Geography 🌎 Theory 📖 Curriculum Lesson 2: Introduction (Abstract - Pictures)

During our last lesson, we learned about 🌎 geography (which is the study of our Earth, people and places in our world) through the representation of concrete objects such as soil, compass, and a map (read here). Today, we are continuing by learning about the study of geography more abstractly, through pictures from our geography picture basket. In Montessori education, subjects are usually taught from concrete to abstract. So, introducing a child first to real objects which the child can hold and relate to (such as a doll representing a person or dirt representing the Earth), facilitates the assimilation of new information. Once the child is comfortable with the concept, you can move towards more abstract theories.

We are also using  Montessori Puzzle Map of the World (buy here). 

Pictures from our geography "basket" portray people and places in our world found in the study of geography. We also looked at pictures of animals and discussed on what continent do they live and whether their habitat is land, water, or air. We talked about the fact that animals share their environment with people, and that we are all interconnected with each other and the planet Earth. So, to preserve the equilibrium of life, we have to protect and respect each other. 

So, we looked through the Global Babies book (buy here) to see pictures of people (children) from different continents. We discussed where they live (places) and the names of their respective continents by referencing a Montessori Colored Continent globe (buy here).

The girl on the right is from India (the Continent of Asia).
This baby is from Greenland (the largest island; part of North American Continent).
This is a landform called "island" - which is a place found on our Earth.

We also looked at pictures of landscapes/seascapes (places). An "island" is a place found on our Earth, and it is a smaller piece of land surrounded by water. We are using a Sandpaper globe (buy here) to reinforce oceans vs continents concept.

Variations: You may rotate pictures as there are many different landforms and people on our Earth. 

The goal of this lesson is to introduce geography as the study of people and places in our world and how the Earth has and still is changing today in an abstract way through photographs.

Language: Geography, names of landforms that the pictures represent, names of countries that the people-pictures represent, mane of continents, etc. 

We also reiterated what we learned from our Sandpaper Globe lesson presentation (see the post here), such as water - ocean, and land - continent. 

This is a "continent", which is a large piece of land surrounded by water.
This is an "ocean" (Indian ocean), which is a large body of water. 

Also read here "Colored Continent Globe" presentation. Did you know that every continent in Montessori Geography curriculum is color-coded ? This way, a younger child can more easily memorize the continents (Adrian learned them at two years old), and materials pertaining to a particular continent can be color-coded as well for the control-of-error. For example, North America continent is always orange, Asia is yellow etc. Colored globe is the next globe you would introduce after the Sandpaper Globe (read post here).  

For your convenience, I added here all our geography materials to my 💖aStore 🛍 under a single subcategory "Geography🌎Materials & 📚Books." 

Stay tuned for the next lesson on mapping.