The Geography Obsession We Didn’t See Coming
I’ve been slacking in my travel space lately in favor of a new, adjacent obsession.
At the end of April my son came to me requesting I create an account in a game he heard about. He has always loved exploring in Google Maps and Google Earth. One thing he especially enjoyed was scrolling around, dropping into Street View somewhere random, and then handing me the laptop to figure out where I was.
Turns out this is not just something he and I did as a fun bonding activity.
It’s an actual worldwide competitive level game with thousands of people playing around the globe.
It’s called GeoGuessr.
I created a free account and he and I did the free daily puzzle for a few days.
It was pretty dang fun.
I dragged my feet around his requests to upgrade to the paid subscription that allowed unlimited play and competitive play. It’s about $47 per year, and I tend to be pretty careful with our finances. I was convinced he’d move on to another interest within a week.
But, I do really love me some geography, so I did it.
Instantly we were obsessed- me even more than him. I was playing it A LOT, by myself, past my bedtime.
I was doing really well though.
The first week we ranked high enough in the duels to get double promoted. The second week we were number 2 and double promoted again. The third week was a bad week and we were only promoted one level.
In three weeks we went from the lowest level (17- Bronze IV) to level 6 (Gold IV).
This week we went on a 12 game winning streak (it’s hard to walk away when you’re winning like that) and are feeling pretty safe in our #1 position with a 1400 point lead (the average win nets you 94-100 points).
We should be Gold II by Sunday evening.
But what’s better is how much this has spilled over into our homeschool life.
Last week at a library homeschool activity the kids were supposed to be doing pointillism painting. Instead, my son painted country flags to help him remember. He requested we check out a world flag book as well. He then proceeded to draw 42 more world flags.
Then he created an entire Minecraft game where he built custom world-flag blocks in BlockBench, and players have to build structures inspired by whatever country they roll.
Two Fridays ago he wanted to spend our afternoon watching GeoGuessr Youtube videos and creating cheat sheets to help us memorize road sign types, bollards, license plates, and power poles.
I’m telling you we are to a point where we can sometimes tell you if we are in Poland or Denmark simply by looking at a bollard on the side of a road with nothing but a field around.
Honestly, sometimes we can even narrow down a country just by identifying the hemisphere and looking at the vegetation
It’s kind of insane. And we LOVE it.
This, to me, is home education at its finest.
When we can put aside the lesson plans and follow genuine curiosity, the amount of learning that happens is incredible. Geography, world cultures, climate, architecture, infrastructure, language patterns, mapping skills, observation, critical thinking — all because of one random game.
Many times my son has been blown away by a place. “That’s seriously what xyz looks like?” “there’s no way.” (South Africa we’re looking at you).
I dream of being a worldschooler and traveling to all these amazing places in the world with my children, but for now while I’m stuck in one place, GeoGuessr is doing a really good job of helping us raise globally minded children.
Not through textbooks.
Through curiosity.
If you want to check it out for yourself you can at geoguessr.com.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you become obsessed and find yourself Googling road bollards at midnight.
