Me on the Map Classroom Map Activity

The story Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney is one of my favorites. It is a great resource to utilize to teach students about geographical awareness. It teaches basic map skills starting with a map of a bedroom, then moving on to a house, street, city, state, country, continent then planet. Combining this great story with the Me in the world flip book makes for a great project your students are sure to love. Take a few minutes each day to discuss the page of the book you will be working on. We first brainstorm what we might see on our street, or in our city. I post images up on the board so the students can visualize what each page should look like. By taking this booklet one page at a time students can really absorb the difference between the labels or street, city, state, country realizing they are not one in the same. Once all the pages are done just add some ribbon through the top and you have a cute flip booklet.

Another activity my students enjoy is creating their own town, we talk about the components of a town and what types of things you might see. Using the Color your own 3D town you can create your own mini town for students to explore. There are tons of pieces included in this kit so I find it easiest to separate the students into a few groups, they can each select parts of town that they want to work on. In teams they color and assemble their 3D town pieces. These are great because they come ready to color and with sticky tabs on the side ready to assemble. When all of your pieces are assembled you can have students decide where the items should go. For an extra challenge I encourage my students to use their directional words (North, East, South and West) when determining placement. I found some grass place mats and some duct tape that looked like a road to add some interest to their tiny paper town. Once our town is all assembled my teams create a scavenger hunt to find different spots around town. They must use 4 directional clues for the rest of the class to help them find their secret spot. This is a great way to reinforce those map skills and encourage the use of directional words when giving directions. My students love this lesson and I know yours will too! While we are learning about maps I love having my science / social studies center reflect my theme. The Directional Map sticker scenes are a great way to provide map reading practice. Each one comes with a set of directions for placement of buildings and objects. You could also create your own to stretch them even further. How do you teach map skills in your classroom?