Geography Plans

I absolutely LOVE geography--it's my favorite subject! However, I struggled last year trying to figure out the best way to teach it to a 2nd grader--there are so many ways to do it and so many materials to choose from. We ended up doing lapbooks the 2nd half of the year, after 1/2 a year of boring lessons that we both hated. Since then, I've done some internet-research on how other homeschool moms teach it. Mostly inspired by my friend Jolanthe (Homeschool Creations) but with some other ideas added, I think I've come up with a good plan for this year. I decided to do 2-week unit studies on different countries, but I chose the countries based on Isaac's history studies (Story of the World: Middle Ages). History is my 2nd favorite subject-very closely following geography, so it's natural that I link the 2! I'm using the books I have pictured on the Amazon widget below, but I'm also using other children's stories, games, puzzles, youtube video clips, websites, crafts, notebooking, and smaller-scale lapbooking. Living in the UK, we'll also have access to some wonderful take-away restaurants--Fish and Chips, Chinese, and Turkish (we did Indian earlier this year).
Can I also mention that I'm very thankful that Jolanthe recommended Around the World in 80 Tales and the Geography Songs? After reading her reviews on Homeschool Creations, I purchased both from Amazon here in the UK, and I LOVE them!
Oh, and we're also going to do a passport. I found the template at
http://www.guesthollow.com/. I'll post a photo once we get it started. I purchased Flags of the World stickers to put in the passport,and I'm going to use my handy date stamper when we begin and finish a unit. Okay, so here are the countries we're going to study (not necessarily in this order):
United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, China, Japan, Iraq, Russia, Norway, Australia, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Mexico. We're going to end with a 4-week unit on Explorers. We're definitely starting with the UK, which should be fun since we've lived here 4 1/2 years. Once we get started, I'll post more about what we're doing! Hurray!!!