Maps

Maps


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 back yard or inside your home. Treasure maps work
especially well for birthday parties.

* Look for your city or town on a map. If you live in a
large city or town, you may even be able to find your
street. 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, prairies may provide an
open path for high winds, and mountains may block some
weather fronts.

* By looking at a map, your children may learn why they go
to a particular school. Perhaps the next nearest school is
on the other side of a park, a busy street, or a large
hill. Maps teach us about our surroundings by portraying
them in relation to other places.



* Before taking a trip, show your children a map of where
you are going and how you plan to get there. Look for
other ways you could go, and talk about why you decided to
use a particular route. Maybe they can suggest other
routes.

* Encourage your children to make their own maps using
legends with symbols. Older children can draw a layout of
their street, or they can illustrate places or journeys
they have read about. Some books, like Winnie-the-Pooh and
The Wizard of Oz, contain fanciful maps. These can be
models for children to create and plot their own stories.

* Keep a globe and a map of the United States near the
television and use them to locate places talked about on
television programs, or to follow the travels of your
favorite sports team.


Additional Activities


Children use all of their senses to learn about the world.
Objects that they can touch, see, smell, taste, and hear help
them understand the link between a model and the real thing.

* Put together puzzles of the United States or the world.
Through the placement of the puzzle pieces, children gain
a tactile and visual sense of where one place is located
in relation to others.

* Make a three-dimensional map of your home or neighborhood
using milk cartons for buildings. Draw a map of the block
on a piece of cardboard, then cut up the cartons (or any
other three-dimensional item) and use them to represent
buildings. Use bottle tops or smaller boxes to add
interest to the map, but try to keep the scale
relationships correct.

* Use popular board games like "Game of the States" or "Trip
Around the World" to teach your children about location,
commerce, transportation, and the relationships, among
different countries and areas of the world. Some of these
games are available at public libraries.

* Make paper-mache using strips of old newspaper and a
paste made from flour and water. If children form balls by
wrapping the strips of paper-mache around a balloon, they
will develop a realistic understanding of the difficulties
in making accurate globes. They can also use paper-mache
to make models of hills and valleys.



Place:
Physical and Human Characteristics


Every place has a personality. What makes a place special?
What are the physical and cultural characteristics of your
hometown? Is the soil sandy or rocky? Is the temperature warm
or is it cold? If it has many characteristics, which are the
most distinct?

How do these characteristics affect the people living
there? People change the character of a place. They speak a
particular language, have styles of government and
architecture, and form patterns of business. How have people
shaped the landscapes?


Investigate Your Neighborhood


* Walk around your neighborhood and look at what makes it
unique. Point out differences from and similarities to
other places. Can your children distinguish various types
of homes and shops? Look at the buildings and talk about
their uses. Are there features built to conform with the
weather or topography? Do the shapes of some buildings
indicate how they were used in the past or how they're
used now? These observations help children understand the
character of a place.

* Show your children the historical, recreational, or
natural points of interest in your town. What animals and
plants live in your neighborhood? If you live near a
harbor, pay it a visit, and tour a docked boat. You can
even look up the shipping schedule in your local
newspaper. If you live near a national park, a lake, a
river, or a stream, take your children there and spend
time talking about its uses.

* Use songs to teach geography. "Home on the Range," "Red
River Valley," and "This Land Is Your Land" conjure up
images of place. Children enjoy folk songs of different
countries like "Sur La Pont D'Avignon, .... Guantanamara,"
and "London Bridge." When your children sing these songs,
talk with them about the places they celebrate, locate
them on the map, and discuss how the places are described.


Study the Weather


Weather has important geographic implications that affect
the character of a place. The amount of sun or rain, heat or
cold, the direction and strength of the wind, all determine
such things as how people dress, how well crops grow, and the
extent to which people will want to live in a particular spot.

* Watch the weather forecast on television or read the
weather map in the newspaper. Save the maps for a month or
more. You can see changes over time, and compare
conditions over several weeks and seasons. Reading the
weather map helps children observe changes in the local
climate.

* Use a weather map to look up the temperatures of cities
around the world and discover how hot each gets in the
summer and how cold each gets in the winter. Ask your
children if they can think of reasons why different
locations have different temperatures. Compare these
figures with your town. Some children enjoy finding the
place that is the hottest or the coldest.

* Make simple weather-related devices such as barometers,
pinwheels, weather vanes, and wind chimes. Watch cloud
formations and make weather forecasts. Talk about how
these describe the weather in your town.


Learn About Other Cultures


People shape the personality of their areas. The beliefs,
languages, and customs distinguish one place from another.

* Make different ethnic foods, take your children to an
ethnic restaurant, or treat them to ethnic snacks at a
folk festival. Such an experience is an opportunity to
talk about why people eat different foods. What
ingredients in ethnic dishes are unique to a particular
area? For example, why do the Japanese eat so much
seafood? (If your children look for Japan on a map they
will realize it is a country of many islands.)

* Read stories from or about other countries, and books that
describe journeys. Many children's books provide colorful
images of different places and a sense of what it would be
like to live in them. Drawings or photographs of distant
places or situations can arouse interest in other lands.
The Little House in the Big Woods, Holiday Tales of Sholem
Aleichem, and The Polar Express are examples of books with
descriptions of place that have transported the
imaginations of many young readers. There is a
bibliography at the end of this booklet, and your librarian
will have more suggestions.



Weather Vane


Materials: wire hanger, small plastic container, aluminum
foil, sand or dirt, tape or glue, scissors, crayon.