I finished up writing my Antigua and Barbuda Unit and came over to add it to my North America Unit landing page and discovered I didn’t have one. So this is me creating this landing page. There are lots and lots of little countries in North America with the Caribbean nations in there, it made for an interesting set of geography lessons.
North America Unit Resources
With each of these countries if I have extra books or resources I will add that to the individual country posts. These are the generic resources for all of the countries at the time.
We used the North America Notebooking pages for all of the countries. This gives a nice grounding for all of the countries.
It’s somewhat tempting to wait and publish this North America Unit later, like after I have a few more posts written, but I really just want to get this published.
Caribbean area of the North American Unit
The interesting thing when you go to look up lists of regional countries you see how different groups put different countries in that list. I sat there staring at the Caribbean country list I found first thinking, “This seems wrong,” and then I looked up another one and realized it left off Cuba, and added Belize to the list. Then a list of several other countries was left off.
- Antigua and Barbuda Unit
- Bahamas Unit
- Barbados Unit
- Cuba Unit
- Dominica Unit
- Dominican Republic Unit (both Dominica and Dominican Republic are scheduled to go live in January 2023, but I’m pre-linking them since they are scheduled already)
- Grenada Unit
- Haiti Unit
- Jamaica Unit
- Saint Kitts and Nevis Unit
- Saint Lucia Unit
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Unit
- Trinidad and Tobago Unit
Central America area of the North American Unit
Central America makes up seven countries of the North American continent. Yeah that’s wrong, I just realized that first list I found left off a couple of countries. I have three different lists: 7 countries, 13 countries, and 14 countries. Why is this something up for debate?
Oh wait, I just found another list with 8 countries.
- Belize Unit
- Costa Rica Unit
- El Salvador Unit
- Guatemala Unit
- Honduras Unit
- Mexico Unit (Day of the Dead lesson) (Christmas in Mexico Unit)
- Nicaragua Unit
- Panama Unit
The Northern portion of our North America Unit
Okay, I can see part of where this might get tricky. Some lists include Mexico in Central America and some lists include Mexico in this part. Why is everyone trying to drive me crazy?
I’m just going to put:
- Canada Unit– we studied Canada years ago when we were participating in Around the World in 12 Dishes, and then again a few years ago, so it’s a bit of a hodge podge of
- United States of America Unit- Also to check out our focus on individual states: United States Geography Unit
You know, I was surprised to discover that there are so many countries in North America! I guess I was not looking at the map for a long time and was thinking of only 3 🙂 I love your geography studies!
I think the official Central America list is Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. At least that’s what they consider Central America in both Guatemala (where I lived) and Nicaragua (where the rest of my family lived while I was an undergrad). Mexico was always considered within those countries to be part of North America, which makes more sense to me geographically.
Middle America will include all of the above plus Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, and sometimes the Caribbean Islands and Guyanas.
Then there’s the Republica Federal de Centroamerica, which is part of Mexico (a state called Chiapas), Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and parts of Belize.
Definitely confusing!