My 11 year old daughter has a keen desire to learn more about the different countries in Europe so I was looking forward to reviewing Drawing Around the World: Europe from  Brookdale House with her.

Brookdale House provides homeschool resources using the Charlotte Mason Method. The company values educators, children and education and believes in child-centered learning. They produce materials that engages the child and help them connect what they learn to their world. They know that teachers have limited time so they produce products that accomplish more than just to give head knowledge to the children. They also produce multi-level homeschool curricula to make learning more efficient.

Drawing Around the World series teaches children geography simply and efficiently. Drawing Around the World : Europe is the first book in this series. Children will learn the different countries included in Europe and mapping them. Children will be tracing the country on the map, locating them and labeling them They also will learn more about the country by completing a country fact table. Information like population, cultures, major religions, climate, and resources need to be filled up.

The geography drawing series has a recommended schedule of 4 days a week. This way, students will remember the location of each country in the continent and be able to recreate their own maps by memory based on the relative locations of each country. Upon knowing the locations of the countries, the student will appreciate history lessons all the more and be able to relate to the current world news as well.

On the first day, students gets introduced to  the new country by completing the fact table and tracing the outline of the country. Locate the country on the European map, draw and label it on the dashed, black and white map. On the second and third day, draw and label all the countries that have been learned so far. On the 4th day, list from memory all the locations and draw them on the map as well.

There are some weeks which features only one country and some weeks where the student will study 2-3 countries.

This product is available in physical and eBook format. We received a PDF file which can be opened using the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. Then I printed out the pages, there are roughly 250 pages in the entire product. The beginning part of the document consists of detailed instructions on how to  use the product and additional resources to help the students in remembering the information better. They suggest using coloring pencils, timed drills and extra drawing practice. It took my artistic daughter less than 10 minutes to complete tasks assigned each day. She just followed the recommended daily tasks.

We both give Drawing Around the World: Europe a thumbs up! My daughter personally liked this product for the following reasons:

• Ease of use. Tracing and drawing the map is not complicated and instruction is simple enough to do on her own.
• Not time consuming. Each session only takes a few minutes each day.
• Effective. After 4 weeks of usage, she still remembers the lessons she studied on the previous weeks.

I liked the product for the following reasons:

• Price. With the reasonable price of $22.95, this product is worth its price.
• Ease of use. The clear instructions give me an overview how this product will help my daughter in her geography lessons. It fosters independence as she learns different countries on her own. It only takes few minutes each day.
• Flexible. Even with the recommended usage, my daughter can go faster or slower on her lessons each day because each session is flexible enough. It can also be used as a springboard to learn more about each country and launch a full study too. We have conversations about each country every time.
• Engaging and fun lessons. My daughter is artistically inclined so she loves to draw and finds this product interesting. I personally am not, but I also find this product engaging and fun.

To know more about different Brookdale House products, check the reviews of other Schoolhouse Review Crew!

For more information on Brookdale House, follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+