Satori Smiles

Have you noticed a lot of geography posts lately?

I recently finished reading The Latin-Centered Curriculum by Andrew Campbell. I had to purchase it used, but I did get the second edition version that was written in the past year. You can get new in stock at the Memoria Press website, including an eBook version.

It has given me several things to think about for our classical education style of homeschooling. I already knew we have been following more of a neo-classical style, but wanted to see what this book had to offer. I won’t be following it 100%, like everything, we’ll take what we like and leave what we don’t. I appreciated the inclusive manner the book spoke to me, and am considering adding a few more subjects to our lineup now. (Namely geography and I’m still debating about a few more I’ll post on my self-education blog soon.) I read this book to help convince myself to include Latin in our homeschool subjects, but mostly what I came away with was the urge to simplify and streamline our studies. Due to my personality, I would find it hard to let go of a subject, but now I’ll be looking at all our subjects with a critical eye and deciding whether they are necessary. Ironically, mostly I came away compelled to add several new subjects to our already full schedule!

Anyway, now you may understand why the sudden urge for geography in our household! We now have geography books, workbooks, coloring books and more coming in the next few weeks and I hope to officially study geography once a week from now on. Satori has missed studying it, as we did a quick burst of geography lessons a few months ago. I’m very open to any suggestions at this point – geography for the K-2 years.

Geography has been a priority for me all along, I just figured we’d include geography in our history studies. For Christmas, all I wanted was a high quality globe. Thank you Mom and Dad (Satori’s grandparents)! We totally love it. We carefully chose a globe that will reflect our family’s style. We wanted a colorful, raised relief large globe. One that would allow both adults and children to stand up, twirl around easily, and familiarize ourselves with the world.

So our Trafalgar globe is now a great addition to our household.

If the globe ever needs an update, we can get a new ball at a greatly reduced cost.

Last week on one of the forums I frequent, someone mentioned this globe and after clicking her Amazon link, there was a message saying I had purchased it last February. Indeed, we did get our LeapFrog Explorer Smart Globe just over a year ago and it has been a delightful homeschooling tool. Amazon’s price seems to have more than doubled though! Here it is at on WorldGlobes.com for $119.98.

At this point, Satori is just starting to learn about Geography, so she can’t use all its interactive features yet. I am thinking about adding more Geography to our weekly lessons, maybe just one day a week. I gave her a whirlwind tour of Geography a few months ago, and she loved it.

Today we reviewed all the continents and oceans and played the Leapfrog Globe game. Here Satori is listening for the next Continent that she’ll have to find! She now has all her continents and oceans memorized.

This globe is fun for the whole family, and we’re looking forward to getting more and more use out of it every year!

Congratulations to Michael and his wife, who both entered the contest for an Amazon $25 Gift Certificate, in celebration of SatoriSmiles One-Year Anniversary.

There were 32 contestants who commented on my blog post, and several of them got additional chances to win by commenting or linking to us.

In two more weeks, we’ll be picking yet another winner! There is still time to enter!!!