Secular Charlotte Mason

I am looking for suggestions to teach some geography to five year olds here.. Games?  continents- activities, mapping- books.. etc.

Please suggest

I got the Holling C. Holling books.  We'll start with Paddle to the Sea.  We'll see how my child is inspired by the book.  There are maps in in the book that show the progress.  We have wall maps and a globe too.  I'll casually point out on the wall map the area of the U.S. that is in the book.   Very casual.

I thought maybe state quarters might be a fun way to learn about the 50 states.  I think they make coin holders that is a map...?  If not we could point it out as we find the quarters.  He loves money.

HTH

You don't need much at this age; children's natural curiosity will inspire them.  Lauri puzzles has a US Map that my kids enjoyed.  The Global Animal Puzzle by Reveal Entertainment might be a good option, though that came out after my kids were of the age to appreciate it.  Usbourne has an "animal atlas" that we enjoyed; tying geography to interesting animals worked really well for my middle son.

The simplest method we found was just putting a world map up on the wall above our oldest son's bed and looking at it with him.  He got to procrastinate going to bed for a bit, and learned some geography in the meantime.  Have maps up and globes around the house, look up any country that you hear about on the news or from someone else on a map and have a kids almanac to find a few facts about it.  The Olympics are going to be in Canada, get a map of Canada and talk about the history of the country while they're on. 

A good reference book for you that might have ideas you can use with your kids is "Why Greenland Is an Island, Australia Is Not, and Japan Is Up for Grabs" by Joyce Davis. It's out of print, but fairly easy to find used.

HTH!

One thing that Jack *really* enjoyed was reading The Adventures of Nils, while tracking Nils' progress on a big map of Sweden.  We were visiting Sweden at the time, so it was particularly compelling...but you could do that with just about any book in whch the characters travel. 

Deepali,

I do have the Nils book if you want to borrow it when I get back.

Gina

I just found The Adventures of Nils on the clearance pile for $1 (before I read this).   Glad to know another young boy liked it so much.