Creating An Illustrated Geography Notebook w/FREE Printable

Part of my 13yo’s geography curriculum this year is to define & memorize terms and to create an illustrated geography notebook for those terms. So I thought I would create some notebook pages to help him complete his work. And of course, I will share them as a free printable below:) We are using North Star Geography this year for our main geography curriculum, but these printable sheets can be used with any geography book, program or curriculum. They are generic geography pages and not associated with North Star or Bright Ideas Press.

I created pages with a map of each continent, a map of the USA, Canada & Central America and one with the world map. He has 6 terms to define each week and after defining and illustrating, if it can be located on a map, he will look up the locations around the world or either in the area we are studying in an atlas and mark them on the map.

Examples of using the Illustrated Geography Notebook pages

His word to define is bay. He writes the definition, illustrates it, and because we are currently studying North America, he looks on this continent for bays and then colors and labels them on the North American map I made. He finds and labels –  Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay.

Seeing where the terms actually are on a map gives him a visualization of them and makes them real in his mind and not just words on paper. It takes a little bit longer to do it this way, but it’s worth it. He does 2 words a day, 3 times a week and it takes him about 15 minutes. We do review games on Fridays and tests every 2 weeks to make sure he is retaining the information.

Some of the terms won’t need a map so I created a page with just boxes and I also created a page with a world map for labeling things like seas, volcanoes, islands, and such. Things that need a larger map, with a box for listing the names below. Here are some of the pages I created.

My son completes his Illustrated Geography Notebook along with his North Star geography study each week. He also does map memory work by tracing a laminated map and labeling the states or countries every day. We have really been enjoying our journey through North Star Geography. The projects are lots of fun, the book is great reading and we are also working with the online version now, which really helps my son since he is more of a hands-on learner. He seems to enjoy being online more than reading from the book which I will be posting more about soon!

You can read more about our North Star Geography learning adventures by subscribing to my blog :).

Setting up the North Star Geography Notebook

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