Little Passports

How to teach young kids about geography? Needs to be fun and exciting and personalised, and of course involve as little effort/organisation by the parents as there is already plenty to do when you’re home schooling anyway.

So what’s the answer?  Well for me it was little passports.

I read a lot of home schooling blogs, and see all these great products and curriculum.  It makes things easier for me when I need to work out what curriculum I want to do with my kids, and I must admit it also helps me with the list of stuff I don’t want to do with my kids.

One of the products that kept coming up in these blogs with positive reviews was little passports.  This is a monthly subscription where your child is sent a parcel each month from two characters called Sam and Sofia. 
 

From the website

Every month, our globetrotting characters Sam and Sofia visit a new country and send your child an exciting package in the mail including a letter, fun and unique souvenirs, stickers, photos, access to online games/activities in our Boarding Zone and more! A total of 24 different adventures available

I contacted the company to see if there allowed international purchases and was very pleased to learn that while they can’t offer a subscription internationally they are happy to sell it as a package all I had to do was choose between the 12 or 24 month options.

This was a LOT of money especially as the postage worked out to be  just over $80NZ but after some saving I purchased the 24 month package which arrived in May last year.

In the huge box that arrived each months parcel was already sealed and addressed to both Rocket boy and Ladybug so all I had to do was look up which month came next and sneak the parcel out to the letter box when the kids weren’t looking.

Also as I control when the parcels are ‘sent’ I can work them around our busy life and if I feel we’re not ready for the next one I just wait a little longer before getting it out.

So far we’ve had the Explorer Kit which includes a cool little suitcase to store everything you receive, a map to put up on the wall so you can find all the different countries Sam and Sofia visit, a passport to put in the country flag stickers which you receive in each package and also stickers, a letter, photo and a code for their online games and activities.

So far we’ve covered Brazil, Japan and France.  Rocket boy is mainly only interested in the souvenirs that come in each parcel with an amethyst (pretty rock with purple crystals) from Brazil.  A sushi eraser and origami paper from Japan, of which the eraser was lost by the next day and the paper got used to make paper cranes until one of Rocket boys friends made a paper air plane so they got used up very fast.  The France package had a poster which either Rocket boy or Ladybug was interested in so it’s currently living in the suitcase.

We haven’t spent the time on the activity sheets or online games and activities as I would have liked but when we started this Rocket boy was online 4 and couldn’t read.  Now at 5 he can read although not a huge amount and is probably ready to do the online games with a little help. 

While Rocket boy is still on the young side for this program we still have over a years worth of packages to open and Rocket boy is only going to get older and more able to complete these activities with less and less parental help.

I believe this program was worth all the money and will be able to be used by all my kids to learn a bit about the world before stepping up to a more detailed geography curriculum.

Do you or your kids subscribe to little passports?  What do you think of it? 

Do you use another curriculum for geography?  If so I’ll love to know more.