Learning geography doesn’t have to be boring.
Although, honestly, dudes, just typing that sentence above has me yawning. Stuffing your head full of facts and figures and geospatial relationships can put anything to sleep, no matter the caffeine dose or the biochemical load of stimulants.
Or so I’ve heard.
From other people.
Moving on.
Despite the boredom inherent in the academic learning of geography, the global citizens of today (that’s you folks and your young dudettes and young dudes) need to know more than the nearest neighborhood. It helps to understand that when news talking heads are discussing Ukraine and Russia fighting, we know where they are in relation to each other.
The best way I’ve found to instill a if not love of, then tolerance for geography, is maps.
My dad and his wife travel. A lot. What I like to do is find where they’re going to be and then do a little research. My young dudes used to talk with their grandfather before he set off, he’d tell them where he was going and then they’d hit the maps with me to find the country.
We would look at that country’s information and physical layout to think about what he might want to do while he’s there, or what other countries he might want to visit.
The young dudes actually loved doing that and still, to this day, remember some interesting facts about various countries that had played host to their grandfather, yet still exist today.
You don’t have to have a globetrotting relative to play this game, though. While watching some of the World Cup matches, I realized we could be doing the same sort of game, only with countries participating in the tournament.Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The good folks at Wired Magazine had the same idea. They went out and secured satellite pictures of every country participating.
That’s Brazil, by the way. It’s a nice little travelogue flipping through the various satellite images. Get your little dudes with you when you sit down to look and see what questions you can answer.
Who knows? You might even learn a thing or three.
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