Embarrassing Geography Fail
I wish I had played these geography games as a child! I have a very embarrassing confession to make. After completing thirteen years of public school education, I had next to no idea about the wider world beyond Australia. When did I receive this revelation? With the arrival of the internet, came dropdown menus.
One day, I had to select my country from a dropdown menu, and was absolutely staggered to see how many countries starting with A there were before Australia? Embarrassing right? Or, is it more embarrassing for the 1990’s Victorian Education Department? I’ll let you decide.
At any rate, I’m so glad that our homeschooled kids know that there are seven continents, an equator, two hemispheres, and a very large number of countries and languages! One way they have learned more about their world recently is through games. Which games and where to find them?
Geography Games
Op-shop, Facebook MarketPlace, and ebay
This year, we picked up two incredible geography games from the op-shop.
One of them was 100 Places to See Before You Die. A slightly confronting name, yes, but great fun.
The idea of the game is to move around the board visiting places from each section on the board. The first one to visit five places, and get back to their home city is the winner. Along the way, kids see beautiful pictures of places from around the world, and read info about them in the form of postcard text. There are quite a few used versions of this game available for a good price on ebay. Probably suited to ages 8+
The other game was Expedition from National Geographic.
Another travel around the world game with lots of info cards about places and landmarks. To add an extra element of learning, why not discuss if the landmarks are man-made or natural each time a card is in play? This one is a little harder to come by, but is available on e-bay, along with some other variations of the game by National Geographic.
There are a good variety of affordable geography games for sale secondhand online. I might get to buying some more and trying them out later.
Games Available New
If you do a Google ‘geography’ shopping search, you will find a wide selection of geography board games and memory card games. I am going to be brutal and controversial here though, and say something I probably shouldn’t. They often look fairly dumbed-down in terms of the possible learning content. I personally think that about a great deal of modern educational content today. If you look at the pics of the game cards from the older geography board games, they offer impressive photographs, and interesting, in-depth information about each place. Of course, the simpler games available new are great for younger players, but could get a bit boring for the over 8 crowd fairly quickly. Not sure if I’ve overlooked some great new ones out there. I would love to hear about it in the comments if I have.
Twinkl Geography Games
If you have a Twinkl subscription, Twinkl offers some really great PDF printable, online interactive, and PPT geography games and quizzes.
You can see more here – https://www.twinkl.com.au/search?q=geography+games
I find Twinkl really helpful for things like games, anchor charts and supplementary worksheets. They also send out a free yearly planner with their membership too. It has improved considerably since we first started using it a few years ago, and the amount of content is impressive.
Printing and laminating the Twinkl game boards is a much cheaper option than buying new or used physical game boards. They also take less space to store. On top of that, if your child becomes really interested in something they discover during a geography game, you’re sure to find content for that specific place or thing on Twinkl to go on a deeper learning adventure.
So there you have it, learning geography with games is a fun way to explore our wonderful world . If you have some more tips or info about learning geography, it would be wonderful to hear from you in the comments, or over on the socials.
