We love maps in our house. My mom instilled a love of navigating in me as we travelled all over the county. I still prefer a paper map to our GPS, although it is growing on me! As we watched the Winter Olympics, our globe was ever present, as we searched for countries that were competing against us.
With this love of maps comes a focus on maps and geography in our homeschool. Until now, I hadn’t found any general sets of maps that I really liked. I’ve tried various maps online, but really wanted something that I could print when I needed it. Enter Amy Pak. If you aren’t familiar with Homeschool in the Woods and Amy Pak’s timeline figures, it is worth a long browse on her website. We already own her Time Traveler Unit Studies and her Timeline Figures CDs. When she announced last year that the maps from her timeline notebook would be available on CD or as a download, I was ready to purchase them right away, but I had already spent my budget. Then I heard we would be receiving something from her to review for the Crew. A child on Christmas morning could not have been more excited than I was when I received the email with links to BOTH the World Map set and the United States Map set.
What they contain…these sets have so much, I don’t know that I have room for everything. I’ll try to list as much as I can. Nearly all of the maps come both labeled and unlabeled. Each map is drawn with physical features, including waves along the shores. They have a classic appearance, and I’ve noticed that my kids are coloring them more carefully than some of the other, plainer maps that we’ve tried.
World Maps:
- Over 130 maps
- Historical maps from Ancient history to the present, including maps that trace Old and New Testament events and places (12 Tribes of Israel, Paul’s Missionary Journeys, and many more)
- Political and physical maps of continents, countries, and regions.
- Over 40 notebooking pages for country studies including brochures, facts about…, “My Intinerary for visiting ____,” religious history of…, daily life, blank report forms in various styles, missionaries to _____, and others.
- Many of the notebooking pages contain both ruled lines and dashed lines (like handwriting paper) allowing older and younger kids to use them
- Graphics to include on notebooking pages: flags and outlines of the country
United States Maps:
- Over 180 maps
- Historical maps from the Explorers to the Present, with separate maps for each of the expansions that you could layer using transparencies (these are the same ones that are included in the Time Traveler US History Unit Studies
- Physical and political maps for every state
- Specific notebooking pages for each state, including a space for drawing or pasting a picture of symbols
- Various other notebooking pages.
I am thrilled with these and would happily have paid $19.95 for each set had I not been waiting for the crew. They have simplified our history and geography studies for the year, just when I needed something to make our lives easier. We have been spending the year in the Eastern Hemisphere, using Sonlight’s Core 5. With these maps, I’ve printed out the country we are studying right now, along with various notebooking pages. My oldest is using more of the notebooking pages to replace (for a couple months) the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer pages. My 7 year old is having fun coloring the maps and filling in her notebooking pages too. Even the little ones beg for maps to color.
All the maps are in black and white, which I love since we use a laser printer. The flag and map graphics for the notebooking pages are in color, but I can live with that. Most of the time my kids try to draw the flags anyway.
Bottom line: This is going on my list of must-haves! It far outshines any map set I’ve looked at for value, aesthetic beauty, and usability.
Cost: $18.95 per set download or $19.95 per set on CD-ROM. Combine both sets and save. Download is $28.95 and combination CD is $29.95. Samples of both sets are available on the website.
