Mapping Your Local Community

What's around the block? Or down the street? Ask your pupils to tap into their map skills by drafting the area around their home and school.

After reading Pat Hutchins’ Rosie’s Walk, have your young cartographers create a map of Rosie’s walk. Then lead them on a walk around the school. When you return class members sequence the walk by making a list of how the class got from...

Students are introduced to the various types of maps and their functions. As a class, they play a game similar to twister to review map concepts. They answer questions about the map and use the internet to view larger maps of the world.

Students read Little Red Riding Hood, focusing on her path home to Grandma's house. In this language arts and geography lesson, students perform a reader's theater, re-creating the walk home and possible routes that could have been...

Students examine their immediate school neighborhood and create a map of the surrounding neighborhood. They take a walk around the school and take notes and sketch important features, draw a map, and construct a three-dimensional map of...

Students create a map of their community. In this mapping lesson, students identify various geographical features and the cardinal directions on maps displayed in the classroom. Students are divided into three groups to create a large...

First graders solve a mystery by following map clues. In this map clues lesson plan, 1st graders follow a computer program called Neighborhood Map Machine. In this program, it gives students directional and spatial clues in order to...

Students predict the things that they may see, smell, or hear in their neighborhood. They take part in a neighborhood walk, creating a rough map of their neighborhood as they go. Upon return to the classroom, students create a final map...

In the world of GPS, make sure your kids can still read maps and determine distances between locations. You will need neighborhood street maps, ideally of your class' home turf. Ask kids questions about different locations in relation to...

Students use north, south, east, and west to identify relative locations and provide directions.