Orienteering: Map Skills

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...

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...

Learners review map skills and practice finding locations on a map. In groups, they create maps with mystery locations identified by hidden stick-on magnets. Other groups attempt to find the mystery locations and then check their work...

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...

As Ken Jennings said, "There's just something hypnotic about maps." Certainly, the longer you look at them the more you can learn. In this project-based learning lesson, individuals study both historic and present-day maps of their area...

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

Students create and read maps. In this map skills lesson, students draw a map of their neighborhood, then use skills acquired during map-making to interpret a classmates map and a map of the Ming Dynasty.

Students improve their directional awareness by locating sites and symbols on a map. They increase their heart rates while traveling to each site and performing the specified task/exercise at each site.