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How to host a geography fair

March 24, 2014 Ticia 15 Comments

This month for Poppin’s Book Nook the theme is around the world.  I struggled a bit to think of a good idea because we’ve done a lot of geography posts, and used all of my favorite books, then we went to a geography fair, and I thought “SCORE!”

For those who are curious, my two favorites I’ve already done:

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

Me on the Map (this is a series of them)

How to put together a geography fair

First a word of advice to parents about the geography fair, do not make this into your project that your kids were somewhat involved in.  I saw a few displays and presentations that felt more like the parent’s work than the child’s.  You hurt your child’s education when you do this, and you enable them to think others will do their job.

Next, some general advice on set up of the geography fair:

  • Set a time limit, and use a loud buzzer for station rotation.
  • Have requirements for everyone to do (see my suggestions below).
  • Set a max budget so no one feels bad because one person could spend $100 and another could only spend $5.  Also this makes the presentations more uniform.
  • Have a passport (see more information on that below).

geography fair display board

1.  Pick a way to display the information for the geography fair.

The easiest way is to use a Trifold Presentation Board {affiliate link} and put your information on that.    You can glue it down in many different ways to look good.  As a kid growing up we always used the Lauri Toys Alphabet Puzzle Boards, my Mom kept them and we’d use the puzzle as a stencil then color it in, much cheaper than buying stick on letters (not as pretty looking in many cases, but still good).

Alternate methods we saw (but wasn’t able to get a picture of)

  • multiple pieces of poster board hung on the walls
  • many different props (from people visiting, or similar items they had)
  • costumes

host a geography fair

2.  Have a simple craft for everyone to do at the geography fair.

This geography fair required each country to have a small craft for the participants to do.  Most of the countries created a flag for their craft, but some had more unique ideas.  Look at local artwork, examples of dress, animals, or plants you might find.

geography fair craft ideas

We made fans, masks, Faberge eggs, a toy head-dress, wrote in Hebrew, and many many flags.  My kids loved all of the crafts they got to do, and I’ve seen them played with off and on all week long.

geography fair food

3.  Have food to try from your country for the geography fair.

At each place we “visited” we got to try some local food.  Sometimes it was candy bought in the store, others it was cookies or bread, but it was always something easy to eat and relatively easy to make.  If you’re looking for ideas try checking out my Around the World in 12 Dishes series.  I’ve been going for 2 years and there are dozens of recipe ideas from full meals to quick snacks.

world fair presentation

4.  Have a short presentation for the geography fair.

(Since that’s not my child, nor the child of a good friend I’ve put her in a disguise)

At each stop in our world tour the kids in charge gave a short presentation to teach us about the country.  They told us about their language, culture, government, and whatever struck their fancy.  Each of these presentations was about 5 minutes long.

Here’s some ideas to help you with presentations:

How to write a research paper and present it (including a rubric for grading)

Creating country reports

geography fair passport

5.  Have a passport for the kids at the geography fair

At ours they were a cute small book about the size of a real passport, and the kids put  a sticker of each country into their passport, and any notes they took.  You could make them a little bigger, and this could be where they put their crafts, and maybe glue in extra information.  No matter what I think this is a great idea for all geography fairs to have.

And for those who are wondering what happened to Science Sunday yesterday, I got behind on…. well everything.  My lesson plans, sewing projects, blogging, and I had to let something go, and blogging was it.  So I didn’t write for yesterday.  Look for it next week as I spotlight all your cool posts for the month.

Poppins Book Nook

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God’s Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Faith and Good Works ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy’s Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy’s Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ The Kennedy Adventures ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Simplicity Breeds Happiness ~ Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom’s Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A “Peace” of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids ~ Simple Living Mama

 

Check out some more Poppins Book Nook ideas on Pinterest.

Clip art by Melon Headz

Poppins Book Nook Giveaway! Every month the Poppins Book Nook group will be offering readers a chance to win a brand new storybook that ties in with our theme for the month. This month one lucky entrant will win a copy of Where in the World! The winner must reside within the United States. This giveaway is brought to you by the company Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, who is owner and founder of the Poppins Book Nook. By entering this giveaway you are also acknowledging that you have read and agree to all of the Rafflecopter terms & conditions as well as Enchanted Homeschooling Mom’s disclosures found here {https://enchantedhomeschoolingmom.org/disclosures/}. Just enter the Rafflecopter below to win:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up


geography Around the World in 12 Dishes, country studies, world geography

Comments

  1. Ticia says

    March 24, 2014 at 7:56 am

    Sigh, I just accidentally got this all ready 1 week early. So, it’s all not gonna be working for a week.
    Double sigh.

    Reply
  2. Phyllis at All Things Beautiful says

    March 24, 2014 at 9:14 am

    LOL…guess what I am going to write about this week? Science Fair, of course. We love our history and geography fair, too.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      March 24, 2014 at 9:20 am

      Ha! That’s awesome. I was actually thinking about your history and geography fair when we were at this one.

  3. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    March 24, 2014 at 10:48 pm

    These are great tips! Let me know when your widget is live and I’ll pin the post for you 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      March 31, 2014 at 7:35 am

      linky and giveaway are live now!

  4. Susan W says

    April 2, 2014 at 11:37 am

    This is great! I hosted a geography fair for kids a few years ago and it was one of my favorite events ever!!

    Reply
  5. Lauren says

    April 5, 2014 at 4:04 am

    Love all of these ideas- and I agree with the buzzer one especially!

    Reply
  6. Natalie says

    April 5, 2014 at 11:10 am

    This geography fair looks like a lot of fun! Smarty’s class is doing heritage reports as a project for the last term. It’s in a similar format, but no crafts, and the food, if parents want to send it in, should be store-bought. That’s public school to you 🙂 Still, it should be a lot of fun – Smarty is going to write about Germany and post her pics from her Germany trip into her report.

    Reply
  7. Ashley says

    April 8, 2014 at 6:17 am

    This is a fabulous idea! Definitely something we should do with our co-op!

    Reply
  8. Leah Courtney says

    April 8, 2014 at 12:06 pm

    We are actually going to be involved in a geography fair this year for the time. I’m looking forward to seeing what the kids can do with studying about and presenting their countries.

    Reply
  9. Jennifer@ a glimpse of our life says

    April 9, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    What a fun way for kids to get a glimpse of other countries.

    Reply
  10. Jill says

    April 13, 2014 at 8:43 am

    This is a great idea! I remember doing something like this in girl scouts and having a great time while learning with my friends.

    Thank you for helping to bring a spoonful of reading fun to the Poppins Book Nook this month!

    Reply
  11. Caroline says

    August 9, 2015 at 1:09 pm

    I’m putting together our co-op’s geography fair for this year, and I got some great ideas from your post.

    Quick question: What was the max budget you set for your fair? Or, what’s a good ballpark number for what the max budget should be?

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      August 9, 2015 at 2:10 pm

      I don’t know if we set a max budget, in this case because it was for a large group each booth was given around $25 for supplies, but for a smaller group I’d say $10 is more than enough, your goal is for the kids to create and show what they learned, not buy lots of stuff.

    • Caroline says

      August 9, 2015 at 10:15 pm

      Thanks.

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Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

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