Me on the Map, my house

Maps are a representation of literal objects. They are small hopefully accurate renderings. This can be a tricky lesson to learn when you’re first learning how to read maps. While going through our “Me on the Map” unit I came up with a brilliant idea for helping the kids see the connection between the figurative map and the literal map. This reading-a-map lesson is a great hands-on geography lesson for homeschool preschool.

Supplies for our reading a map lesson

Me on the Map (this is part of our Me on the Map Unit, after all), digital camera (or let’s be honest, your phone), printer, gluestick, button

Reading a map lesson

0. Spend an eternity searching for a map of your house. Finally, find it a few weeks later.

1. Send your kids all over with the camera to take pictures of the different rooms. Have them take turns, otherwise, you will regret it. You get weird pictures like this.

2. Print off the pictures, I just used my printer, didn’t want to bother with going to the store to get them. Cut out the pictures and have a map of your house handy.

3. Hand each kid a picture or two. To keep the peace I made sure each kid got a picture that was related to their room, and then another they weren’t as thrilled about. What picture did they argue about most? The bathroom. *

*On a totally unrelated note, for some reason one of my sons decided it would be funny to urinate on his sister. His reason: “I needed to go potty and she was sitting on the potty.” EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. Glue the pictures down, talk about where they are and such stuff. Have them practice finding rooms.

Now, here’s the game, making the reading the map lesson hands-on

This is a great game if you have wiggly kids.

Use a button (I thought about being silly, and claiming this was my button craft for Mama Jenn, but really…..) and put it on your map (you can see it on the picture above).

Then have the kids run to that room.

This was the best game ever according to them. Much better than the game I’ll write about later this week. Boring reading game (it’s not really boring, but it’s no run to where the button is).

Oh well, we’re one step closer to getting through “Me on the Map.” We still have the downstairs to do, but that’ll be next week.

More learning fun to have

• Stonehenge lesson
• Using picture books to learn how to follow maps
• First Olympics elementary lesson
• Teaching proper procedures for science
• Astronomy Unit