Geography · Home Geography · 1894

Home Geography for Primary Grades

C. C. Long's beginning geography for children about 7 to 9 starts at the child's own door: finding north by the sun and stars, measuring and drawing plans of a room and yard, then hills, rivers, rain, plants, animals, rocks and the work people do. All 45 lessons have a guide you can follow step by step, with the right page of the book beside it.

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Turn this on to see every lesson as a simple checklist: what to get out, what to do and what to say, one line at a time.

How to use it

Start at your own door. Long wanted children to learn geography by looking at what is near them first. Most guides send you outside: to point north, pace the yard, follow a stream or climb a hill.
A little, often. One lesson a day, two or three days a week, covers the book in a school year. The poem lessons are short; a few long lessons can be spread over two days.
Model, draw, then tell. The book asks children to show what they learn by modeling it, then drawing it, then telling or writing about it. Keep a sand tray (a baking pan of damp sand) and a geography notebook for the whole year.
Writing to fit the child. The book often says "write the following." A 7-year-old can copy one sentence or tell you the answer while you write; an older child can write a few sentences alone.
Then and now. Long wrote in 1894, when coal, wagons and slates were everyday things. Short "What we know now" notes help where facts have changed, and old words for peoples are gently updated.
Safety outdoors. An adult stays close by streams, ponds and lakes. Never look straight at the sun. Steam and boiling water are for adults; children watch from a distance.

Unit 1 Finding direction

Right and left, then north, south, east and west by the sun, the stars and the compass, with shadows and winds. Lessons 1–6.

Unit 2 Distance, pictures and plans

Measuring in inches, feet, yards and miles, and drawing plans of a table, a room and the yard to scale. Lessons 7–9.

Unit 3 The shape of the land

Plains, prairies, deserts and oases, then hills, mountains and valleys, modeled in a sand tray. Lessons 10–12.

Unit 4 Water, air and weather

Rain, wind and snow, how water turns to vapor and back, and dew, frost, clouds, fog, hail and snow. Lessons 13–17.

Unit 5 Rivers

How springs, rills and brooks make rivers, what rivers do to the land, and the water cycle, with three river poems. Lessons 18–23.

Unit 6 Maps and forms of land and water

Reading a map, then lakes, islands, peninsulas, isthmuses, bays and straits, reviewed on a trip up a hill. Lessons 24–27.

Unit 7 Plants

Vegetables, grains, fruits, cotton, flax and sugar, forest trees and flowers, and what plants need to grow. Lessons 28–36.

Unit 8 Animals and the seasons

How animals' parts and coverings fit their lives, how animals serve people, and the signs of the seasons. Lessons 37–40.

Unit 9 Things found in the earth

Coal, salt and metals, then building stones, brick and glass. Lessons 41–42.

Unit 10 How people live and work

Homes around the world, farming, mining, lumbering, fishing, factories and trade, and a review of work in your own town. Lessons 43–45.

The book itself

Home Geography for Primary Grades

1894 · About ages 7 to 9

C. C. Long's conversational lessons start with what a child can see close to home, such as hills, streams, ponds and the weather, and use them to imagine the rivers, mountains and seas of the wider world.

🧑‍🏫 Teaching guides ⬇ Download PDF (10.9 MB) Internet Archive ↗

Scanned from a University of California Libraries copy.

Guide numbers match the book's 45 numbered lessons, shown in Roman numerals beside each title. The guides are written for this site; the book is in the public domain.