T.O.S. Review~If You Were Me and Lived In . . .

 

Both A~man and Z~girl love learning about other countries and their different cultures. One of our favorite home school group activities is our monthly Geography Club. This year our club is taking a different country every month and each family involved is responsible for demonstrating specific aspects about each country. Our country for this month was Turkey and both A and Z had to get in front of the group and tell their friends about the sports people play in Turkey and about notable people who are from Turkey. It is always great fun! So getting the chance to do a review on Carole P. Roman from Away We Go Media's book series was right up our alley!

We received these four books to review:

IfYou Were Me and Lived in…Mexico

IfYou Were Me and Lived in…South Korea

IfYou Were Me and Lived in…France

If You Were Me and Lived in…Norway

These books were created for children ages Pre-K- age 8 and while my children are a considerable bit older at 12 and 14, it was still a good way for them to get a "taste" of each of these countries. Instead of just explaining what they do in each country they try and get the reader to imagine what it would be like if you actually lived in that particular country. The first page would start with "If you were me and lived in...Mexico" and started out showing where on the globe that individual country was located at. Then it would tell about what possible landmarks you might see, possible girl and boy names there, and what your life might be like if you were a child living in that individual country.

So not only would it be telling facts about each individual country but it presented it in such a way that the child reading it could see a bit of what other children that lived there experienced in their day to day lives. I really think a child would be able to retain the information presented with this type of approach. I think it makes the children seem more real when they are doing similar things (yet different) as the child reading the story. 

We also received a neat blow up globe that is very child friendly and easy for a child to see exactly where the country they are reading about is located at. 

I can see this book series being a valuable resource with our Geography club! Our club has ages 5-15. The books would be perfect for our youngest members to learn some basics about the countries and the older members could use the basics and expand it to learn even more details about each individual country!

Each book is between 22 and 28 pages in length, the print is nice and large for early readers. The If You Were Me books by Carole P. Roman with Away We GoMedia are available for $8.99 each.