Schoolhouse Crew Review -- Memoria Press Geography I

Memoria Press is a company I’m always happy to see on my upcoming review schedule. Even though we are not a “classical” homeschool, I have found many products from this company’s impressive catalog that we have used and really enjoyed.

We were recently sent Geography I: The Middle East, North Africa and Europe to use and review. Included in this set are the following:

Geography I Text
Geography I Workbook
Geography I Teacher Guide
States & Capitals Review Student
States & Capitals Review Key, Quizzes, and Tests

According to the Memoria Press website, this set is used for Grade 4 and up. I found it plenty interesting and challenging for Ben, who is finishing Grade 6. The cost for everything in the set is $48. Individual books range from $5-$14.95.

The United States Review of States & Capitals books are included as a review of the more complete States & Capitals curriculum, written for Grades 3-6. It is assumed that students using Geography I will have completed States & Capitals in a previous year.

Geography I is a curriculum set that could easily be used independently by students Ben’s age, and for the states and capitals review, it was. But as soon as I began flipping through the books on middle east, Africa and Europe, I knew I would enjoy learning as well.

The 103-page Student Text begins with a quick introduction to geography and includes brief descriptions of country, capitals, resources, climate, and climate. It then delves into the three regions of focus, country by country, covering these areas of geographical interest. I treated this book as a read-aloud so that Ben and I could discuss the material presented along the way.

As each country is presented, so is a map of the region, a “Fast Facts” box with geographical information such as major cities, languages, major religions, population, land forms, bodies of water, climate, resources, and information about the countries flag. Each country is described in terms of it’s historical significance as well as modern-day influence.

Most days, we focused on one country in the Student Text and then Ben followed that with independent work in the Student Workbook. The Student Workbook mostly consists of map work with a few fill-in-the-blank type questions about each country. There are periodic reviews throughout with much emphasis on labeling countries on a regional map and memorizing capital cities.

The Teacher Guide was the least used of these three books. It is basically identical to the Student Workbook, with the answers filled in and maps labeled. I did find it useful for quickly assuring myself that Ben had labeled his maps correctly. It does also include several quizzes and tests should those be needed for extra reinforcement of the material.

The Review of States & Capitals set also consists of a Student Workbook and Teacher Key, Quizzes and Tests. The Student Workbook divides the United States into 8 geographical regions and provides practice with map work and state capitals in a couple of different ways including:

Identifying states on a map
Matching capitals with states
Naming states according to the listed capital cities
Naming states and their capitals according to a map
Filling in the blanks with state names, with listed capital cities
Filling in the blanks with capital city names, with listed states

The Teacher Key, Quizzes, & Tests provides an answer key for all of the Student Workbook as well as a plethora of quizzes and tests to reinforce what your student has learned. Whether or not your student has completely Memoria Press’ States & Capitals curriculum, or any other study of states and capitals, you will find this review set useful for your homeschool.

By far, Ben’s favorite part of the Geography I set was the Student Text. We both enjoyed our time each day learning about a different country. We were able to cover the entire Middle East and North Africa during the review period. These were regions we had not spent much time studying in the past, and I found our study to not only be historically significant, but also very timely for current events. Learning about how the Jewish people came from Isaac, and the Arabs from Ishmael, both sons of Abraham, helped Ben to better understand the long-lasting battle over Israel that he hears on the news, as well as the conflict between Christians and Muslims. He was also on a quest from the very beginning to find out which country was formerly Persia. I’m not sure why that stuck in his head from the beginning, but it did. So when we got to Iran, it was a fun day of discovery.

While the studies of each country were brief introductions at best, with the goal of presenting them in the context of geography, I found that each tidbit of information seemed carefully selected to bring in biblical history as much as possible, as well as the most significant historical events for those countries. Much interest has been sparked to learn more about the history of the conflicts surrounding Israel because of the teasers presented in Geography I. I appreciate that very much.

Of course, I recognize that the goal of this curriculum is to help students grasp the geography of these regions, and you are probably wondering if the methods used were effective. Surpisingly, I believe they were. I say surprisingly because at a glance, it looked pretty dry, to be honest. But Ben thoroughly enjoyed the methods of using map work coupled with filling in the blanks. I really like that there is plenty of opportunity for review peppered throughout and extra quizzes and tests provided, if needed.

With that said, I do have one minor criticism. You will need to have access to a copier in order to use the quizzes and tests. While the reviews are built into the Student Workbooks, the quizzes and tests are not. If I could provide one constructive criticism, this would be it — it would be pretty easy to add the quizzes and tests to the Student Workbook, or in a separate file that can be printed, or to include them as perforated pages with text only on one side in the Teacher Guide, so that they could be torn from the book. I simply find it difficult to copy pages from workbooks without a spiral binding, so providing a way for me not to have to do this would have thrilled me. But that’s honestly a minor annoyance and would not keep me from purchasing this useful curriculum.

See the Geography I Table of Contents.
See a sample page from the Geography I Student Text.
See a sample page from the Geography I Student Workbook.
See a sample page from the Review of States & Capitals Student Workbook.
See a sample page from the Review of States & Capitals Review Teacher Key.

Purchase Geography I.

Other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew have also reviewed this product as well as Prima Latina. To see what they had to say, click on the graphic below.

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Schoolhouse Crew Review — Memoria Press Geography I