5 Days of ... Making Geography Fun- Day 1: Interactive Town Maps

Welcome to the Schoolhouse Review Crew's 5 Day Blog Hop. This time around there is no specific theme, each Crew member will be sharing a subject of their own choosing with a new post each day this week. There are going to be posts like Making Homeschooling Fun,  Family Friendly Finger Food, Babywearing and Clearing Out the Clutter. 

I will be sharing some ways to make geography fun for young children. 

When the girls were younger they really enjoyed watching Dora the Explorer. Originally my thinking was that the show would be a nice introduction to Spanish for the girls. I then realized it is a great show for an introduction to map skills. I love the way there are several landmarks they need to be looking for as Dora and Boots travel to their destination. I thought it would be fun to create a map of our town.

I found an aerial map of our town online and copied the main streets and river into a file folder. We live in a town that is only 1 mile around, so this was pretty easy. For bigger towns or cities you would probably want to concentrate on a smaller area to start with. 

We went around town, taking pictures of important buildings and other landmarks. I printed out 2 copies of each picture. One copy went onto the map and then I covered the entire thing with clear contact paper (the poor man's laminator). Then I "laminated" the second set of pictures so they could be matched onto the map.

The idea is to take the map around town and match the landmarks as you go.   You could also pick one as a destination and two or three others as stops along the route to plan fun activities (sort of like Dora). Another thought is to print a third set out and play a matching/memory game. The last landmark matched can be the destination for a fun trip. 

Though we made the map a few years ago, we just recently used it as we took a walk around town in an attempt to fill in some more details about our town. I posted about this in my Poppins Book Nook post, Map Skills with Mapping Penny's World.

There are many more insightful posts to be found. Just click on the banner below to head to the main post on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog where you will find a list of everyone who is sharing. To get you started, I invite you to stop by these blogs:

Dawn @ Guiding Light Homeschool ~ Homeschooling with Excessive Energy
Lexi @ Lextin Academy ~ The Homeschool Dad, CEO
Lynn @ Ladybug Chronicles ~ Organizing Your Home and School
Cristi @ Through the Calm and Through the Storm ~ Homeschooling Thankfulness
Melissa@ Mom's Plans ~ Historical Field Trips
Adena @ AdenaF ~ Mnemonics
Amy @ Homeschool Encouragement ~ Lego Learning
Erin @ For Him and My Family ~ Record Keeping