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Book Studies For Homeschoolers

Highroads of Geography

Book Studies

There was a book written in 1916 by, well, we aren't sure.  It just says, "anonymously."  A homeschool friend of mine introduced it to me years ago from Project Gutenberg's public domain collection.  I found it quite interesting as it presented geography in such a unique way.  It was a story written around the idea of a father traveling the globe and sending home letters to his children about his wondrous travels and adventures.  I immediately thought that be great to receive letters all the time from someone as they traveled the world. 

This work spans many countries including: France, Egypt, India, Burma, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), China, Japan, Canada, parts of the United Kingdom and the United States.

I decided to bring this book to life as a means for studying geography over the course of twenty weeks.  I reformatted the e-text so that the letters were separated on different sheets and the text looked like they were handwritten.  I found some of original pictures that went with the text.  I created Montessori cards and printed them out on photo paper.  (They looked a bit Polaroid-ish, so it worked well.) I told my daughter that we were going to pretend that daddy was going on a long trip but that he would be mailing us letters about his adventures.  We then read the first part of the text together.  The author used this part to set-up father's departure and explain about his trip.  I then mailed a letter once a week to my daughter.  She thought is was so great because, 1) all children love getting mail, 2) she started a photo collection and 3) the letters of the "text" brought learning geography to life.  You could also create a family post office box and put it in there too addressed to your child if the postage cost is a deterrent for you.

The original text comes with review questions.  Download our e-text version to see them. 

NOTE:  Keep in mind that this story is an older text and some terms and references to places and people may be outdated or politically incorrect by today's standards.  I used this as the perfect opportunity to talk about how countries and their societies change.  I also touched on human dignity. 

Highroads of Geography

The Resources

Novel Text Files

Print out the files that you need.  Separate pages by letter numbers found at the top of each page and place each letter in a separate envelope.  Give or mail your child one letter each week during your book study.

Our reformatted version of the text into 20 letters as described above.(.PDF)

Our reformatted version of the text reformatted into 20 letters as described above.(.doc)

Original e-text version with study questions and listing of pictures per page.(.PDF)

Montessori Cards

Print out our sets of Montessori cards to help children see the different places from the letters.  These art pieces are from the original work.  Not all letters will have an accompanying picture.

Set #1

Set #2

Set #3

*These aren't the best quality cards but they serve their purpose in the project of imitating old fashioned Polaroid style photographs.

Add a Map

Consider printing out a map to go with this project and track father's travel route as you read through his letters. Visit our map resource page to see our collection of maps of the world.

Looking for a mural sized maps, visit Owl and Mouse to print out oversized maps that your children can colour and mark on their own. 

Highroads of Geography My Book Mini-books

(My Book Mini-book about Canada)

Set of all twelve My Book Mini-books for Highroads of Geography

Highroads of Geography My Book Keepsake Pages & cover for use with My Book Mini-books

Highroads of Geography My Book Mini-books Cover

Highroads of Geography My Book Mini-books Keepsake Pages (w/instructions)

Do you enjoy lapbooking with your children?  Visit our lapbooking page and see our resources like more My Book Mini-books, lapbooking templates, map and world flag images and more.  We want to help you put the fun in learning.