Tuesday, February 4, 2014

My Favorite Geography Resource

Geography Through Art
Picking just one favorite is always hard for me. Usually it's more accurate to say that something is ONE of my favorites, rather than THE favorite. So today I am sharing one of my favorite geography resources - out of several that I love and recommend, this one is unique in its approach and that's why I chose it to highlight.
Geography Through Art by Sharon Jeffus and Jamie Aramini offers over 100 art projects using various media and techniques. The projects are organized by continents and the country that is the inspiration for each project. Also, there are projects for a range of ages and skill levels. Students are given instruction on sketching animals and landmarks from around the world; and on projects such as sculpture, painting, paper-cutting, print-making, collage, and carving. The book includes maps of each of the continents, along with a summary of the geographical features of each. Several famous artists are briefly profiled. One feature I particularly like (my favorite feature? LOL) is called "Cultural Connection". These tidbits throughout the book highlight how different cultures are related to each other in the folk art techniques. For instance, paper-cutting from China, from Poland, and from Mexico is discussed and the question of why paper-cutting is a popular art form across different cultures.
geography through art projects
sketches of Big Ben, Easter Island heads, pyramids, castles, Roman and Italian landmarks,
Greek columns, and Chinese pagoda
geography through art projects
"Ivory" chessman (Scandinavia), Egyptian heiroglyphs, Chinese paper-cutting,
Chinese calligraphy, African animals, Old English style sign (pictograph),
Ukrainian Easter Egg
This year I've planned to do a number of the projects shown for North and South America. So far we've done mostly sketching - the Easter Island heads and quite a few animals - and Kennady did the Retablo Art project featured for Peru.
geography through art animal sketches

Retablo Art
I purchased this book several years ago and it has been a great supplement for our social studies, and provided inspiration for a co-op class I was able to co-teach. It could also be used as an art curriculum.
aged map art

australian aboriginal dot painting

For more details on some of these projects, you can check out these posts from my archives:
Do you have a favorite geography resource? Leave a comment and let me know! This post is linked up at Circling Through This Life for the 52 Favorite Anything series.
Circling Through This Life
This post will also be included in the Curriculum Choices Round-up at the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.



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6 comments:

Chareen said...

I agree this is a great book. Thanks for the reminder I need to get mine off the shelf again :)

Homeschooling6 said...

Thanks for sharing. This looks really neat. I'll have to add it to my 'collection' ;)

Unknown said...

This looks like a fantastic resource! I haven't heard of it until now. Thanks for sharing!

Wishing you a lovely day.
xoxo

Unknown said...

This looks really good! I was thinking about doing a focus on geography with my youngest next year. I will check this out.

Anonymous said...

I like the looks of the Geography through Art book~ I wonder if I could fit that in with CC.... Both of my boys will do anything if something artistic is involved!

Kym said...

I don't know how it would fit in with CC specifically, but you can pick and choose the projects you want to do so the book is very flexible.

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