You can’t talk about Marco Polo and his trip to China, without getting out a few maps. It was also a great chance for the kids to see how the maps connected together and put some geography into this homeschool history, because prior to this our other map lessons had been pretty much on one map. Now we were crossing continents from Europe to Asia.
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Supplies needed for Marco Polo mapwork
big wall maps (find out how to make a wall map), overhead markers* (if your map is laminated like mine, if not pencils*), Wondermaps*
Marco Polo travels to China mapwork
First we grabbed our map of Europe and found Italy. Then we labeled our key city of Venice, which at this point is the center of all trade.
Then we headed over to our Asia map and started labeling all of the important places there, while referring to our printout of his actual journeys.
Marco Polo started out traveling by boat. This was probably the easiest part of his journey (though it made for a hilarious writing prompt from my kids as one went into insane detail about being seasick).
Then before we looked at where Marco Polo took his journey, we looked at what was going on in China. Specifically who was in charge in China. Genghis Kublai Kahn (I had that wrong at first, thanks for letting me know I put the wrong name down). We looked at our Wonder Map and saw all of the places the Mongols had conquered and put a red checkmark next to their names. It was turning into quite a big area. At some point, the kids and I will do a more in-depth lesson on Genghis Kahn, but that got us a nice start.
Then we marked his route through Pakistan, India, and Nepal. We talked about how Marco Polo had to cross some pretty impressive landscape to get to Peking. He had to cross dessert, jungle, and mountains. That must have been a tiring trek.
We used this lesson for part of our inspiration for our Marco Polo writing prompts.
For some reason I thought that he traveled on land. I learned something new today from your blog… again.
Well, once he got to the Middle East he did. 🙂 The Byzantine Empire was in its death throes at this time, so it was not a safe place to travel at that time.
I believe the ruling kahn at the time of Polo’s travels was actually Kublai, Genghis’ grandson. Interestingly, both Genghis and Kublai came to power at 13-years-old. Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the Mongol tree? 🙂
Thank you for this specific mapping suggestion! I’ve been hunting ways to supplement our own study of Marco Polo’s journey, and mapping hasn’t been our strong suit, particularly when former names are used.
You’re right! I totally put in the wrong name. That’s what happens when you’re writing without double-checking your notes.