At the end of each school year, our community holds a geography fair based upon the current cycle’s Foundations memory work. This event has given students and parents an opportunity to showcase the geography memory work in a unique and creative way at our End-of-Year Performance and Awards Ceremony. It has also provided a way for those who are not familiar with Classical Conversations to come and experience a bit of our memory work with us.
We keep the guidelines simple. During week twenty or twenty-one, the geography fair coordinator (which is the director for our community) sends out an email to each family requesting each child’s preferred week(s) of geography memory work. As the parents respond with their children’s top geography choices, the weeks are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. Students can choose to display the memory work using any medium they prefer and are allowed to receive help from their parents if needed. The completed projects are brought directly to our awards ceremony and set up in the fellowship hall for display. After the performance and awards, we celebrate with a potluck dinner and enjoy looking at all of the various geography work that is displayed across the room.
An assortment of projects using various mediums has been submitted in the past:
- Color-coded posters, tri-fold boards, and tracing paper overlays
- Cookie dough and cake maps
- Salt dough maps
- Wooden jigsaw maps
- Paintings
- Labeled globes
- Felt boards with images of each country/city
- Geography tri-fold boards with history emphasis
- Sewing crafts, such as pillows or quilts
- Play dough models and clay-sculpted relief maps
Some specific displays have been:
- European Countries Pillow
- Painted Wooden Map of Caribbean
- Indus River Clay Relief Map with History of Indus River Valley Civilization
- Paul’s Missionary Journeys Plotted on Byzantine Empire “Pirate” Map
- Hebrew Empire Map with History of the Hebrew Culture and Passover
- Southeastern Asia Geography Flag Pin Map using Monet Watercolor Technique
- Mid-Atlantic World Lift-the-Flap Map in the style of Berthe Morisot
Our geography fair has easily become a favorite tradition in our community. In fact, we have found that no rewards are necessary for our geography fair—the children delight in simply showing their work to others and seeing what everyone else has done! Parents and children have enjoyed working together to present geography in a way that emphasizes their natural talents, abilities, and hobbies. As a result, all of us walk away inspired and equipped with a greater knowledge of the world that God has given us.
