Caroline Arnold (1) (1944–)

Carefully skimmed for the theme of Geography in Children's Books group, August 2021. I currently have no access to children... but I believe young me would have enjoyed doing some of these.

I appreciate that it includes both human and physical geography, and makes the distinction. It also has a progression of the difficulty of the activities & the sophistication of the concepts... I recommend educators, including home-schooling families, don't do a unit on maps and try to do lots of the activities, but rather that they do one activity a month or so, perhaps with a few other reinforcing mini lessons in between.

Included are explorations of a weather map, a population dot map, map vs. globe, etc. Nice design & illustrations. Also includes glossary, further reading, and index.

Better activities for some concepts exist. I recommend making iced tea (simply put 3-4 bags per quart in a plastic pitcher, fill about 2/3 w/ water, set it in the sun (on top of a car works great) for a few hours, bring inside to discard tea bags, fill the rest of the way with water, refrigerate) for the concept of Solar Energy. Greenhouse Effect is even easier... just compare the inside of the car (or the outer lobby of some banks, schools, etc) to the outside temperature.

Still, I highly recommend this to parents and other educators.… (more)