In terms of geography, the tool I found most effective was video games. Since we homeschooled our sons, I was open to innovative ways of teaching geography. I tried several books, but what worked best were some of the video games for PC’s manufactured by Koei. The games of Uncharted Waters, L’Emperor (Napoleon) and Romance of the Three Kingdoms opened the world to my sons. When playing the games, they often checked encyclopedias and maps in order to find locations mentioned in the games. Of the three, Uncharted Waters had the most influence.

Sadly, Koei no longer makes the games, but if you find them, they are well worth it. Some of them are available via downloading them from sites on the internet. Like all download sites, you have to be cautious. In the story line, as the main character it is up to you to establish trade routes with ports throughout the world. Along the way, one also has to develop some business sense and economic know how in order to win the game. By having to discover new ports, they learned the location of major cities throughout the world. Koei often placed great details in their games and these are no exceptions, learning at what latitudes the winds blow and in which directions was also a wonderful addition to learning geography. The graphics are weak, but the knowledge gained of geography around the world is amazing.

Another game my sons enjoyed and learned about other cities and nations is Machiavelli-The Prince (a.k.a. The Merchant Prince). This game is for a more mature audience in that it involves politics, religion and wars. The learning part has to do with setting up trade routes in various parts of the world. Setting up trade routes means learning what cities are there and what products they are known for. This game is available for downloads online.

These games also gave my sons an interest in history and the cultures involved. They wanted to know more about France, China and Europe in general after playing these games. Since the historic games (L’Emperor and Romance of the Three Kingdoms) contain figures that actually lived, they wanted to know more about those people. This led to books being obtained that talked about the lives of the characters they were most interested. Even to this day, my 18 year old son can walk into a Chinese restaurant and tell me who the historic figures are that are whose statues are displayed. He also knows the major cities and regions of China.

If you are open to new ideas, you may want to consider using this novel approach to learning geography. In terms of plain geography books, I was most impressed by those produced by Kingfisher press. Another creative way of presenting geography was to use Field Guides. I used the Audobon Fieldguide for reptiles to reinforce the geographic location of various animals. My sons always wanted to know where certain snakes or other reptiles were located, so we would look it up and discuss what states were there and what cities they might be found in.