Making Geography Fun for the Gifted Student

I have to be honest. Every now and then I run across curriculum in the homeschool world that just quite frankly doesn’t fit the bill for our gifted child. From personal preference to just outright lack of market-readiness, we’ve had a few run-ins with curriculum where we felt that our money was just plain wasted.

Last year we ended up buying a curriculum for geography for our then 8th grade daughter, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. While that is just a part of trying things out, if we are being honest, it is upsetting when this happens. No one likes to buy something to not like it and to be unable to return it. I was a little concerned when my daughter asked me to find her another geography curriculum for 9th grade. But I looked anyway.

Enter into my life: North Star Geography.

In a previous post, I introduced you briefly to North Star Geography as we had just began using it. Now that we have had more time to really delve into this curriculum, I wanted to share with you our experiences with more depth.

Making Geography Fun For The Gifted Student

As an Active Duty Army family, we travel often and have lived all over the world. Geography is an exciting part of our military lifestyle and a large part of our homeschool. This year as we enter into the first year of homeschool high school, my biggest goal is to make geography fun for our oldest, as some material is just not suitable for our gifted high school student.

North Star Geography has given our young gifted student an excitement about geography that I haven’t seen her have since she was first formally introduced to the subject several years ago. Here are four ways that North Star Geography has made our 9th grader’s course fun:

1. The delivery and writing style of the content. This is a huge hit with our daughter. She has found that Tyler H. Hogan has a very rich and vivid writing style that makes her really excited to read and keeps her wanting to learn more. I do have to point out that our daughter has always been a very avid reader and always has her nose in a book. So I do think it is very impressive that her attention is captivated since she is very literature rich in her personal life.
2. The variety of activities. Our daughter really enjoys all the different activities that go along with this curriculum. From making a homemade compass to learning more about your elected officials (local, state, and federal), to journaling–our daughter is enjoying every bit of it.
3. The depth of academic content. We already had high expectations for this new curriculum as we adore Bright Ideas Press’s Mystery of History! Our daughter is not only learning the basics of geography (map reading and navigation skills), she is also learning about physical geography (the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere) and human geography (social structures, culture and heritage, and interacting with the environment).
4. The variety of academic content. While this curriculum is a geography curriculum, it is truly a gifted child’s dream! Why? Because it has so much variety! In addition to learning about geography, our daughter is able to get in math, art, hands-on science, vocabulary, memorization, cooking, and writing/research skills. She really likes curriculum that covers a lot of ground, and North Star Geography certainly does this.

I cannot tell you how much of a blessing North Star Geography is for our gifted high school student! As a home educator I am thrilled to have a curriculum with as much depth and variety as North Star Geography. I am excited to continue on this journey with my daughter, as I am having just as much fun learning and watching her have fun. I would recommend this for any junior high or high school student (gifted or not) who is willing to go on an adventure and learn a bunch of great stuff along the way!