children’s Atlas of God’s World, and the worksheets, we decided to create our own schedule. Following is an outline of our once-a-week co-op lessons:

1. At the end of each lesson, one child would determine which country we would travel to next. It not only made our lessons more flexible, but also gave the children more personal ownership of the class.
2. At the beginning of each lesson we would review what we studied during the previous weeks and checked everybody’s homework.
3. Then we “entered” the chosen country for that particular week, obtained the immigration stamp, and dived into the books. Each child (or a pair of children) would work with a different resource to gain information: Some would read the textbook, some would study the map, some would study other children’s atlases, while others would do online research. After about 10 minutes each child would present to others what they had discovered.
4. Finally, I (the teacher) would fill in information they did not cover from their research.
5. We would also watch a couple of short videos related to the particular country.
6. Sometimes we would cook/bake together the specialty meals suggested in the textbook.
7. At the end of each lesson, the children would receive worksheets for their homework and other special projects (for example, creating a travel brochure).

Before the school year ended, instead of taking a test, we played a jeopardy game. The children studied ahead for this game knowing that prizes were awaiting them. I had no problem making them learn. First of all, we reviewed the knowledge we acquired during weekly lessons often, but also, I believe, the test being conducted in a game format with great rewards motivated them to study hard for it.

After completing the entire school year, we created a large board with our favorite countries’ facts and presented it to other family members and neighbors during our end-of-year co-op fun day. Each child was given an opportunity to publicly present the countries they had personally chosen to visit. We also gave our viewers a peek into projects we completed during the school year. What a delight to hear the students excited about geography! It was the most fascinating and child-driven class I have yet taught. Time well spent!

One day I am going to pull together my online Passport to the World materials that I collected and make them available to you, my readers. However, if you are planning to use this fascinating curriculum soon and would like a working draft of my video list, board presentation materials, and/or end-of-year jeopardy game, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Have you used Passport to the World successfully in your homeschooling? Please let us know how you enjoyed it in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you!