Travel The World! The 2009 Schoolhouse Planner (June 2010 Module)
The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
www.theoldschoolhousestore.com
1-888 718-HOUSE
$7.95

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has made world travel as easy as a click of your computer mouse! The June 2010 Module of the 2009 Old Schoolhouse Planner is a 56 page unit study for the whole family. This E-book includes everything you need to teach world geography to students from Kindergarten to 12th grade. The unit study is composed of a study guide with numerous internet links embedded into the text. This feature allows the student to quickly find the definition of vocabulary words and explore related websites.

The course begins with an exploration of globes, flat maps and the compass rose. It continues with a study of the world's oceans and the seven continents. There are internet links to quizzes and games within each section. In addition, there are numerous printable activity sheets; including word searches, word scrambles, crossword puzzles, copy work (manuscript and cursive), coloring sheets and lap book materials.

My children, ages 14, 12, and 9, each used the Travel the World study. My 14 year old enjoyed the interactive games that were linked to the study. She also liked the recipes and high school level word search. I thought the geography challenge on the high school level was a nice touch, especially since my daughter had just completed a year of high school geography. I found the word search, at this level, was a little too easy and would have preferred a challenging crossword puzzle.

My 12 year old son found the interactive links "neat" and found it fun to do geography on the computer. He also believed that the games added to the course and he continued to "play" in the unit, long past the allotted time for history. My son is not a fan of activity sheets. However, I felt that here was enough reinforcement within the unit to do a complete study without the use of the activity sheets.

The youngest of my children was very excited as she previewed the unit. She was drawn to the colorful graphics, the activity sheets and the lap book component. My 9 year old was especially fond of the interactive games. We spent quite a bit of time playing the Longitude and Latitude Matching Game. The object was to locate a little girl lost on a map using latitude and longitude coordinates. An additional favorite was the Continent Copycat Game, which is very similar to the popular game Simon. However, this one tests your memory while reinforcing the locations of the seven continents.

Overall, I really found the Travel the World Module easy to use and it required little to no prep time. A family with younger children might need to copy activity sheets ahead of time. However, my children printed out sheets as they worked. Another great feature is the internet links, which allows children to play on the internet without surfing to unfiltered websites. I found this product to work well with each of my children's learning styles. In addition, the e-book is reusable and affordable at $7.95. I would definitely recommend this program to other homeschooling families and look forward to using some of the other monthly modules that The Old Schoolhouse Magazine produces.

The Travel the World E-book was provided free of charge for my review as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation, and this review is my honest opinion.

Reviewed by Lauren Bell