Orienteering: Map Skills

Students use a map to locate six specific landmarks on a course using a map. They identify how maps can help us and write a paragraph describing how to get from one landmark to another on the map.

To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then write...

Young cartographers design maps of their school gardens, including a key, compass indicating correct orientation, and colors to enhance their map details.

Young geographers travel back through time with primary source and map analysis and envision Captain John Smith's arrival at the Chesapeake Bay. 

Second and third graders practice with basic map skills. They create their own map including a legend and a compass rose. This fabulous plan has many excellent websites linked which allow learners to explore maps of all kinds; including...

Celebrate the geography of the Americas and develop map skills through a series of activities focused on the Western Hemisphere. Learners study everything from earthquakes and volcanoes of the Americas and the relationship between...

Map the classroom with your kids to help them understand how maps work and how to read them. The activity starts off with a story about animals living and moving around the globe, and then kids create maps of their classroom to show how...

Learn more about maps by examining Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. Kindergartners will learn about basic map skills and how to identify the compass rose, oceans, and land masses. They will also discover the purpose of...

Young geologists piece together the puzzle of plate tectonics in an earth science lesson. Given a physical map of the world, they search for land formations that indicate the location of different types of plate boundaries.