Geography

Search thrift shops, yard sales, and craigslist for a globe if you don’t have one already. 

We have had a lot of success with inflatable beach ball globes.  They are more portable and less precious than desk décor, so you can keep a couple around and study even when you are in the pool!   

Learn some basics: continents, capitals, oceans. If you already know those, stretch yourself by adding in more obscure geographical facts. 

Download and play: Seterra.  Still working on the 150 largest countries and their capitals.  

Learn the names and locations of the Mexican and Canadian States.  

Learn the names and locations of the 20MM+ population global megacities.  

Learn about the history of cartography.

Read:  Mapmakers - John Noble Wilford

Learned that some parts of the world can have slightly different gravity and compasses can point slightly off true north depending on the mass and density of the earth they sit close to.  

Discovered that part of developing the theory of plate tectonics came from looking at striations in rock where magnetic elements switched directions because these rocks "line up" pointing toward wherever magnetic north was when the rock formed.  This helped date the rock sample and connect it to other pieces of rock which may have shifted and separated but show similar magnetic patterns.  It also helped better understand in geologic time when the magnetism of the north pole swapped places with the south pole.     

Came to appreciate that calculating longitude was more complicated than calculating latitude because you need an accurate clock as an input into the calculation.

I also realize I should have paid closer attention to trigonometry because it got humanity so far in estimating distance and altitude of places it would have been too time consuming or treacherous to travel to.  Fortunately, my daughter is on the cusp of learning trig, so I may get a second crack at it.  

Toward the end of the book as mapping technology moved toward aerial and then space photography, I started to get a sense of vertigo about how quickly mapping precision was advancing.