I LOVE markable maps!!!

This picture shows why I love markable maps. Well, first, let me give some background. I hated geography. I just didn't relate. Drawing the shapes of countries and rivers and hearing about their weather and vegetation did not interest me.

This year, I've decided to more fully use the Sonlight curriculum that I have had for some time. I started one of the grade 2 readers with Simonne, Clara and the Bookwagon. The setting is Maryland in the early 1900's. We talk about setting, then follow Sonlight's encouragement to find Maryland on the map. Well, I didn't know, so we found out together. My goodness! A whole new world was opened up. We continued by finding all the states we could recognise, then Simonne found a puzzle of the U.S. that was labeled and she spend a long time using it to identify states on our markable map.

THEN, I decided to continue on this vein, and introduce continents and oceans. Can I tell you that I had no previous idea about any of the oceans before this? Honestly, I remembered the location of the Caribbean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It was really exciting for me to find out where these were and have Simonne eagerly labeling the places. I even offered to write the labels for her and she just point them out, but she wanted to write herself (this is the former reluctant writer!) We have a cute little song about the continents and oceans singing and Zachary is singing along. I love homeschooling!!!

Every day since, in every book we read, we note the places mentioned, and look for them on the map sometime shortly after. What a life!