Our Favorite Books and Movie Series for Studying Geography

We have a history and geography fair coming up soon with our homeschool group.  I've asked my boys to pick their topics and we're working on finding books, movies, and activities to go with each region they're choosing.

Typically we just plug the place we want to study into a few search engines linked with the words book or movie and see what pops up.

We've found so many wonderful book and movie ideas using this technique with Amazon and Pinterest but there are some books and movies that we look for in particular.  Series that we have just fallen in love with.

My boys love learning about new places!  We have a few series of books and movies that we always use and enjoy.

Movies:

Travel With Kids-- There is a whole series of these movies and my boys have a great time watching these two boys travel the world with their parents.

Families of... -This series of movies take a look at a day (or two) in the life of children around the world.  Each video usually looks at two different families from each country; one rural and one urban. 

The Little Travelers- This movie series reminded us of Travel with kids but in these movies two little girls are moving around the world with their family.  

Books: 

This is... We love this series of books that takes a close up look at cities all around the world.

A Walk In...  While not as large a series as the This is books we enjoy these close up looks at roaming through famous world cities. 

Discover America State by State Alphabet-- Our favorite series for learning about the 50 states!

America By Numbers- Another favorite book series for learning about all 50 states.

Discover the World- They also have titles that explore the world! 

What are some of your favorite resources for studying geography?


Ian was a bit restless and unsure what to work on for school.

I asked him if he had decided on a topic for the history/ geography fair yet and he said no.  We had talked about the history of the Panama Canal as one possibility and I had found a movie from our library for him.  I asked him if he wanted to watch the movie and see if he'd be interested in reporting on that.  He agreed and went to watch A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama.  He later told me it was interesting but he thinks he would rather report on the history of the bulldozer.

He pulled out and read the book Construction by Sally Sutton.  We went to the library's bibliomation page and requested a lot of bulldozer books.


Evan and I also started on Evan's report today.  Evan wants to learn about Korea and so we read The Name Jar.  It's a story about a girl who moves to America from Korea.  We enjoyed he story and talked about the Korean alphabet as well as learned a bit about their diet and customs.  Alec was in the room with us while I was reading aloud and he came over to listen to the story too. He pointed out to Evan that the pictures showed them using chopsticks, that they had different pottery displayed in their homes and all the Korean "letters."

 I had found a link to a sight that showed a Lego display of Pompeii that was created for a Museum in Australia.  We looked at the pictures on the sight and compared Pompeii to Ancient Greek and Roman architecture.  We looked up Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius on old maps of Italy.  We watched a YouTube video called A Day In Pompeii and then read Pompeii... Buried Alive!