Students Become Mapmakers

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

Discover the connection of native peoples to their natural world, including cultural and agricultural practices, by studying the Zuni people of the American Southwest. This lesson includes examining a poster's photographs, reading...

Measurement and map skills are the focus of this lesson, where students crawl through a "cave" made out of boxes, desks and chairs, observing the dimensions.  Your young geographers measure various aspects of the cave and practice...

Young archaeologists practice their mapping skills by creating a detailed site map of their room or another room in their home. After indicating walls, windows, doors, and closets, they add furniture and objects, labeling each item.

Can you read a map? Scholars use an interactive technology tool to analyze maps of various kinds to gather evidence and data to better understand their meanings and usefulness. Using newly obtained knowledge, they form an interpretation...

I Have A Dream ... that after the lesson, all individuals master the reading, writing, researching, listening, and speaking skills the biography project helps them develop. Martin Luther King, Jr. serves as a topic example for a model...

Where do the coordinates lead? As children brainstorm ways to find the location of different buildings, they learn about coordinate points and how to use them to locate areas on a grid or map. They practice using ordered pairs by playing...