School Days: Me on the Map

The past couple of weeks we've added geography to our lessons and we used the book Me on the Map. Unfortunately, even though they have the book, our library could not find it for me. But, I did find this video and it worked well. The plan is to use this lesson as the start of teaching Sean geography. I just haven't decided if we'll be doing a tour of the different countries or the states. I'd love to hear your ideas!

Update: Sean has told me that he wants to learn about continents, so that's what we're going to do!
First, he got to explore a globe. A lot of his new vocabulary came from just sitting with him and the globe and him asking, "what's that?". Some of the vocabulary that Sean worked on was: Map, Globe, Compass, Continents, Oceans, Equator, North Hemisphere, South Hemisphere, Country, State, City, North, South, East and West. Sean really seemed to like all the new tools he got to use during this unit. He likes the hands on things.


We used a star sticker to help him find us on the globe.


The big project for this lesson was a book of maps so there was a lot of map making.



His favorite part was when we took a walk and brought along a map of our neighborhood and a compass. We went a few blocks the opposite way from where we go when we normally go for a walk and I helped him use the map and compass to find his way back home.

...yes, safety goggles on the head are a necessity when doing this activity. ;)


The last part of this unit was putting the book together.

He really likes the hole puncher.



His book:
That's a picture of himself but yellows and oranges don't photograph well.


Because of safety issues, I arranged the first few pages so certain info can not be seen. I also realize I put them in the wrong order. The order it is in the finished book is:
My House- I drew the outline of the house and he told me what rooms were what and drew his bed in his room. A star sticker was placed in his room.
My neighborhood- I printed a map off mapquest. The bottom of the page has a card with our address. The map already had a marker for our house.
My City- A star sticker was placed about where our neighborhood is.
My state: Virginia- A star sticker was placed about where our city is.



The last several pages:
My country: United States of America- He colored in our state.
My continent: North America- He colored in our country.
Continents- A star sticker was placed on our continent.
My planet: Earth

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