| Activity: Get the Map Habit |
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Put your child's natural curiosity to work. Even small children can learn to read simple maps of their school, neighborhood, and community. Here are some simple map activities you can do with your children.
- Go on a walk and collect
natural materials such as acorns and leaves to use for an art project. Map
the location where you found those items.
- Create a treasure map
for children to find hidden treats in the yard or inside your home (a fun
idea for
birthday parties). Also, encourage children to play this game with one
another--hiding the "treasure" and drawing the map. Or, some rainy
day, suggest they draw imaginary treasure maps just for fun.
- See if you can find your
street on a town or city map. Point out where your relatives or your
children's best friends live.
- Find the nearest park,
lake, mountain, or other cultural or physical feature on a map. Then, talk
about how these features affect your child's life. Living near the ocean may
make your climate moderate and bring tourists to the area. Mountains may
block some weather fronts and offer recreational opportunities, such as
camping and hiking.
- Point out different
kinds of maps to your children--such as a state highway map, a city or town
map, a bus route map or shopping mall map--and discuss their different uses.
- Before taking a trip,
show your children a map of where you are going and how you plan to get
there. Look for other routes you could take and talk about why you chose the
one you did. Maybe they can follow the map as you travel; for
example, when you get to one town, ask them to tell you the next.
- Encourage your children
to make their own maps using legends (keys to what the pictures or symbols
in a map mean). They can draw fanciful maps of places or journeys they have
read about. Older children might draw a layout of their neighborhood.
- Keep a globe or a world
map near the television and use it to locate places talked about on
television programs, or use a U.S. map to follow the travels of your
favorite sports team.
- Look at a map of your
state, such as this one of New Hampshire. Look at the numbers at the bottom
and the letters at the right and imagine lines extended that divide the map
into a grid. Locate Manchester in grid F-3. Use the scale to measure the
straight-line distance between Manchester and Mount Washington.
- On a globe or world map, ask your child to point with a finger to the North Pole, South Pole, and the Equator. Ask which is the Western Hemisphere, the Eastern Hemisphere, and in which one do we live. Find the lines running from the North Pole to the South Pole and identify them as lines of longitude. Find the lines that run parallel to the Equator--lines of latitude. Are the lines numbered? Talk about what these lines mean. Try to figure out roughly the degrees of longitude and latitude for where you live--your global address.
~Table
of Contents~
~Location~Place~Relationships~Movement~Regions~
~Glossary~
Courtesy of Education Publications Center
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