Geography Obsession

My oldest son has an obsession with geography.

His love for geography began with a game I found on the computer. You can read my post about it by clicking here.  After playing these games for many months, he was able to take a United States map with no lines, and size and rotate and place a state where it goes on the map.

From there, we followed the recommendation of a fellow homeschooling mom, Katherine, and as soon as the boys could read, they jumped into: Stack the States (Also comes in Stack the Countries). 

Now mind you, both of my first grade boys play these games as part of our homeschool curriculum. However, while Sidge is obsessed with animals and the farm, Isaac became infatuated with learning more about the states and countries of our world. He knows where every US State is, all of the capitals, and can tell you with nearly 99% accuracy where any country is in the world. It's honestly ... awe-inspiring. 

It was while playing Stack the Countries that he developed a keen interest in the flags of the world. For Christmas, my parents gave him a game: Flags of the World. At some point, shortly after receiving the game, Isaac informed me that he thought he could quite possibly learn the 195 flags included in that game. I told him I believed in him, and in fact, we thought it was worth a $50 lego shopping spree online if he in fact could do it.

I feel very strongly that children are sponges, and we have a small window that memorization will come easily to them. I am constantly coming up with bribery options to encourage them to take on some of these challenges. 

Yesterday, Isaac told us he was ready to do it. Here he is, on video, preparing for his 195 question quiz:

And here are two videos of him successfully zipping through the flags:





I am so incredibly proud of my boy. I also really love homeschooling in that it gives us the opportunity to allow our kiddos to really focus on things they love. Normally, I would not devote this much curriculum time to geography -- but Isaac's passion for it makes it an easy choice.

And now .... lego.com for shopping!