TOS Crew Review — Map Skills

I’m going to Tucson.

I’m going to jump up to Canada.

Look at me, I’m in Alaska!

Everyone watch out, I’m heading to Florida.

When I got everyone settled back in Illinois, or at least off the map, we opened the “books” and enjoyed another hands on geography lesson.

Product: Map Skills Unit Study from Soli Deo Gloria Resources
Details : A 2-3 week introduction to map skills unit study designed for K-3 graders.
Price : $14

What we loved . . .

  • Full of ideas. Although built around a geography workbook that is an optional purchase, this ebook comes chock full of ideas to keep your kiddos hopping around the world.
  • Multi-disciplinary. While it starts with geography it also dabbles in science, art, Bible, Language Arts, .
  • Multi-age. The focus age is K-3, but all my kids enjoyed working on this together. The young ones learned the most, but the older ones lead the discussion and took it places it would not have otherwise.
  • Compatible workbooks for further study. If you want to spend more time or have more written work, she recommends workbooks that can hit the kids more at level as well.
  • Active learning. The activities had the kids running and talking and working with their hands. They all had a great time and the little ones learned quite a bit in the process.
  • Flexible. Not every activity will float your boat, but there is plenty there to keep you busy for a few weeks, or longer if you space it out into shorter lessons.

Some considerations . . .

  • Light on the Language Arts. One of the challenges with unit studies is they can’t hit every subject to the depth or level of every child. I found this one a bit light on the Language Arts and did not use it in place of our regular curriculum in that subject. It was a great geography study, but it was not very strong in other subjects.
  • Best suited with an additional purchase. To get the most out of this you would likely want to purchase the additional workbooks. That would help in gearing it toward a wider age range and in covering the topic in greater detail. It still has engaging projects and thought provoking worksheets in and of itself.

Map skills is an area that my kids naturally learn through real life experience, but this ebook pointed out some areas that my younger kids have not had a chance to interact with yet. It provided us some fun ways to learn these areas without just reading a book or doing worksheets. They learned and definitely enjoyed the process.

Each family will have a different experience with a product, so I would definitely encourage you to check out some other TOS Crew reviews on this product, over at the TOS Crew blog.

Disclaimer: This ebook was provided to me free of charge through Soli Deo Gloria Resources as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.