Way back in the Dark Ages when I was in high school, I did an internship with a first-grade classroom. While there the mentor teacher read “Me on the Map” (affiliate link), and I fell in love with it. Fast forward a few years and I’m teaching first grade, and I got to teach this book to my class with a variation of this Me on the Map lesson, and then a few years later, I read the book to my own children. All in all, I like using it for geography lessons.
The premise of Me on the Map
Me on the Map is a great introduction to maps for young kids. They start with the small level of a map of your room and slowly head further and further out. Slowly we see where she is in her house, then the neighborhood, city, state, and so forth.
This is one of my very favorite preschool/early elementary books.
Our Me on the Map self-portraits
The book starts off talking about me. So we made self-portraits.
Here are the super quick directions of how to draw a self portrait:
- Draw a circle.
- Draw a small line under the circle for the neck. (that picture got eaten).
- Draw a rectangle or an oval for the body.
- Draw sticks at each of the 4 corners for the arms and legs.
- Draw circles at the end of the arms for hands and draw a line at the end of the legs for feet.
- Okay, here comes the annoying step that in all drawing instructions, now add details. Mwa ha ha ha ha…… I got lazy in my picture taking, and besides what I add for me, you might not add. You’ll see all of the final products in a bit.
So, I took the kids through this step by step. Princess, of course, ignored my brilliant instruction and produced scribble. She’s very proud of it and will tell you it is her, or it’s Aurora, it all depends on what she wants to talk about then.
Superman worked and worked and worked. He went through about 10 sheets of paper. “That’s not my favorite head.” “That’s not my favorite ear.” “I need a new paper.”
The final results of our first Me on the Map lesson
Eventually, Superman came up with this for his self-portrait. I loved that he wanted it to be a Batman picture of him, and that took him so many tries to get it just right.
Batman seems to of lost his legs. And he’s green, maybe he’s sick.
Look at the delicate brush strokes of Princess’ work. The surreal depiction of herself is very neo-classical.
Stay tuned, for our continuation of Me On the Map next week we’ll show you Me in My Room as drawn by a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. It’s different.
Now, I’m off to go remind kids that it’s bedtime, not playtime. They struggle with that concept
More fun ideas to use with your young kids
So cute! Love it!
Love the commentary – the self-portraits turned out very cute. Superman is definitely an artistic one 🙂
This is so cute. We will have to try this.
Self portraits are cute! very sweet your boy wanted a “perfect batman self”
I was thinking my daughter was too young for this, but maybe I'll do it anyway…and we'll consider her scribbles as abstract art!
Aww I love their artwork! Very cute self-portraits.
This is great Ticia!! You always do the neatest things with your kids and their school.
We haven't read Me On the Map – I'll have to put it on the list. And, I probably wouldn't have noticed the camera cord – but it's nice to know I'm not the only one who takes pictures of it (ocassionally, I like to leave the camera case on the table, so it can make it into a picture too.)
SO cute – and I love your description of the pictures. I can hear the snooty voice of an art critic in my head!