About this book
Where We Live: A Home Geography by Emilie Van Beil Jacobs offers a lively, early-20th-century guide to discovering the familiar world around us through careful observation and practical lessons. Rooted in Jacobs’s work as a supervising principal (1913–1914), this home geography blends artful description with hands-on schoolroom pedagogy, asking readers to look closely at schoolyards, streets, buildings, people, plants, and local industries before widening to seasons, climate zones, North America, and world maps.
Organized in two parts, the book moves from neighborhood physiography and transportation to broader themes—direction, the earth’s zones, and guided “trips” across continents—accompanied by simple maps designed for young learners. Jacobs’s foreword sets the tone: avoid vague, secondhand notions and cultivate direct, sensory understanding. The result is both a practical textbook and a historical snapshot of how geography and civic awareness were taught in American schools a century ago.
Ideal for teachers, homeschooling parents, historians of education, and anyone fascinated by historical pedagogy or the art of place-making, this audiobook invites listeners to relearn their surroundings and appreciate the thoughtful, tactile approach to geography that inspired generations of students.
