Our fabulous group of educating moms and our second-graders-to-be got together again, and this time we learned about geography. We started with where we are and made their little worlds get bigger and bigger!
I started by showing them a map of our city, and how our home and street fit into that. On the basketball court at the park, I had them draw, with sidewalk chalk, a little house representing their own. I then had them draw the city boundary around it. Then, I showed them the map of our county, and how our city fits into that. They drew a county boundary around the city. I then showed them a state map showing all the counties within in. They were excited to draw the shape of the state around our county. Next, we looked at a map of the United States, and they worked together to draw the boundary of our great country, leaving room for more continents on the conveniently round basketball court. Next, I assigned one child to complete North America, and assigned others to draw the other continents. They were so excited!
It was a fun activity, and the maps were easily found with a Google image search. I highly recommend this as a good hands-on spatial relationship lesson in learning one’s place in the world.
Another mom put together a great craft, layering pieces of paper for each level of geography. She also made a cute game with cupcake paper liners, layering those same levels of geography. We had so much fun!
