Major Areas Covered:  

Since this product is for very young students, it does not cover complex geography issues relating to culture or economy. However, this product does cover world locations and regions and introduces spatial relation concepts such as direction and travel time.

Topics Covered:  

The program strives to inspire young children to become inquisitive about the planet and begin to contemplate broader subjects. The layout is similar to I Love the USA, but extends beyond the United States.

This software covers locations by relating interesting facts such as the types of animals that live in specific areas, the location and relevance of famous landmarks, historical tidbits and music clips. It also highlights locations with video clips or images of natural wonders such as geysers, lakes, rivers, mountain ranges and so on. The interactive maps share information on local people and culture as well as country boundaries and major cities.

Teaching Tools:  

This product is an excellent teaching tool to introduce geography to young children. It has games, quizzes, an interactive map and multimedia features such as photographs and video and sound clips. It also has an index that includes a broad range of subjects like cities, natural wonders, plants and animals and famous places.

The games also offer several levels, so questions can range from very easy to very hard and kids receive metals for completing the games. Nearly every image in the program is interactive so that kids can move through the program and click on images to learn about various subjects ranging from animal sounds to climate.

Ease of Use:  

This geography software is simple to use—you can access every game and feature with just a few mouse clicks. Children as young as four can point and click a mouse over interactive images to see a video or to play instructive narrations. For children that are learning to read, all instructional text includes audio narrations so that kids can read along.

It is also easy to skip sections or games if a child has already viewed them. They can quickly move to a new area without revisiting the same information. This nice feature is not included in some other geography programs.

Of the products that we reviewed, this is the best geography software for very young children. Children as young as four can learn to use this product and will enjoy exploring with it until they are around eight or nine years old.

My First World Explorer is entertaining, educational and easy to use—just right for every young world traveler. For the 8 and above age grouop check out our top rated product, Carmen Sandeigo Geography System.