Knowledge Quest Maps offers several different products either in CD-ROM or e-book form to help you in teaching your children about time periods throughout history. In their words:
"Map Trek is an atlas plus historical outline maps that allow you to teach geography alongside history. This is a resource that any homeschool parent can use with brilliant success, even if you don't remember a thing from your history or geography classes in public school."
I LOVE history, but I'm relearning everything and then some. On top of that my children are pretty quick and asking lots of questions so that I'm constantly trying to keep up with them. We're currently working through a states curriculum from a different source, but being able to pull out more specific maps and see changes that have happened over time has been really handy. With the MapTrek US Edition I have 53 historical maps, 50 state maps, 3 full U.S. Maps, 109 student maps and complete lesson plans at my disposal at any time. I also like that I don't have to scour the internet for a clear map... please tell me that I'm not the only one who's done that?! Seriously, I can't tell you how many google searches I've done in hopes of finding the perfect map that's in my head. These are nice because they aren't overly detailed and the main ideas that I'm trying to get across are clear. The main objective of this company is to enhance learning, and I think that they complete this pretty successfully.
A Sample Map can be downloaded from here. There are only 4 provided here, but at least you can see what some of the maps look like.
If you'll notice, the maps are designed to not eat up too much ink, which is a bonus, and it allows you some freedom in how you/your child chooses to color the map. I find it a lot more effective in teaching geography to let my children fill in the details they thought pertinent (i.e. if they want to use it to draw the topography then great! OR the state flower and bird, or main commodities, whatever! Here they can fill in what's important to them, and I like that :-D).
Map Trek can also be easily used along with many curriculums like A Child's History of the World, Story of the World, Veritas Press, Streams of Civilization, TruthQuest History and more. You can find free curriculum integration guides for FREE here.
The Map Trek products can be purchased here. The Ancient World, Medieval World, New World, and Modern World can all be purchased for $14.95 per e-book or as a complete CD-ROM collection for $39.95. The US Edition CD-ROM or ebook is $19.95. Or you can purchase a 6-EBook Set (that includes the US etc) for $47.00... which, I think, is the best value.
To see what other crew members have to say about MapTrek you can visit the crew blog.
*As a member of the TOS crew I was given a copy of MapTrek in exchange for my honest opinion. I have received no other compensation.*
