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Trail Guide to World Geography by Cindy Wiggers Review by Martha Robinson

Lesson plans for weeks one through twenty-seven are shown on two pages each. The first page of each week has "Geography Trails," two simple questions per day for four days. The questions are provided for three levels: primary, intermediate, and advanced. Mrs. Wiggers suggests that advanced high school students should be assigned both the intermediate and advanced questions. The topics of the questions begin with the world and move on to the individual continents. The author says that just answering these questions will provide a good background in geography.

The second page of each week consists of "Points of Interest," a section of activities for those who wish to dig a bit deeper in their geography studies. The mapping sub-section provides activities for mapping of locations on the continent being studied or items such as the equator, Arctic Circle, and oceans during the weeks that the world is studied. The "Trail Blazing" sub-section offers many research and hands-on ideas, such as cooking, writing papers, and doing salt dough maps, for further study and refers frequently to assignments in The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide by the same author. The next sub-section, the geography notebook, gives basic instructions for starting a notebook and recommends research ideas (once again referring to The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide) for it. The final sub-section coordinates activities in another book, Teaching Geography Through Art, co-authored by Mrs. Wiggers. (Click on hyperlinks for the corresponding reviews.)

A unit study using "geography through literature" for the book Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne encompasses weeks twenty-seven through thirty-six. Ideas for mapping and arts and crafts are included along with spelling and vocabulary, comprehension questions, additional research suggestions, math applications, spelling, and vocabulary.

The appendix includes a map of the former Soviet States, "geography through literature" book lists, illustrated geography dictionary reproducible pages, and an answer key.

Recommendation: Trail Guide to World Geography offers the week-by-week guidance that many parents need for studying geography. The instructions section of the book is loaded with ideas, but frankly, I found that there were SO many ideas of creative approaches that what actually needs to be done got lost. When you work with this book, I would suggest reading a couple of weeks of lesson plans and then going back to the instructions.

In order to implement many of the activities in the "Points of Interest" part of the program, you will need to purchase Teaching Geography Through Art and The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide. You could get by without The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide by using the outline maps from Uncle Joshs Outline Map Book if you are willing to make up mapping activities of the important locations on each continent yourself. If you have The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide, Uncle Joshs Outline Map Book will not be needed.

Trail Guide to World Geography provides a well-laid out plan to make geography studies interesting and painless.

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