Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude

Here is a simple assignment that will introduce your young geographers to location, one of the five themes of geography, through an activity in which they map the directions and lines of latitude/longitude of where they live. 

Find five activities all about longitude and latitude! Use oranges to show the equator and prime meridian, plot birthdays on a map using coordinates, and plan a dream vacation.

Here is your go-to student resource on primary geography concepts, including facts about the surface of the earth and its hemispheres, latitude and longitude, globes, types of maps, and identifying continents and oceans.

Get out the compass and a pencil its time to use a coordinate grid to practice mapping skills. Young cartographers use the prompts and provided grid to plot locations, draw parallel lines, and determine distances between points. 

Teaching learners about latitude and longitude can get a little complicated. Present the concept by first representing it as a graph. Just like finding a location on a graph using the x and y-axis, learners will be able to locate items...

Not just a simple globe of the moon, this interactive version allows you to choose lighting according to the location of the sun, views from different positions on Earth, and more! Satellite images and topographic data have been combined...

Pinhead Patty takes us around the globe and explains what latitude and longitude are in this entertaining video. The author uses an orange to demonstrate the line measurements on a sphere.

Students make puzzles from world maps, dramatizing how much of the globe is covered by ocean.

Students study the concept of using a map as a tool with the usage of a balloon designed to mimic the features of the Earth with the major features marked and shown on the balloon.

Eighth graders discover the fundamental advantages/disadvantages of both maps and globes. They see that maps may distort size, shape, distance and direction. They discuss the advantages and applications of 5 types of map projections and...