Brookdale House . . . A T. O. S. Review

I have a confession to make right here and now. I was never taught Geography when I was in school. In fact, to this day, I cannot read a map. I have to rely on GPS to get me to just about anywhere! I really had despaired of teaching Geography to my kids, and along came a lovely review copy of the digital version of Drawing Around the World: USA, which came from a company called Brookdale House.

With Drawing Around The World: USA, my kids and I can learn the states and capitals for our entire country, in just minutes a day. We are also learning the capitals, and the actual placement on the map of the United States of each state.

One of the things my kids enjoy is finding out interesting facts about each state. They are looking forward to Michigan and New Mexico, because they were born and raised in Michigan until three years ago when we moved to New Mexico. I think they are looking forward to those states because in Michigan, there is a very special state stone, and here in New Mexico, they were thrilled to discover that our new home has a state cookie! 🙂

The suggested schedule is a four day week.

1. Study the new state, complete the State Fact Table, and locate and label each new state onto the dashed, black and white map. Then, the student is to draw all states studied thus far.
2. Locate and label each new state onto the dashed, black and white map, and draw all states studied up to now.
3. Locate and label each new state onto the dashed, black and white map, then draw all states studied so far.
4. List, from memory, the states studied thus far. Then, within the blank box, draw from from memory, all of the states you have learned.

If you follow this schedule, you and your children will have learned the placement of each and every state in the United States of America, along with Washington D.C. in only 27 weeks. We are going somewhat slower though, so it will take longer. Only two of my kids have real artistic ability, “The Artist” and “Mr. Loquacious.” In fact, “Mr. Loquacious” has, on his own been working on a notebook of state flags for the last few years, so he already knew the capitals and some facts about some of the states! 🙂

Because we are having trouble with drawing the correct shapes and placements of each state from memory on the blank map, for now we are sticking to the map which has the dashed black and white spaces. Since this is a digital product, we can go back and do it again later when we all feel a bit more comfortable with the drawing part.

We do enjoy this program, and recommend it to anyone, in particular those who enjoy learning at a gentle, slow pace. I believe something which takes only minutes a day certainly fits that bill. 🙂

To read more about what the Review Crew members thought of this and other products from Brookdale House, please click on the banner below!

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